If you guys want to chat about the debate - use this post. I did not watch it live. I think it's a bum deal that Beto is getting flack for speaking Spanish. The man is trying to be inclusive... Brad Kanus

Many Borderlanders may not realize that El Paso County’s Lower Valley is one of the nation’s largest cotton producers. But the valley’s historical farming communities like San Elizario, Texas, face a struggle to continue working the land.

“Cotton farming in San Elizario can be traced back to the early 19th century in the El Paso Lower Valley,” says Orlando Flores, of Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Services. “Originally the county produced grapes, the Mission Grapes, but died off due to a fungus. After that, cotton was introduced into the valley.”

Cotton fields in Clint, Texas being flooded by irrigation canals. Photo courtesy Orlando Flores, Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Services.

Cotton became popular and turned out to be a major cash crop for El Paso’s upper and lower river valleys. The dry environment, low humidity, and high elevation of the region allows for a longer growing season which makes it the area ideal for growing large amounts of cotton. Many of the cotton fields in the Upper Valley were sold off to housing developers years ago, making the Lower Valley the highest producer of cotton in the area today.

“The Rio Grande is very significant to agricultural life in San Elizario and allows for a different type of farming,” Flores says.

Cotton harvester gathers Pima Cotton in the Lower Valley. Photo courtesy Orlando Flores, Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Services.

Instead of using sprinkler systems, farmers in the Lower Valley use a traditional style of acequia irrigation, that involves communal irrigation canals and flooding the fields with water. Spanish colonies in the American Southwest used this type of irrigation system in places such as New Mexico, Texas, California, and Colorado.

Pima cotton, considered the best quality of cotton, and upland cotton are what the region grows. According to Texas A&M Agrilife, about 60% of the crop in the El Paso area is high-quality Pima cotton.

“El Paso County is responsible for about 50% of the state of Texas’s cotton crop. It is huge and people don’t realize that,” Flores says. “We are the largest Pima cotton producers in the state of Texas with over 200,000 acres across the entire Lower Valley and only second to the state California.”

But the agriculture tradition of the Lower Valley is showing signs of fading. Shannon Skov, a cotton farmer in Clint, Texas, says the art of farming is slowly dying due to labor shortages and the opportunity to cash out by selling land to developers.

“It is more profitable to sell your land than to farm it and finding people who are willing to work on farms is difficult.”

Many farmers in the Lower Valley rely on family to help plant, water and harvest the crops. But with younger generations following other career paths, farms have become more difficult for families to maintain on their own.

“Farmers rely heavily on migrant workers,” Skov says. She says it is harder to find workers these days.

Meanwhile, as the city of San Elizario grows, acres of fields are being lost to a housing boom. According to U.S. Census, the city had 4,000 residents in 2010, which has grown to more than 9,000 in 2017. Most residents now work outside of the city, with an average commute of about 40 minutes. Primary employment sectors for residents are construction, healthcare, retail and government.

“There still is agricultural life in San Elizario. You can still find alfalfa, pecans, cotton, and Sudan grass in the area, but more and more acres of land are being sold,” Flores says.

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Click hear to read In San Elizario, Texas, residential growth competes with cotton farming for land

Oh, man. Did you see what happened last night? Some little guy named Julian Castro from San Antonio beat-up on y'alls boy, Roberto O'Rourke. First, San Antonio took Sea World from y'all. Now, it is San Antonio's third-rate presidential candidate that beats up on your second-rate presidential candidate. The worse... Max Powers

David K over at Refuse the Juice wrote this in a recent blog post:

“Streetcar” update… A friend reached out to tell me they were in El Paso last week and road the trolley.  She mentioned something about a baseball derailing a care recently, but was otherwise happy with her ride.  She had to take an Uber back to her hotel, though.  The whole thing struck me as funny.

We deserve better

Brutus

You have either heard about or saw the picture of the father and daughter who drowned only inches […]

Joe Biden's Immigration Hypocrisy


Source: Joe Biden's Immigration Hypocrisy

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Reason Magazine Immigration Feed

Children Shouldn?t Be Dying at the Border. Here?s How You Can Help.

Speak up. Donate. Educate yourself. Vote.
Source: Children Shouldn?t Be Dying at t...

Max can say whatever he wants about how historical designations are totally meaningless for property owners, but that won't make it true. You don't seek and receive the designation without giving up something. Otherwise, they'd just hand them out to... Brad Kanus

There were some questions last week about the contract between the city and the group that owns the Chihuahuas.

This post from some time back will provide some details

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Brutus

America First = American Imperialism


Source: America First = American Imperialism

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Reason Magazine Immigration Feed

Want to understand why nothing ever happens in Congress? Look no further than the idea that Congress can […]

U.S. Government Says Migrant Children Deserve Dirty, Traumatizing Conditions


Source: U.S. Government Says Migrant Children Deserve Dirty, Traumatizing Conditions

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Reason Magazine Immigration Feed

Am I mistaken in my belief that the Times is still printed in El Paso while the layout and design are done out of town?

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Brutus

El Chapo Guzmán was found guilty of violating several federal charges related to drug trafficking on February 12. […]

We're at the 'Concentration Camp Semantics' Stage of 2019 Now


Source: We're at the 'Concentration Camp Semantics' Stage of 2019 Now

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Reason Magazine Immigration Feed

Trump?s Immigration Plan Would Have Missed This Nobel Prize Winner

I.I. Rabi came up with the idea behind M.R.I.s. Who brought it to fruition? A man whose family fled genocide.
Source: [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/opinion...

The Terrible Things Trump Is Doing in Our Name

One year ago, Trump outlawed family separation. It hasn?t stopped.
Source: The Terrible Things Trum...

Frater Jason has recently written comments about people learning more about our Constitution.

Should the blog start a series of posts that reprint the Constitution?

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Brutus

Some of you may have noticed that I missed two days of blog posts last week – Wednesday […]

By Sylvia Ulloa, New Mexico In Depth, New Mexico In Depth

The easiest number to understand in the just-released 2019 Annie E. Casey Kid’s Count report is that New Mexico ranks 50th overall in child well-being.

That’s a stark ranking, the second year in a row New Mexico earned that distinction.

For detractors and supporters of former governor Susana Martinez, there’s a lot to digest in the numbers released Monday because they track with nearly her entire tenure.

The chart below shows the Kids Count rankings in several categories for 2012-2019, but most of the data comes from 2010-17 (Rankings go back to 1990, but a different methodology was used in those years, making direct comparison difficult).

“It very much is a reflection of what happened, and more specifically, what didn’t happen during the Martinez years,” said James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which monitors the indicators for New Mexico.

“Fundamentally, the story the data tells is there was a real failure by the Martinez administration to invest in youth, children and families in a way that made much of a difference in terms of these kinds of rankings,” he said. Jimenez was chief of staff to Martinez’s predecessor, Democrat Bill Richardson.

Behind the numbers

It’s worth digging into the 16 categories to see where the state has been and where it’s going.

The report for 2012, based on data from Martinez’s first year in office, shows the state 49th in child wellbeing. In 2018 and 2019, New Mexico ranked  50th. But there are nuances within those numbers. There have been some important improvements that Martinez gets credit for, despite the overall trend downward.

Probably the biggest strides have been in early education, where the Legislature and governor increased access to preschool during lean budget years. When Martinez started, 61% of 3- and 4-year-olds did not attend preschool, for a ranking of 44. In 2017, that was down to 56%, and New Mexico jumped to 29th in the nation in that category.

Another high-profile action by Martinez was to accept Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, something many other Republican governors rejected at the time.

“The one area where she did do well in, and we give her credit for, is the Medicaid expansion. That had an immediate and dramatic impact on some of the health stats for our children,” Jimenez said.

That action cut the child uninsurance rate in half, from 10% down to 5%, with New Mexico zooming past 12 states in that area.

Still, two big areas that Martinez focused on — K-12 education and the economy — showed little sign of budging. Fourth-graders not proficient in reading went from 79% to 75%, with no change in ranking, and 8th-graders not proficient in math went from 76% to 80%, dropping New Mexico four slots to 49th. As for economic well-being, a slightly smaller percentage of children live in poverty, 27% in 2017. That rate fluctuated between 29% and 31% during her time in office. Other economic conditions have stagnated or gotten worse for families who struggle to access secure employment and affordable housing.

That’s despite Martinez’s push to diversify the state’s economy through tax incentives and a corporate tax cut in 2013.

“Clearly the trickle down approach didn’t work,” Jimenez said. “Tax incentives as a way to spur economic development as a general policy has almost always failed in our state and in our country.”

New Mexico In Depth has contacted former Gov. Martinez for an interview about the Kid’s Count numbers, but has not heard back.

However, on her legacy website, Martinez touted the increase in the number of students graduating from high school and college. “High school graduation rates have increased to an all-time high of 73.9% in K-12 public schools, with graduation rates for Hispanic and low-income students growing at a faster rate than the rest of the state,” the website said.

The site also touted Martinez’s use of a $50 million closing fund for economic development projects that created more than 8,000 new jobs.

Where to next?

Jimenez said to really move the numbers on child wellbeing in New Mexico would take a unified approach between the governor and Legislature. That was difficult to achieve during the Martinez administration, when the Republican governor and Democratic-controlled Legislature had different ideas about the way forward.

One thing that can help bring a cohesive approach to child wellbeing is the newly passed Early Childhood Education and Care Department, he said.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was a backer of the department, which will bring together all programs serving children from birth to age 5. Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman for the governor, said interviews for a secretary to lead the department are taking place now.

“It will be a lot of work and a sizable investment to stand up this new agency, but well worth it when we deliver the turnaround New Mexico kids and families deserve,” Stelnicki said.

He also said the governor would take a comprehensive approach to improving child wellbeing, rather than “cherry pick” solutions.

Still, he said, Lujan Grisham did plan to keep pushing the Legislature aggressively on early childhood education. (Her attempts during the past legislative session to get money for preschool from the Land Grant Permanent Fund fell on deaf ears, though she did manage to get a hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee, a first for the idea.)

NM Voices’ Jimenez said his group was pleased with the change in direction coming from the governor’s office, and saw two areas where the state could dramatically alter the trajectory for New Mexico’s children.

The first was in education.

“We’re pretty excited about the way they are speaking about culturally and linguistically appropriate education for our children. They’re not operating under the assumption that the national standardized tests ought to be the metric against which we measure children’s success,” Jimenez said.

He said the state should also shift its strategy from economic development to workforce development.

“What industry really needs is a workforce. We would recommend to the governor that. Let’s focus on ensuring we have the workforce a 21st century economy needs,” Jimenez said.

This article first appeared on New Mexico In Depth and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Click hear to read New report explores New Mexico education system’s downward trend under Martinez administration