August 5th 1982, farmworker Sacharias Ruiz awoke at dawn in Bryan, Texas. He would not live to see the sun set. Mr. Ruiz’s job that day was to spray Dinitro-3, a highly toxic pesticide, on cotton plants in Bryan, Texas. The pesticide canister had a leak, just a small leak, but, nonetheless, a fatal leak. Soon, Mr. Ruiz was too […]
Sarah and the Two Jims
The 1980s were hard times for agriculture, the worst hard times since the Great Depression. When you look at the raw data, it is truly staggering. Real U.S. net farm income fell over 40% from the early 1970s to early 1980s. Well over a quarter of a million farms were lost in the 1980s. Those lost farms were overwhelmingly family […]