Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
compared to other industries.
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As an example of this last advantage,
Salinas Valley lettuce growers were able to settle their long-standing labor
dispute with packing shed workers by moving much of the packing work
into the fi eld, where it was performed instead by bracero labor (Galarza
1964; 1977). Given all these factors, access to bracero labor not only
maintained growers' control over farm labor but actually consolidated
and increased it.
For growers, the system was almost too good to be true, and they fought
for the Bracero Program's continuation throughout the 1950s and early
1960s, as mounting pressure from union and civil rights groups threatened
to end the program. Thus, agricultural groups complained of an impend-
ing labor crisis nearly every year, hoping to extend the use of bracero labor
as long as possible. Given the huge labor surpluses created by thousands
of bracero workers, these perpetual cries for help sound comical in retro-
spect, but the system was not perfect for all industries, especially Spreck-
els's beet sugar interests in the Salinas Valley. Bracero labor was perfect for
thinning beets, and beet growers came to rely on this source of labor. But
as long as beet growers continued to use bracero labor for thinning, Spreck-
els's hopes of fully mechanized beet production went unfulfi lled. If there
were no braceros, though, valley growers might not be inclined to grow
sugar beets at all, instead choosing to grow the more lucrative vegetable
crops. Therefore, although bracero labor hindered the full mechanization
of beet production, the beet sugar industry remained one of the Bracero
Program's most faithful defenders, lobbying for its continuation every
year. Spreckels found itself in the awkward position of promoting the
advantages of mechanized production while still lobbying for the Bracero
Program.
Cooperation between Spreckels, the UC, and machinery manufacturers
provided solutions for the more technical problems of machine thinning.
New technologies were developed that mitigated many of the problems
involved with the new style of thinning. For instance, the UC worked with
chemical companies to test new herbicides for controlling weeds. Also,
agricultural engineers with Spreckels, the UC, and farm equipment manu-
facturers worked on new seeding technology for planting beets more pre-
cisely. This integrated approach, of course, was much more complicated
than just having a crew of skilled farmworkers do the work, and articles
on machine thinning in the
Bulletin
throughout the 1950s and early 1960s
