The Hightower Legacy

The 8 glorious years.

Jim Hightower was elected to two terms of office as Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture.  1983-1991.  In those eight glorious years, Hightower, and the amazing team of activists and policy analysts that he recruited and enabled, created a legacy of agricultural achievements that created models for the rest of the country.  For those 8 years, the Texas TDA was the most progressive and pro-active state agency in the country.  The TDA was at the forefront in stemming the nationwide decline in numbers of small and family farmers. 

Yet that legacy has been mostly neglected and his successors at the Texas Department of Agriculture have virtually written Hightower and his achievements out of history.

People’s History in Texas initiated an oral history project to recover that history.   The PHIT mission statement is to collect and preserve and to tell the story of the neglected and under-represented segments of Texas history.  And the Hightower TDA has an incredible history to tell.

People’s History in Texas has collected over 100 participant stories on the impact that the Texas Department of Agriculture made on state and national policies during the Hightower years.

We are making these stories available in a variety of media.  Podcasts, short videos, tiktoks, and now here on Substack. We hope you will follow this story.

Hightower came into office in the midst of the most severe agricultural credit crisis since the Great Depression.  The family farm and the family ranch were facing extinction.  

Reagan, the Farm Bureau, the United States Department of Agriculture all were working avidly and gleefully to increase the average size of the farm in order to make it more “efficient and productive.”  And they were more than willing to sacrifice the family farm for massive exports and cheap cattle.

The Texas TDA became the focal point of opposition to that strategy.  The Texas TDA battled the Farm Bureau, battled the USDA, battled the Reagan-Bush administration.

The mission statement of the Texas TDA was to create an agricultural environment that would be safe for the consumer, safe for the farmworker, safe for the earth and would permit the family farmer and rancher an opportunity to make a profit.

There were many notable success stories

Texas was the first state to certify an Organic Label, which turned out to be so popular with consumers that competing states  insisted on a national Organic Label.  

Texas passed a Right to Know law for pesticides that is still one of the strongest state laws in the country.  

The TDA was in the forefront of environmental efforts.  They helped local citizens battle nuclear dumps, uranium mining, and chemical pollution.  

The TDA supported diversification efforts to move smaller farmers away from industrial mono-crops of wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans. The TDA fostered farmer’s markets, promoted the Texas wine industry, the cut flower industry, the Christmas tree industry, the blueberry industry and helped sponsor cooperative canning operations.

This substack series will also include entries from our other projects.  The RAG underground newspaper, the Standins, the Resettlement Communities of the New Deal, and our ongoing uncovering of the parts of Texas history that get left out of Texas history—the stories that have been forgotten and should be remembered.

Please be sure to check out our website peopleshistoryintexas.org to view our documentaries and get access to our podcasts.