Culture and Agriculture:
Celebrating Texas Agriculture in the Middle East BY JEAN LONIE
Inflation
BY TOM KARST
Y
ou never know where you’ll find a fellow Texan. I am coming to believe that there is something in the global cosmos that makes it nearly impossible for Texans to not find each other when out and about in the world. This fledgling theory was put to the test last month in Dubai when 12 producers and agricultural industry leaders went with the Texas Department of Agriculture to participate in Gulfood and host Texas Day and an agricultural roundtable at the USA Pavilion of Expo 2020, the modern day version of the World’s Fair. Within hours of landing in Dubai, I got word of a couple from my husband’s hometown were also
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in the city at the same time. Since our two pecan growers in the group were also from the same town – which has a population of 4,300 or so people – it felt like a really high percentage of townsfolks who were in or connected to Dubai at that moment! When you dig a little deeper and find out how many oil, energy, and engineering jobs are in Dubai (and the entire Middle East region), it becomes far less of a surprise that so many Texans are there. It may be a slight stretch to say Texans are running the world, but they are absolutely building and shaping it! As it turns out, Texans are also feeding the world. It was that role as a leading exporter of food and agri-
