Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
eration of researchers—described in Thomas Kuhn's (1970) classic account
of scientifi c change. But a great deal of the attention that advisors give to
environmental issues has to do with the issues' prominence as industry
problems in their own right. The regulatory state, from county-level agen-
cies to the federal government, is increasingly regulating agriculture. Each
new discovery about the environmental consequences of agriculture brings
the prospect of new regulations; like it or not, growers often face new
restrictions on the techniques and technologies they use for farming.
For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identi-
fi ed agriculture as the largest single nonpoint source of water pollution in
the United States.
5
Agriculture in Monterey County is no exception; at the
time of my research, it was widely believed to be responsible for a high
level of nitrate contamination in groundwater. Drinking water in wells
throughout the county showed higher-than-healthy amounts of nitrate,
most likely from excess synthetic fertilizers leaching out of a crop's root
zone (the depth of the soil that a plant's roots reach to take up water and
nutrients). High levels of nitrate, when consumed in drinking water, can
interfere with respiration, especially in the very young and very old. Wells
throughout the valley were designated unfi t for drinking water, and the
nitrate contamination issue received a lot of attention in the local press.
Residents in some of the poorest areas of the valley were generally affected
most by the contamination, and the county trucked in drinking water for
their use. Local community groups petitioned the county to drill new,
deeper wells, and the issue was eventually publicized in the
San Francisco
Chronicle
, to the dismay of many in the farm industry (McCabe 1998a;
1998b). Because of the severity of the problem and the publicity, some
kind of regulation seemed imminent, and the vegetable industry appeared
to be one of the most likely sources of the contamination.
6
In addition to the nitrate problem, the use of pesticides remains contro-
versial. Ever since the publication of Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring
(1962),
pesticides have been synonymous with environmental threats. Although,
when compared to the nitrate problem, the use of pesticides in Monterey
County was not tied as directly to specifi c environmental risks, there were
signifi cant pressures on growers to reduce their dependence on pesticides.
In 1996 the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was passed into law by
the U.S. Congress. The FQPA was originally lauded by agricultural industry
lobbyists as a boon for agriculture, mostly because the Act provided
