Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
Ye a r
Sugar Beets
Lettuce, head
Figure 4.9
Acreage of head lettuce and sugar beets, Monterey County, California, 1935-1997.
From Annual Crop Reports, Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner's Offi ce.
Mobilizing Science and Technology in a Time of Crisis
In some respects, the choices actors make between maintenance and trans-
formation as modes of repair seem obvious. Actors, such as growers, with
a great deal invested in a complex system of production will make a
“rational choice” and attempt to limit the extent of repair to the minimum.
Those actors with less at stake in the system can more easily call for radical
change. But a closer examination of these decisions makes the nature of
the choices more complicated and less obvious. For example, what I have
described here as a program of maintenance for the growers—the Mexican
National and Bracero programs—were huge undertakings, involving inter-
national agreements, complex transportation issues, and worker training.
Similarly, the use of bracero labor, while certainly helping growers to
maintain and consolidate control over labor and further resist farmworker
unionization, did not eliminate confl ict. As noted, Cooperative Extension
advisors in Monterey County had encouraged growers to raise wages during
the later years of the war as a means of stabilizing labor and preventing
walkouts. Why, then, were growers so uniformly insistent on maintaining
their use of migrant and bracero farm labor?
One part of the answer lies in the ecology of power of niche market
farming, especially the process by which power is created through produc-
tion. Although the complex strategies employed by the growers and the
