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Southwest Farm Press: 12 favorite stories of 2023

Farm Press has conducted countless interviews and covered numerous topics, from drought to record sorghum yields to a U.S. military veteran and a trip through Ireland agriculture. Here are a few of our 2023 favorites.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

December 29, 2023

13 Slides

Throughout 2023, Southwest Farm Press covered multiple topics, attended numerous meetings and conducted countless on-farm interviews. Here's a look back at 12 favorites, though there's plenty that didn't make the list! Some of our standouts include:

  • Simplifying life on the farm, from equipment to stress

  • A farmer's daughter returns to the family farm

  • Drought's toll on production and the producers who have endured

  • Seeing farming through different eyes

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We also shared stories about the Southwest's top cotton and peanut producers and their families, and a High Cotton presentation made courtside in a high school gym. From a young producer who's diversifying with Wagyu beef to growing crops half a mile from the U.S./Mexico border to a record sorghum crop, we've learned a lot from you this year.

New in 2023? Farm Press debuted its first digital-only edition in mid-January. Take a look! Each print magazine is also uploaded, so if you missed an issue, you can visit this page to turn the digital pages of past editions.

Thank you for following along with Southwest Farm Press throughout 2023. We appreciate the opportunity to sit at your table, ride in the cab of your stripper or combine or visit with you at a meeting, all so we could tell your story. Thank you for trusting us. We can't wait to do it again in 2024!

Related:How do inflation, interest rates compare to '80s?

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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