Commissioner Hightower in 1983 gave women the opportunity to lead for the first time in the history of Texas Department of Agriculture.
Women in the TDA led innovative programs that created new markets, protected consumers, and defended farm workers in the years that Jim Hightower was Agriculture Commissioner, 1983-1990.
Hightower told PHIT, “Once you start something like that, if you have two women who are heads of programs, then suddenly other women want to apply there. We were open to all of that. We would have events at the department celebrating women’s participation. Women were the creators and they made it possible for me to be there. Really.”
When Hightower was elected Ag Commissioner, he recognized he had a platform and a government agency that could put new programs in place to help consumers, small farmers, and farmworkers. From his work on the Agriculture Accountability Project in Washington, DC, and as editor of the Texas Observer, Jim Hightower and Susan DeMarco, his partner in work and life, were aware of young activists that could be tapped to help start and run new programs. Many were women.
Kate Fitzgerald was a student at the University of Texas at AusJn and worked part-time at the Texas Observer. The editor of the Observer, Geoff Rips, went to work at TDA and brought Kate in as a summer intern.
Fitzgerald’s job was to assess hunger in Texas. “I went through county by county, pulling data from wherever I could find it. Basically what I found was that there were enormous rates of poverty, but also hunger events that are now called “food insecurity’’ in Texas. Then when I graduated in December, Geoff Rips hired me. He brought me on to work for him, and the role was Director of Food Assistance, which was pretty funny because I didn't direct anybody but myself. But it was my mandate from Hightower through Geoff, ‘Do something with existing resources within TDA to help create new markets for farmers and at the same time address hunger.’”
Paula de la Fuente met Hightower through Richard Moya, Director of Field OperaJons, at a fundraiser. “I chatted with [Richard Moya] about what I did, what my background was. I grew up on a farm. I have a degree in agriculture. I also had marketing experience and sales experience. I even had some radio experience. When a position came available, sometime later, as a marketing specialist under the direct marketing program to oversee all of the farmers markets across Texas, they called on me. I didn't hesitate to put in my resume. I started at TDA at the end of February of 1988. I'd never worked for a state government or a state agency.”
Fitzgerald and de la Fuente were a team, Paula promoting and organizing farmers markets and Kate working on the policy side.
Kate Fitzerald spoke to PHIT in an interview in 2020, “The first thing we did was to develop farmers markets in urban areas. Third Ward in Houston. We went and looked at cities and essentially tried to lure farmers to come into inner city areas, and also create markets in rural communities, which were losing their grocery stores with Walmart's push into rural areas. First of all, get farmers markets into these areas that had lost access to affordable, nutritious food.”
“The next one was getting farmers markets authorized to accept food stamps, which were then still called food stamps[SNAP program today]. The big policy challenge there was that in order to be authorized to accept food stamps, you have to give the federal government, USDA, either your employer identification number, which farmers don't have, or your social security number. Farmers are saying there is no way we’re giving the feds our social security number to get into this program.”
“The policy win we had was that we got USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service to allow markets to be authorized collectively. The Paris, Texas Farmers Market Association received an authorization to accept food stamps and then every market vendor could then accept food stamps. What they would do was the shopper would just go and spend them directly. Essentially the analogy could have been, think of a farmers market as a grocery store, and each different farmer was just a different checkout lane. The business itself was the market. That was project number one.”
“We organized farmers markets in the parking lots of the WIC [Women and Infant Children] clinics. Back then, every WIC participant went to the clinic and had an individual consultation with their nutritionist counselor once a month. You went in, you got your benefits, but you also got a class and they taught nutrition. The farmers would set up the market on those days in the clinic parking lot. It went really well. That first year they would get printed coupons from the WIC clinic that would get turned in to the farmers. The farmers at the end of the day, would turn it into the market manager. I don't remember exactly how we did it but somebody cut them a check for the coupons they redeemed. Eighty percent of them were used, which was just this stunning thing in the course of October through early December in 1988.”
The TDA team worked with four other state departments of agriculture to convince Congressman Kika de la Garza, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Subcommittee, to sponsor a pilot project, the Farmers Market Nutrition Programs.
Fitzgerald sJll remembers the details. “The deal was that the feds would put up 70 percent of the cost and the state had to pony up 30 percent of the cost to participate in this pilot project. We had worked with the Iowa Department of Agriculture, Massachusetts Department of Agriculture, Pennsylvania, and Maryland Department of Agriculture to put this piece of legislation or this “ask” together. We were all going to apply for it, since we all had some track record.”
When Texas Governor Bill Clements decided not to apply, Hightower wrote an article about why it was good public policy. Ultimately, Texas applied and received their share of the grant funds.
Fitzerald was proud of the accomplishments. “We did a program and it's now a permanent program that still exists as part of the WIC program. It was included in the next Child Nutrition authorization. We started a senior program working with the Texas Department on Aging. That was funded initially by just agency money that the agency and Department of Aging could come up with. Gus Schumacher, Commissioner of Agriculture in Massachusetts when Hightower was in Texas, became Deputy Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton years and he made the elder program a permanent program within USDA then.”
Paula de la Fuentes was also proud of the work that they did. “I felt like the work was very heart-based. Almost had a spiritual aspect to it, even if it wasn't approached that way. But truly I think that's what it felt like when you're helping to protect the Earth, protect the soil, feed people, take care of children, especially the ones that are at risk. You know the ones you would see come into the farmers market out of the WIC program. We did a senior citizens program also as well, a smaller program that would bring the seniors into the market....It was heart-centered type of work.”
Kate Fitzgerald totally agreed on the importance of the work. “That was basically the most exciting project that I got to be a part of and all of them are now permanent and national. That was the best job of my life. I'm going to be 60 next year. I got let go by Rick Perry when I was 30. In the subsequent 30 years, nothing has compared with those two or three years at TDA.”
People’s History in Texas interviewed more than 100 Texas Department of Agriculture supporters and former staff members for the TDA Legacy Project 1983-1990. This post is based on some of those interviews. More to come.
Melissa Hield