Sid Miller - Texas Agriculture Commissioner Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
See a dog and a field in the tractor. Yep, yep,
you got to have those things you want to be
a farmer. Seventh, at least in Texas. Seventh, you need
a pickup truck too. By the way, seven twenty two
is our time here in Houston's boring news. Sid Miller
joins US Texas Agriculture Commission. Every time I see you
on TV, you're calling from your pickup trucker. Are you
in your pickup truck this morning?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, I will be as soon as I hang up
this fuck.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I bet you will be. So Trump's USDA evidently trying
to explore a federal solution that would ban China for
buying US farmland. What do you think about that.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I've been working on this for five years. It's about time.
I mean, it's one of the stupidest things we allow
to happen here in Texas. We let a retired Chinese
military official by one hundred and forty thousand acres next
to Lachland Air Force Base in Del Rio. Now a

(00:56):
lot of people don't know, but Laftlin Air Force Base
is where we house our U two spyplane, our most
top secret aircraft, and we let China set up shop
right next door, and they wanted to put up a
wind uh farm, a solar farm. So we're gonna let
them spy on our military, give them access to our

(01:18):
electric grid. Uh, we let them have access to our foods,
you know, our food system. I don't know how much
more stupid you can get than that. It's got to stop.
Well way past.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Time, you know that being so stupid, said why didn't
we do something about that ourselves as a state. Why
didn't we stop that from happening? Why do we have
to depend on the federal government to do it for us?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, last session, two years ago, I worked with Senator
the Lowies. Cold course, we had a good bill. It
was one of the first bills they passed out of
the Senate, sent it to the House, never got a hearing.
That's you know, the Democrats still control the House then
and they didn't like it, so they didn't even get
a hearing in that house. So this time I'm hopeful

(02:03):
that things are going to be a lot different. We've
got a new speaker, there's no longer any Democrat chairmans,
so we just got to do this. I mean, it's
just a no brainer.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, I don't. Don't. I don't mean to burst your
bubble or to be negative here, but we have all
Democrat vice chairmans who now have this big four million
dollar budget that was passed without the entire body voting
on it the way they're supposed to. And they've only
the only thing they have brought to the floor in
the House so far after weeks of being in session,
is they finally brought the school choice bill. So it
doesn't seem to me like things have changed that much

(02:37):
in the Texas House.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, they're just you know, they get a slow start
every time in the House. They as a matter of fact,
you can't pass any bill in the first sixty days
of the session unless it's put on emergency measure by
the governor. So we'll see. I'm gonna give them a
benefit of the doubt. I'm working hard. Sentator co course

(03:00):
got the bill again. She's just about ready to pass
it out of the committee in the Senate. Uh, so
we'll we'll see. I actually campaign against many members of
the Texas House, uh you know that were responsible for
killing that bill. So and we we actually we turned
over about twenty of them, so we got their attention. Uh.

(03:22):
I think they're going to be. I feel pretty good
about him passing it this time.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Good. I hope you're right about that. Now. Is there
anything we can do retroactively? You know, take that example
of one hundred and forty thousand acres going to former
Chinese military official who wanted to build his solar wind
farm or whatever the heck it is he wanted to do,
basically spy on on that on that base. Can we
somehow as a state force him to sell that property
or we stuck?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Well, we could uh take Arkansas's lead governor, Governor Huckebye
Sanders up there. Uh she she they had some U
it was only like one hundred and twenty acres that
the Chinese had bought. She said, you've got one year
to divest yourself or the state's gonna take your land
away from you. Get out, get out. And uh, we

(04:09):
could do that, you know, taken executive order by the governor.
I haven't seen any indication that he's willing to do that,
but we could do that, and I hope we do.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I hope you're right. Sid Miller. Always a pleasure, sir,
Take care, enjoy your ride this morning. Texas Agriculture Commissioner
Sid Miller seven twenty seven