Texas Department of Agriculture Archives - People's History in Texas https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/uncategorized/texas-department-of-agriculture/ Tue, 25 Apr 2023 16:02:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-logo-32x32.png Texas Department of Agriculture Archives - People's History in Texas https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/uncategorized/texas-department-of-agriculture/ 32 32 Cather Woods https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/cather-woods/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:17:10 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2617 “Jim Hightower was one of the best things for Texas in my experience, in my lifetime, and I’m 78 years old. So, I started working with farmers during that era. He was really nice. He worked hard to make sure that he made it better for blacks. By making sure that you knew what was there, by reaching out to […]

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]]> Ellen Widess https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/ellen-widess/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:14:58 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2613 “One of the provisions they (the Trump-era EPA) wanted to get rid of was the farmworkers’ right to have their doctors, or any other advocate, a lawyer, priest, worker center, anybody, union, get access to their pesticide safety sheets to know what they were exposed to, what the risks were and to be able to go after the company and […]

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]]> Gus Townes https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/gus-townes/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:08:25 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2598 “A lot of these towns were drying up. They didn’t have anything in them, not even a farmers market. So our strategy was to try to revive rural towns using farmers markets…The first one I had Leroy [Biggers] put together. When we got there, that farmers market only sold roses. That’s a big rose-growing area up around Tyler. So that […]

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]]> Brigid Shea https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/brigid-shea/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:04:15 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2589 “The (Clean Water Action) canvass had a unique ability to literally be this foot soldier army that could go out door-to-door and reach people who may not show up elsewhere, but who really agreed with the idea of better protections for the environment, and eliminating excessive use of pesticides that were poisoning people, and making opportunities for organic farmers to […]

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]]> Freddie Richards https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/freddie-richards/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:02:30 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2585 “Initially, the (Texas Agricultural Finance Authority) program funded people who wanted to take ag from production to processing and marketing, from the commodity production side to the processing side. Then we tried to help people who wanted to fund specialty projects that included viticulture, bees and deer and Christmas trees which were also considered to be agricultural diversification. Not 100 […]

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]]> Alfred L. Parks https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/alfred-l-parks/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:01:08 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2581 “We had a guy that came in from the Dallas area. He had no farming background, but he had married into a family that’s local here… “My family has land not far from Prairie View, and we want to get into watermelons.” He created a supply chain. What he had done was go out and develop some markets with Luby’s. […]

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]]> Jesse Oliver https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/jesse-oliver/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 07:59:36 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2577 “(O)ne of my first formal relationships with agriculture was at the Black Farmers Conferences and getting some history of what was going on with them and what had transpired…The few who held on, who actually worked the land and stayed there, were still facing difficult times, mistreatment by USDA, especially with respect to support farm loans, crop loans, crop insurance, […]

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]]> Becky Murphy https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/becky-murphy/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 07:57:53 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2573 “I remember one of the (California) grape growers said, we have a surplus of wine and a surplus of grapes in California and things are getting tough. Now we have all you other states competing with us. I said, wait a minute, you obviously never read Leon Adams. He said, if we had people growing grapes all over the United […]

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]]> Barbara Meister https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/barbara-meister/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 07:54:27 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2567 “It’s Hightower’s philosophy, go out and scour the countryside, find these folks who are doing these innovative things and bring them into the government structure.Give them a computer, give them a secretary, give them a travel budget, and say, keep doing what you’re doing. But do it in here, do it throughout the whole state. I remember that being a […]

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]]> Pauline Medrano https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/pauline-medrano/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 07:52:49 +0000 https://www.dev.peopleshistoryintexas.org/?page_id=2562 “We went door-to-door into the different neighborhoods and found out neighborhood associations, PTAs, we promoted them however we could. It was grassroots. It was churches, PTAs, neighborhood associations, neighborhood groups. We’d say, ‘We want to start a farmers market. What would be a good day? What would be a good morning?’ Olmos Park (San Antonio) said, Monday morning. And that’s […]

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