Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
pioneers of IPM, Carl Huffaker and Robert van den Bosch, helped draft
a plan for UC to create a dedicated IPM program. During the late 1970s,
California experienced several pesticide regulation controversies. This
created a favorable political climate for this, and the state legislature
authorized the UC IPM program in 1979, the first of its kind at a land-
grant university.
29
Many farming states have subsequently launched their
own programs.
Land-Grant Universities: Who Are the Clients?
Agricultural scientists have to negotiate the “endemic ambiguity” of
their profession since the creation of the LGU system.
30
As some of the
first publicly funded scientists, they had to establish networks of support
for their work. They had to cultivate support from growers and agricul-
tural interests by conducting “useful” scientific work that would result
in continued financial sponsorship by elected state officials. At the same
time, they nurtured their primary professional allegiance to their scien-
tific disciplinary community, and many early scientists resented the
applied work expected of them. Agricultural scientists were able to
manage these tensions fairly well until the 1970s, when public critics
began to complain about the consequences of the agricultural system
that they had designed.
Charles Woodworth recognized that University of California scientists
alone could not effectively serve the burgeoning agricultural industry,
so he devoted considerable time to working directly with pesticide
manufacturers and salesmen. In 1912 he wrote: “I am not sure we all
appreciate the tremendous influence the manufacturers and dealers of
insecticides are exerting. They are in touch with a hundred growers
where an Experiment Station Entomologist reaches one. They have
the last word when they furnish the goods just as they are about
to be applied. Their advice will go far to confirm or to counteract our
recommendations.”
31
Woodworth was instrumental in expanding the clientele of the univer-
sity of California from the growers and rural communities to include
private industries serving agriculture.
32
UC would develop new technolo-
gies, which would then be transferred to the private sector, to be used
under the expert eye of UC scientists. Thus, by the early twentieth
