“TDA, under Reagan Brown, was very pro-pesticide. The staff were wearing chemical company baseball caps and buckles. TDA wasn’t distinguishing between imported and native fire ants. In the 1980’s, fire ants took over the University of Texas’ Brackenridge Field Station. Dr. Larry Gilbert’s at UT and his students started mapping the spread of imported fire ants. The native flies had […]
Susie Reid
“Working with Hightower and the work every day were the best part of my life…It was really fun…There aren’t so many people like Jim Hightower… I worked with Hightower for probably 10 years in the different things he did, and I just loved it.. My husband was kind of happy when it ended, because sometimes I didn’t get home until […]
Max Woodfin
“The pesticide regulatory program had essentially been toothless by choice. One of the reasons Hightower hired Rick Lowerre was because Rick understood the regulatory world and how to use regulations to fairly enforce the law. TDA didn’t do anything genius-level. We just started enforcing the rules and the laws that were already in place. If a pesticide applicator caused pesticides […]
Tonya Kleuskens
The Department of Energy was looking at Deaf Smith County and also Swisher County, Texas at that time. So, we were just paying attention, listening with friends. But, I began to hear a lot of helplessness from people in the area, saying that there was nothing they could do about a federal project—that the property was going to be taken […]
Gary Keith
“I wrote an op ed piece for Hightower on farm policy. And you never wrote something for Hightower that he just took and put out with his name on it. I can still see him standing at his desk with that black pen.. For the next two years I directed the nuclear waste studies project… I was back and forth […]
Dan Kelly
“I laid out the results of the (Organic) task force’s work. I ended by saying something to the effect, ‘This looks doable. Let’s adopt these standards by regulation.’ This was a novel idea. Rick Lowerre (Deputy Director of Regulatory) sort of gulped and said, ‘Can we do that?’ I had read TDA’s statute and said, ‘Yes, we can.’ Nobody in […]
Susan Raleigh Kaderka
“(A) lot of the marketing juice behind organic agriculture did have a food safety tone to it and so people would think, ‘Well, if I buy organic and it won’t have pesticides on it, that will be safer for me’, which was true. But the organic growers themselves, that movement was much much more interested in soil health and just […]
Dennis Holbrook
“I was approached by representatives from Texas Tech University, asking to allow my employees to participated in a blind study of agricultural workers. They were testing for pesticide residues, and they were not having a great deal of success or luck in getting participation from a lot of the farmers here. But I told them, ‘Look, I’ll participate in the […]
Melissa Hield
“I co-founded People’s History in Texas in 1976 to bring to life stories of ordinary people and significant social and political movements.“ Melissa Hield is PHIT’s executive director. A founding member of PHIT, she also serves on the board. In 2019 she retired as an executive at a Texas state agency where she specialized in strategic, business, and project planning. […]
Kimberly Ratcliff
“The meat company started with a set up at a farmers market, then I added a website. Now I’m selling all my meats, I have contracts, huge contracts, the Houston Food Bank. I have a contract in Washington DC. I literally just got off the phone call before here with a major restaurant chain that I’m possibly going to sell […]