Nate Sheets: Keeping Rural Texas in the Business of Agriculture

The Republican nominee for agriculture commissioner talks about helping producers earn more, connecting Texas farms with consumers and giving rural counties a say in industrial development.

When I visited with Nate Sheets on Oct. 23, he was in Hereford and I was in Austin. He was traveling through my part of Texas while I was away from home.

But the conversation quickly got back to something familiar to both of us: families who want to stay on their land and aren’t sure how they’ll make that work.

Sheets, the Republican nominee for Texas agriculture commissioner and founder of Nature Nate’s Honey, believes helping those families make a living should be central to the job.

“A cotton farmer does not need me to tell them how to farm cotton,” he said. “He needs me to help him go sell more cotton to more people for more money.”

That is the business experience Sheets says he would bring to the Texas Department of Agriculture.

From honey bottles to the ballot

Sheets describes himself as a fifth-generation Texan raised in a family that valued service. He served in the Navy, attended Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State, and started several businesses before building the honey company.

The business began with a beehive and a working relationship with a local beekeeper. Sheets and his wife, Patty, bottled honey by hand and helped put it on store shelves. In 1997, he bought the product side of the business for $10,000 through seller financing.

For years, his cellphone number was printed on the bottles.

Customers called to ask where the honey came from, what was in it and how it was tested. Sheets said listening to those questions helped shape his products and the way he marketed them.

He believes the same approach could help other Texas producers: understand what customers want, then help farmers and ranchers reach them.

After stepping back from the CEO role in 2024, Sheets began considering public service. He said conversations with former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and his wife led him to look more closely at the agriculture commissioner’s office.

He ultimately challenged and defeated incumbent Sid Miller in the Republican primary. Sheets said his decision was driven by what he wanted to accomplish through the agency.

Making farming pay

The question of what comes next for a family farm is personal for me. My dad still farms. My siblings have moved away. Like many agricultural families, we are having difficult conversations about the future.

So I asked Sheets what his ideas would actually look like for families trying to keep going.

He started with the Go Texan program.

As a member, Sheets said he put the program’s logo on his honey bottles, but wanted more help getting products into stores and building sales. He wants to turn it into a stronger agricultural marketplace, connecting producers with retailers and consumers.

“People want to buy local and they can’t find local,” he said. “Yet we have producers that are going out of business because they need more profitable revenue.”

His proposals include dedicated Go Texan sections in stores, a stronger online marketplace and rotating farmers markets at elementary schools, where parents could buy groceries when dropping off their children.

The goal, he said, is to help producers keep more of the money consumers spend while making local food easier to find.

He also wants Texas to capture more of the business that happens after a crop leaves the farm.

Sheets described meeting a young cotton-farming couple developing jeans made from their cotton. He sees opportunities to connect those kinds of businesses with customers and eventually support more processing and manufacturing closer to where agricultural products are grown.

His larger point was that producing more isn’t enough if families cannot earn enough to stay in business.

Texas food in Texas schools

Sheets also wants stronger connections between farms and school meal programs.

He described involving students in growing food and helping schools move toward more cooking from scratch. During our discussion of rural development, he identified school kitchen improvements as one investment communities could seek from incoming industrial projects.

That connects two parts of his agenda: finding customers for Texas producers and improving the food children eat.

The details of purchasing, staffing and kitchen capacity would matter in putting those ideas into practice. In our conversation, Sheets outlined the direction he wants to take.

Data centers and who gets a say

Of course, I asked about data centers.

I have written extensively about the speed of development, the demands on water and electricity, and whether rural residents have a meaningful say in what happens around them.

Sheets said he shares those concerns.

He argued that developers have taken advantage of the limited tools available to counties in unincorporated areas. He wants the Legislature to give county commissioners and judges authority to negotiate with and oversee industrial projects.

His proposed conditions include developers bringing their own water, protecting households from added grid costs, avoiding tax abatements and investing in community needs such as water systems, hospitals and school kitchens.

But I wanted to be clear about how far he would go. Would he support allowing counties to turn projects down altogether?

“Sure,” Sheets said.

“Let that local community decide if that’s what’s best for them,” he said. “We don’t want Washington, D.C. telling us what to do in Texas, and we don’t want Austin telling us what to do in local counties.”

We also discussed the distinction between development residents may dislike and development that places demands on community resources. I pressed him on water, energy and agricultural land, and on the need for transparency before decisions are made.

Those are questions the Legislature will have to address. Sheets acknowledged that his role as agriculture commissioner would include advocating for those changes.

Giving families options

Sheets returned to farm profitability when I asked what he could accomplish through the office itself.

A family earning a living from agriculture has more choices when a developer arrives with an offer. A family struggling to finance another crop may see things differently.

“I can advocate, I can talk about local control, I can talk about this tool for county commissioners,” he said. “But what I can effectively go work on is to help the profitability of farmers and ranchers.”

He also wants to help families with succession planning and create opportunities for young people to enter agriculture.

For those of us who live in agricultural communities, the question is familiar: Can the next generation afford to stay?

Sheets is asking voters to let him put his business experience to work on that problem. His proposals deserve the same follow-up we should expect of anyone seeking public office: How will they work, what will they cost and will they help the families they are intended to serve?

Listen to the full conversation with Nate Sheets on the Texas Rural Reporter podcast episode.