Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
case of farm labor, growers, farm advisors, and critics of California agricul-
ture all found ways to identify labor as a kind of problem, albeit in different
ways. These confl icting views forced the divergent camps to respond, as,
for example, growers did when they created public relations campaigns to
promote their defi nition against more critical voices. In sum, these negotia-
tions represented a balance of structured practice and calls for change.
Despite their importance for understanding the story here, these seem-
ingly mundane local production practices—and their role in the produc-
tion of power—are only one part of the explanation. Growers were not
alone in their efforts: the state intervened on behalf of growers at every
level, from the local to the international. Without this assistance, it is
unclear whether labor relations would have looked the same to the farm
industry. As noted, those experts and policymakers in state institutions
who worked closely with the farm industry during the war, including farm
advisors, often expressed a kind of ambivalence about this relationship.
Thus, the policies and practices of state agents also clearly refl ect a kind of
negotiated order, where the interests of the state, the farm industry, and
other voices struggled to shape the form state intervention would take. In
some cases, this negotiation caused tension among farm advisors and
growers, as when advisors in Monterey County tried to reconcile their
state-mandated goal of stabilizing the labor system and growers' attempts
to keep wages as low as possible.
Overall, however, this confl ict between the state and industry should
not be overemphasized. Although in 1946 UC Director of Cooperative
Extension B. H. Crocheron referred to advisors' activities during the war
as a “rude interruption,” the larger picture of the war years and after shows
a very close and cooperative effort between farm advisors and growers. In
this respect, farm advisors make an interesting case for understanding how
state-based scientifi c and organizational resources are mobilized in a time
of crisis. Cooperative Extension was a kind of organizational technology
for growers, providing them with new practices and technology related to
just about every aspect of labor, from labor contracting, to understanding
the racial and ethnic “characteristics” of farm laborers, to the development
of new machinery and other farm production technologies. Growers were
successful in controlling their ecology of power by tapping into this tech-
nology, using it to shape the farm labor politics of California during war
years but also the decades-long “crisis” described in this chapter.
