“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 […]
Ed “Big Mac” McGowan (D)
Mac McGowan started with the Federation of Southern Coops and was quickly recruited to join the direct marketing team at TDA. He helped organize the Hempstead Watermelon Coop. He was the instigator behind the Fort Bend Vegetable Growers conference, which continues today. This conference is 50 percent minority farmer attendance still thirty-five years later. An award in honor of Mac […]
Keith Jones
“I had been a part of the mid ‘80s farm crisis; had moved to Dallas and had gone to work for a bank in Dallas and was really needing to get back into agriculture some way…. I came on board (at TDA) in ‘88 and Hightower had this conference on organic and sustainable agriculture in March of 1989. He was […]