Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the perception of environmental problems and possible solutions. Although
this strategy is a fundamentally conservative technique of social change,
it also allows advisors to develop close relationships with some of the
largest contributors to farm-based pollution.
In this chapter I draw primarily from contemporary interview data col-
lected during my time in Salinas. I also draw on fi eld notes taken during
meetings that concerned environmental issues and corresponding research.
The discussions I had with advisors and growers about agriculture and the
environment were sometimes general but often revolved around specifi c
cases of environmental problems in the valley and throughout Monterey
County. In the next two sections I discuss the political and regulatory
context of environmental problems in agriculture. I then move on to two
case studies that explore these issues in more detail.
Defi ning Environmental Problems in Agriculture
If working on environmental problems related to agriculture is diffi cult,
perhaps the simplest strategy for advisors would be to ignore them and
instead focus on the kind of production problems that the industry has
always called upon them to solve. This is actually the strategy that the
previous generation of (now retired) advisors employed when attention
was fi rst widely brought to the environmental impacts of agriculture in the
1960s and 1970s, especially following the negative consequences of pesti-
cides like DDT. Although the UC slowly began to respond to these con-
cerns, it was not until the late 1970s and 1980s that the growth of the
environmental regulatory state forced growers and agricultural scientists
to take stock of their growing practices in the light of environmental
impacts. In the same way that the UC and its farm advisors dragged their
heels when responding to accusations of bias from racial and ethnic minor-
ities during this period (see chapter 3), the prior generation of farm advi-
sors could largely, in the words of one retired advisor, “pay some lip
service” to environmental issues.
This is not a strategy that the contemporary advisors use. In fact, a great
deal of the Salinas Valley advisors' time and resources is devoted to address-
ing problems related to the environmental impact of farming. In part, this
change may be attributable to cultural change in science—the overturning
of old paradigms, the rewriting of textbooks, the ascension of a new gen-
