Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
These examples show the political context of environmental issues in
Salinas Valley agriculture and highlight the pressures that growers per-
ceived from regulation. In large part, growers were not worried about
environmental problems as production problems; the developments I
described would not have much effect on the yields they were getting from
their fi elds. But they saw the threat of increased governmental regulation,
the loss of certain chemical controls, and the negative publicity as a real
menace. In this respect, it is not the environment that is a problem for
growers but rather environmentalism. Therefore, farm industry responses
to environmental problems are often just as much concerned with spin-
ning a positive image of agriculture and defl ecting potential regulation as
they are about actually addressing the problems themselves.
This does not mean that growers are always indifferent to environmental
issues. It merely refl ects their struggles to maintain control over production
practices and the larger sociomaterial ecology of their industry. Recogniz-
ing this is essential for understanding the tricky relationship between
agricultural scientists and the farm industry with respect to environmental
issues. Many of the growers I interviewed explicitly categorized environ-
mental problems as political problems and cited the state as the source of
unwanted—in their view, often unneeded—intervention in the practices
of the farm industry. For example, this grower described testifying before
a California state commission to seek approval to use a pesticide in his
industry:
CRH:
Were you involved with any other problems that weren't necessar-
ily related to production—say, political issues or things like that?
Grower:
Well, a little bit. When I fi rst started in the pesticide fi eld, we
used to go to Sacramento and testify on why we needed [to use a
pesticide]. . . . After doing this two or three times, I happened to have an
opportunity to speak to one of the people sitting up in front of us—I guess
you could call it the Board or whoever was evaluating [our request]. And
I happened to bump into him after that, and I said, “What happened up
there? You sat on the panel up there, and I'm just curious as to what hap-
pened. Because the state never did ask us anything, so what are we doing
here?” [Laughs.] And this guy was a qualifi ed person. He said something
like, “Hey, they had their minds made up before you got here.” Now that's
[just] politics, [but] I didn't do it [again] after that.