Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
In contrast to the success of the fall harvesting mechanization, the spring
thinning work was much harder to mechanize, both with respect to the
engineering involved and growers' preference for hand labor. Growers
proved reluctant to adopt the new blocking technology for spring work,
as Pioda noted in Chronological History ,
No progress was made in 1944 in pre-harvest mechanization. Growers will not use
either the Dixie or the Farmer Mercantile Company blockers so long as hand labor
is available. Growers insist upon a regularly spaced stand of beets. They are not
convinced that they can secure a satisfactory stand from mechanical blocking.
Because of the shortage of hand labor and resulting high wages paid to workers,
there has been no reduction in costs following mechanical blocking.
Pioda makes a very similar note regarding machine thinning in his 1945
installment of the Chronicle . In 1946, when the Bulletin crowed in every
issue about the success of mechanized harvesting, there is virtually no
mention of mechanized thinning. Many problems made growers more
hesitant to mechanize the spring thinning work than the fall harvesting
work. First, if a grower wanted to harvest with hand labor, the smaller,
more numerous beets resulting from mechanized thinning would take
much longer to harvest and cost more. Second, the beets needed to be
weeded at least once per season, and this required hand labor anyway, so
why not have them hand-thinned as well? Third, because of the method
by which the mechanical thinner worked, growers needed to use more seed
per acre to ensure that there were not gaps in a given row.
These factors worked against the use of the new mechanical thinners,
but, ironically, it was the beet sugar industry's initial solution to the war
labor crisis, the Mexican National Program, that impeded the thinning
technology most of all. As noted, after troubles early in the war, the seasons
of 1944 and 1945 had few problems with labor shortages, and given the
unreliability of the thinning machinery and its special requirements,
growers were reluctant to mechanize as long as there was an adequate
supply of cheap labor through the Mexican National Program. These pref-
erences did not change when the war ended. In fact, the Mexican National
Program proved so popular with growers that they lobbied for its continu-
ation well past the end of the war. Spreckels was caught between its desire
for fully mechanized beet production and its need to retain the beet
growers who had become dependent on imported labor.
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