Highlights from our interview with Sid Miller, Texas Agriculture Commissioner.
Q: Lone Star Standard
What does the Department of Agriculture do for Texans?
A: Sid Miller
We do everything agriculture. Cows, sows, plows, and all that stuff. But we do a whole lot more. I oversee a $7 billion agency. My budget is larger than the budget of 31 governors.
Beyond that, we are the consumer protection agency for the state. I regulate every barcode scanner in the state. Every scale. All the pesticides. We have a global marketing program with the chamber of commerce for the state. We run livestock export facilities, nutrition programs. That’s my single largest department. I am responsible for 5 million school meals each school day.
Plus, we stock area food banks like Meals on Wheels, elderly feeding, nursing homes, summer feeding programs, and things like that. I oversee rural health care in 191 rural counties across the state. So, it’s a large operation. We have a lot of moving parts over 130 statutory functions that we perform for the federal and state government.
Q: Lone Star Standard
What is the goal of your Farm Fresh program?
A: Sid Miller
When I came on board ten years ago, instead of having healthy kids, we had healthy trash cans because all the food was put in the trash can. It was terrible, absolutely terrible. So, I went around to a lot of cafeterias trying to get my head around this problem of hungry kids. We don’t need that in America.
I would ask these cafeteria managers how much local products, freshly cooked are they serving the kids. They would say, “we don’t have time to go to the farmers market. We don’t know any farmers. We just buy it from Cisco.” Then they cook it, flash freeze it, and we just throw it out and put in on a plastic tray.
I figured that’s why it’s going in the trash can. It tastes terrible. To make a long story short, we worked really hard over the years to get local products in our schools. When I started there were no local products, now, under my Farm Fresh program, last year we put $300 million worth of locally-produced food and served it to kids. No added dyes, no preservatives, never frozen. Good, fresh food. And, guest what? It didn’t go in the trash can. It tastes good so we continue to expand that.
Q: Lone Star Standard
How is the agriculture industry adapting to changes in technology?
A: Sid Miller
First, just a quick history lesson. When we started, I mentioned that 98% of us were farmers when this country was founded. That was Agriculture 1.0. It was subsistence farming.
Then we came into Agriculture 2.0 which was the age of mechanization, where we had tractors and combines. One farmer can farm a thousand or two thousand acres.
Well, now, we’re at the point of Agriculture 3.0, and that’s the technology age where we are using satellite mapping. We’re using drones to fly all our pesticides on our crops. We have automatic milkers. The dairymen doesn’t even have to go to the barn anymore. The cows milk themselves. We have driverless tractors. And that’s where we are today.
The age of technology is upon us. And the agriculture industry is widely embracing it because the biggest problem that farmers have, no matter where they farm, is labor. They can’t get enough labor. So the more that we can automate, use technology, we’re taking great advantage of that.
Sid Miller is an 8th generation farmer and rancher from Stephenville, Texas. He served in the Texas House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013 and currently serves as the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, serving since January 2015. In that role, he oversees the Texas Department of Agriculture.
This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-20-sid-miller.
