Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
century many scientists had begun to understand their service to
agricultural input suppliers having equal importance as serving growers
themselves. This kind of collaboration between LGU scientists and
agricultural input industries found justification in the productionist
ideology, and was very effectively sustained until the publication of
Hard
Tomatoes, Hard Times
drew public attention to the way this partnership
enriched the wealthy few at the expense of the many poor farmers.
Hightower's work called forth small farmer and rural community
activists, who worked together in many states to mount activist efforts
to demand major changes at the LGUs. The California Agrarian Action
Project (a forerunner of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers)
and the Wisconsin Rural Development Center were just two groups
giving voice to these concerns. These and other organizations carried
Hightower's critique to state LGU administrators and elected officials.
These groups were joined quickly by environmental critics of industrial
agriculture, particularly in California due to its high pesticide use.
In 1978, Robert van den Bosch wrote
The Pesticide Conspiracy
. He
described a “pesticide mafia” of agrochemical manufacturing compa-
nies, UC and public officials, and large growers who found it to their
personal financial interest to promote pesticides, in violation of ecologi-
cal common sense. In his analysis, growers, farmworkers, the public, and
the natural world were the chief victims of this conspiracy. He charged
the entire pesticide research, manufacture and use system of suffering
from a conflict of interest, and in the tradition of Carson, risked his rep-
utation by going public with knowledge about the abuse of pesticides.
His expertise as a biocontrol entomologist added substantial credibility
to his arguments.
33
In 1979, the California Agrarian Action Project (CAAP) joined with
the California Rural Legal Advocacy to sue the UC Regents, university
administrators, and 300 unnamed faculty and employees for failing to
abide by the public good character of the Hatch Act, which authorized
the agricultural experiment station. The plaintiffs alleged conflict
of interest in the financial arrangements to develop and manufacture the
tomato harvester, but made broader claims about the adverse social
impacts of mechanization research: frustrating the efforts of farmworkers
to organize unions, disadvantaging smaller farmers, and compromising
the quality of rural life. When the dust from this legal drama finally
