By The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board, Opinion Staff

Republican Nate Sheets has the experience and vision to be Texas’ next commissioner of agriculture. Voters should choose him over Democrat Clayton Tucker.

Sheets, 56, is founder of Nature Nate’s honey brand, formerly North Dallas Honey, which Sheets purchased in 1997. Sheets’ career includes a little of everything. He served in the U.S. Navy for six years. He worked in advertising. He was a missionary. And he helped create the “I Am Second” evangelistic campaign. In 2013, he launched Bonton Honey in South Dallas with Bonton Farms leader Daron Babcock.

Sheets told us that range of experience will help him serve an industry that produces everything from beef to hemp.

His leadership experience won’t hurt either. More than 600 people work for the Texas Department of Agriculture, and the office interacts with hundreds more state employees and elected officials to make agriculture safe and profitable for Texas growers. Sheets’ experience managing the largest honey brand in the U.S. should help him excel at the parts of the job that are about leadership and coalition-building.

And Sheets will need to build coalitions to accomplish his agenda. He wants to improve Texans’ health, particularly childhood nutrition and obesity trends. He wants to create platforms for local growers to sidestep big conglomerates that control much food processing and distribution. He wants to ensure that Texas institutions like schools and prisons source food from Texas producers. He wants fewer food recalls and fewer family farms closing in Texas. He admits that the solutions to many of those problems are beyond the scope of the ag commissioner, but he tells supporters that Texas ag needs a champion and he can deliver.

“This takes vision,” Sheets told us, “and we’ve been vision-less for 12 years.”

That was a reference to the incumbent commissioner, Sid Miller, who was elected in 2014 and who, in our view, misused his office for political ends. Miller lost to Sheets in the primary election this spring and has since engaged in a campaign of sour grapes.

Tucker, 35, is campaigning on many of the same issues as Sheets, but offers less experience. His campaign features an inordinate focus on data centers, which he opposes. We appreciated how Tucker avoids using partisan talking points. In our candidate interview, he gave credit to the Make America Healthy Again campaign and said he favors free-market ideas. He wants to break up food processing monopolies and defend farmers in “right to repair” disputes in which equipment manufacturers force their customers to use approved mechanics. But his plans for how to achieve those goals were rudimentary.

After Miller, whose tenure was marked by an endless stream of small-minded social media posts, Texas farmers and ranchers deserve a representative who can tackle big problems with big ideas. Sheets seems ready to do so.