The last week of a nearly 40-year career in agricultural research and education was wrapping up in late August for Ruben Saldana.

“It feels awkward and a little emotional,” he said in his Weslaco office where he served as the administrator for Texas AgriLife Research & Extension, District 12.

Saldana provided leadership for a district that covers nearly all counties south of San Antonio as well as managing the AgriLife extension center in Weslaco. It’s a job he held for nearly 20 years in working with the parent Texas A&M University System while also collaborating with county governments regarding office space and resources for the district’s extension agents. 

Saldana managed plant pathologists and horticulturists in Weslaco while also supporting extension agents across 20 counties who deal with real-life issues like what to do with honey bees in backyards and fever ticks on South Texas cattle ranches. In the midst of it all, he also worked with county judges and commissioners and would gain enough insights into political life to be elected a city commissioner in his hometown of Mercedes.

“It takes a special kind of person,” said Saldana, who earned a Ph.D. in agricultural education from Texas A&M. “You have to be comfortable with people and be able to change and adapt and be a problem solver. If you can’t do those things, you won’t be able to do this job.”

Community Engagement

Those issues will now be ones for others to solve when it comes to AgriLife’s District 12.

Saldana in retirement from those duties can look back on a career that began as an educator with the Mercedes school district. He thought in those first after-college years of following in the footsteps of his parents.

His father, Lauro, was a longtime teacher and vocational education director in Mercedes and is so well known there that his son calls him “an icon in our community.” Saldana’s mother, Irma, was a teacher herself and would become a director of curriculum in the Mercedes school district. The younger Saldana did have one year as an agricultural educator in Mercedes before embarking on a 30-plus career with Texas A&M-affiliated extension services.

Saldana’s first A&M Extension Service job would be in Laredo. All of his subsequent jobs were also along the border. From his start in Laredo, then to Willacy County and Weslaco, he went on to El Paso for eight years before returning to the Rio Grande Valley in 2006.

Those years before the District 12 administrator job included a four-year stint in Weslaco where he was a 1990s-era project manager for South Texas AmeriCorps. Saldana considers those years among the most satisfying of his career. He found working with youths on mentorship, education and health initiatives to be fulfilling. He did similar sort of work in Laredo in helping to lift youths up from economically disadvantaged situations. 

“You knew those kids would benefit the most from those programs,” Saldana said. “I really enjoyed it. You knew you were making an impact.”

History & Future Challenges

The history of the AgriLife Center goes back to its establishment in 1923 just east of the newly created town of Weslaco.

Its first name was Substation Number 15. The facility sat on a tract of land once used by federal troops sent to South Texas in the early 1900s to deter incursions from Mexico during that country’s revolutionary war era. From its inception, the center established research and trials into citrus, vegetables, cotton and sugarcane.

Its most famous accomplishment came decades later when Dr. Leonard Pike led the research that would develop the Texas 1015 Sweet Onion. The Weslaco-bred onion is today the official state vegetable of Texas. The mild and sweet taste of the onion is so popular nationally that in 2023 Texas growers increased their acreage by 40 percent to meet rising national demand.

Saldana walked into this history when becoming the center’s administrator in 2006. He and his team of scientists and researchers would make their own mark in helping growers and ranchers deal with a whole host of problems and challenges in adapting to ever-changing environmental conditions. 

“When they run into a problem, they don’t want to go to A&M to get a degree,” Saldana said. “They need a solution. We take the knowledge we have here and put it into place locally to help solve problems. We say, ‘here’s the data, here’s the research,’ and they make the decisions on what to do with the information. That’s why people turn to us.”

From retirement, Saldana will see how the dynamic between agriculture and a rapidly growing RGV plays out, the remaining open spaces contrasted by urbanization on its constant march to develop land. 

“To me, that’s the challenge of the future,” he said. “How do we continue to support agriculture and all that it provides us while we see the Valley growing as it is. How do we negotiate these kinds of differences and find that middle ground?”