TDA Archives - People's History in Texas

Susie Reid

melscruggs — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 22:33:12 +0000

“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 […]

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Dan Kelly

melscruggs — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 17:36:22 +0000

“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 […]

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Susan Raleigh Kaderka

melscruggs — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 17:23:46 +0000

“(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 […]

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Kimberly Ratcliff

melscruggs — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 20:36:05 +0000

“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 […]

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Alfred L. Parks

Melissa Hield — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:01:08 +0000

“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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Farm Bill 1985: A Lost Opportunity

Richard Croxdale — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 23:48:05 +0000

Rally to Save Family Farms Texas Populism Project Doug Zabel grew up on a farm in the Midwest and was a political consultant and campaign manager before he went to work with the Texas Department of Agriculture. He became closely involved with the development of the National Farm Bill of 1985. “My dad had this little community bank that was […]

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Texas Organic Label First in Nation

Richard Croxdale — Sat, 30 May 2020 21:09:43 +0000

First Texas official Organic Label Texas was first State to certify an Organic Label for produce. That’s right—TEXAS! In 1987, the Texas Department of Agriculture established an official State label guaranteeing that the produce was organically grown. It is a little known fact. It is so little known that it has almost been completely written out of the history books. […]

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PHIT New Project

Richard Croxdale — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 10:27:14 +0000

Hightower Campaign Poster The Hightower Years Farms on Fire The Texas Camelot PHIT is beginning a new oral history project. The project title is still a work in progress, but the subject matter is pretty solid. We are collecting participant stories on the impact that the Texas Department of Agriculture made on state and national policies during the years […]

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