WESLEY and KELLY ADAMS have operated a family farm where they raise pasture-fed beef since 1986. They believe the unique blackland soil provides for the special quality and full flavor of their beef, since healthy soil is the basis of plant, animal, and, ultimately, human health. All animals in their grazing program are raised on pasture from birth, with no supplements. Wesley and Kelly provide their animals with high-quality forage and tend them with stress-reducing techniques. They use no growth hormones, dewormers, pesticides or antibiotics. In 2002, they formed a Holistic Resource Management (HRM) plan in keep with their goal to be responsible, environmentally-sustainable, and financially-successful farmers. Adams Blackland Prairie is a member of the Grassfed Livestock Alliance and a recipient of the USDA’s Conservation Security Program. The Adamses has received four loans through the Local Producer Loan Program, all of which have been used to purchase grassfed cattle, to be sold when at their final weight.
CASEY McAULIFFE operates Moon Dog Farms with her partner Alex McPhail in Santa Fe, Texas, and manages Galveston’s Own Farmers Market on the island. Under her leadership, the market became the first in the Houston area to establish a “double dollars” initiative for food stamp customers and the first in Galveston county to adopt the Farmers Market Nutrition Program for WIC clients, which distributes $30 vouchers for fresh market produce to families using WIC benefits. She graduated from Southwestern University in 2008 and worked on organic farms in the Northeast until returning to Texas in 2013. Casey recently won her local municipal election and now serves as City Councilperson for La Marque, Texas.
DANNY NUCKOLS has a Ph.D., Political Economy, and M.A. Literary Analysis, both from the U.T. Dallas. He currently teaches at Austin College, where he holds the John T. Jones Chair of Economics. Dan is the Director of the Economics Scholar Program, in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. His research includes topics surrounding sustainable agriculture and the philosophical underpinnings of ecological economics. Dan is on the Board of Holistic Management International, a member of the Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association and FARFA, and a founding Board member of the Council for Healthy Food Systems.
HOWARD VLIEGER is a third generation family farmer who has been a “student of the soil,” studying why and how the soil works as it does, since 1989. Howard lives on the family farm where he was born and raised in northwest Iowa, and assists his son with some of the farming duties. He has founded two companies to help family farmers reduce their dependency on chemical- based farming and transition to biological and/or organic crop production. Howard works with scientists and researchers around the world to develop effective solutions, based on the latest science, for the real-life problems farmers are experiencing because of GMO crops and glyphosate. Howard is a co-author and the primary coordinator of a first of its kind scientific study: the feeding of GMO grain and non-GMO grain to hogs for their lifetime as a meat animal. Howard is an internationally recognized educator and speaker on the topic of GMOs.
PAM WALKER is a writer and a local farm and food activist. She is the author of Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas: Profiles of Organic Farmers and Ranchers across the State (Texas A & M University Press, 2009) and of articles that have appeared in edible Austin, edible Houston, and the Houston Chronicle. From 2002 – 06, she led Urban Harvest, a Houston nonprofit, in organizing and initially developing its first farmers’ market. She is a lifetime member of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance and a sponsor of its annual conference. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Rice University, an M.L.S. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. in English from Austin College, and has worked as a librarian, a college English teacher, and the administrator of the Humanities Research Center at Rice. She is the granddaughter of sharecroppers and learned from them to grow vegetables and to pay attention to farming and food.
