Who Owns the World

A sample page from the book

Background

Texas, one of the most assertive states of the Union, is almost twice the size of Japan and substantially bigger than France in size. Originally a Mexican territory, the Mexicans made the fatal mistake of selling large portions of the huge state to American ‘empresarios’ or settlers, mainly as a buffer against Comanche and Apache war parties. In 1835, the Mexican government tried to challenge the land rights of some of the settlers and the Texans rebelled, eventually becoming the 28th state of the Union. The new state government sold off vast tracts of land and invested in schools and, later, in its fledgling oil industry. Stephen Austin, one of these ‘empresarios’, after whom the state capital is named, headed off the Mexicans and the vast land frauds in places like New Mexico and Arizona by having much of the state surveyed at his own expense.

The federal goverement owns 2,909,900 acres of Texas.

Farms in Texas

There are 194,031 farms, standing on 131,308,286 acres. Of these farms, 118,441 are wholly owned, 54,892 are partly owned and 29,968 are tenanted. There are3,724 farms of between 1,000 and 2,000 acres in the state and 1,397 farms over 2,000 acres.

Farms in Texas were entitled to about $1,800 million in direct federal farm subsidies in 2004.