THE ROAD TO F
RESILIENCY
THREE-TIME ALUMNUS SERVES AS USDA FOOD SYSTEMS RESILIENCY SENIOR ADVISER
or Marty Matlock, his experiences growing up on a subsistence farm in rural Osage County, Oklahoma, moved him toward service and food resiliency. Now, at age 59, he serves as the U.S. Department of Agriculture senior adviser for food systems resiliency in the market and regulatory programs. Matlock’s hope is to bring his wisdom and experience to help improve the decision-making process to nudge the food supply chain to more resilient footing, he said. “The U.S. food system is incredibly efficient, it’s incredibly sustainable, and it’s incredibly profitable,” Matlock said, “but very fragile.” Matlock said resiliency is the ability of a system to keep functioning under stress combined with how quickly it can recover once disrupted. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. saw just how fragile the food system is, he said. “What is a success for me will be 10 years from now we have a diversity of meat processing as well as fruit and vegetable production across the landscape,” Matlock said. “U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has carved out about $4 billion of the Build Back Better fund to make food systems more resilient in the U.S.,” Matlock said. 88 WINTER/SPRING 2022
The impacts of the money being spent now are expected to show results in two years, he said. Matlock has spent his professional life relying on short-term thinking, he said. Now, his goal is to try and look up more, see the bigger picture, and pick his next path more explicitly, he added. Matlock’s road to becoming a USDA senior adviser has been one achieved through hard work, service, ambition and the occasional failure, he said. That road for Matlock began as a child growing up in Prue, Oklahoma. “My upbringing was comparable to many other rural, working-class Oklahoma families,” Matlock said. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a machinist. Some of Matlock’s fondest memories include competing in rodeos, growing up on the land, and graduating with a class of 27 students, he said. Matlock’s Cherokee heritage came from his father and both parents taught him a sense of community responsibility and a strong work ethic, he said. “You get up in the morning and work because that’s what you do,” Matlock said “The dignity of sweat cannot be overstated.” Matlock said growing up he remembers the famine that struck Ethiopia
in the 1980s. The famine gained global news coverage and caught the attention of celebrities like Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, he said. The famine also caught his own attention, Matlock said, and sparked a passion to one day feed the world. His passion for alleviating food insecurity directed his collegiate career. In 1984, Matlock obtained his bachelor’s degree in agronomy from Oklahoma State University. During Matlock’s senior year of his undergraduate program, faculty member and mentor Jerry Grant introduced him to Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. “Norm changed my life,” Matlock said. “He taught me hunger is no longer an agronomic problem. It is an economic and political problem.” In 1989, Matlock received his master’s degree in plant physiology from OSU, where his primary adviser was Jim Ownby, the former head of the botany department. “Dr. Ownby was perhaps the most influential person in my young academic career after Norm and Jerry,” Matlock said “He taught me to think like a scientist and opened my mind to the process of discovery science is.” After finishing his master’s degree, Matlock worked for five years at a
