Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and irrigation advisor explained, this uncertainty makes harvest time a
critical period for surveillance:
Soil/Water:
You need to...make sure that the grower doesn't harvest
[the trial] before you get out there. That's why it's important to have other
people around—because, you know, you could call [the grower] fi ve times
and you go out there on the day before they're supposed to harvest and
it's already been harvested. And that happens a lot. You have to realize
[the growers have] got a different agenda than you do. And you're not
generally on the top of their list as far as your experiments. . . . So you gotta
really be on top of that all the time.
Only close surveillance of the fi eld allows the advisors to control for
these factors. At the same time, the growers themselves are keeping an eye
on their fi elds and are wary of strangers who suddenly appear, tinkering
among their crop. When I returned with some technicians to the celery
fi eld pictured in fi gure 5.3 for the trial's harvest, we were questioned by
the grower about our presence in his fi eld. This excerpt from my fi eld notes
describes the incident:
We . . . run into the grower as we park the trucks and get out. He is driving a pickup
truck and has a dog with one of those plastic don't-lick-your-wounds hoods. He asks
what we're doing here, and [Tech A] responds that we're from Cooperative Exten-
sion, taking some data from a fi eld trial. [The grower] says something like, “Well,
this is my fi eld, and I don't know of any fi eld trial happening on it.” [Tech B], being
the head of the research team without [the advisor] around, steps up to the truck
and talks to him. [Tech B] says that we are [working] with x and y and z, spitting
out the names of several people working on the project until one clicks. The grower
says, “Oh fuck, I forgot about that! Good-bye!” and peels off in his truck. We all
laugh a bit about that. [Tech A] says to me that the grower was probably worried
that we were [county] celery inspectors.
This grower likely noticed the pickup trucks we arrived in, which have
an offi cial-looking seal on the door, much like trucks used by the county
agricultural commissioner's offi ce. The commissioner's offi ce inspects crops
throughout the county at harvest time and checks for potential regulatory
violations or safety hazards. In addition to these inspectors, interlopers in
the fi eld can be taken for Immigration and Naturalization Service agents
or even—in the case of pricey crops, such as artichokes or strawberries—for
thieves. Consequently, advisors and their staff may have to renegotiate
access to the fi eld on each entry.
