Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
35
250
30
200
25
150
20
15
100
10
50
5
0
0
1902
1908
1914
1920
1926
1932
1938
1944
1899
1905
1911
1917
1923
1929
1935
1941
Ye a r
Acres harvested (YI)
Days of factory operation (Y2)
Figure 4.1
Beet acreage and days of factory operation, Spreckels factory, Salinas, California,
1899-1944. From Pioda,
Chronological History, Spreckels Sugar Company.
Even with beets shipped in from other areas, the Salinas plant worked
well below its full capacity most years. Innovations in irrigation and
disease control in part account for the relative success of the plant from
1915 to 1921. But the mid-1920s brought yet another challenge: the rise
of the vegetable industry in the valley. At the same time that Spreckels was
fi nally beginning to make fuller use of the mammoth Salinas facility, local
growers were beginning to experiment with vegetable crops, especially
lettuce. Increasing throughout the 1920s, lettuce production claimed
50,000 acres of valley farmland by 1930, a time when sugar beet produc-
tion was virtually nonexistent. Charles Pioda, the longtime superintend-
ent of the Salinas facility, lamented the competition from vegetable crops
in 1924: “Artichokes, lettuce, and other garden crops [are] making strong
inroads in our beet territory,” and he noted that in 1929 none of the
tenant growers who rented company land were growing any beets at all
(Pioda,
History
).
When the onset of the Great Depression caused commodity prices for
vegetable crops and dry beans to drop dramatically, many growers sought
refuge in sugar beets, leading to a rise in beet acreage throughout the 1930s.
Even though Spreckels was paying less per ton in grower contracts than it
