Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
CRH:
It just seemed like a waste of time?
Grower:
Well, to me it was a waste of time because . . . [the state] has their
own people and they make their own decisions, but, according to the law,
they have to have hearings. And I think they have hearings sometimes just
[to satisfy] the law.
In another interview, a different grower implicated the UC system itself
as being overly involved with the politics of environmental change. He
complained that urban politicians with a dilettantish interest in noncon-
ventional farming had better access to the UC than the farm industry
did:
Grower:
[The university will] listen to some dingbat from San Francisco
who wants to have sustainable organic agriculture on the roofs of the
apartment buildings in San Francisco. Because [the dingbat] will vote
against you if he doesn't get that in. And so you will devote political time
and devote extension time to do that, because that's where the vote is. I
understand that's the site of the problem. You know, I just think that
somebody in the hallowed halls of Berkeley or Davis could say, “Screw
you—we're not doing that—go away.” But they never do.
In each of these cases, the growers portrayed state actors as political
agents who based their decisions on political convenience rather than on
an understanding of the ecology of the farm industry. These complaints
often made a distinction between actors inside the farm industry, who had
knowledge of the local conditions of farm production, and outside actors,
who did not. Typically, growers portrayed government regulators as well-
intentioned but naive outsiders at best and as manipulative zealots at
worst. These outsiders, the insiders argued, lacked a full understanding of
the local conditions of agricultural production and wanted to change the
ecology of agriculture without understanding how politics related to prac-
tice. Thus, the state's regulatory solutions were based not on information
or familiarity but on uninformed, politically motivated decisions.
This way of framing environmental problems represents a problem in
its own right for the researchers, especially the farm advisors, who are
working on solutions to environmental problems. As employees of UC
Cooperative Extension, the advisors are charged with improving certain
areas of agricultural production, and mitigating environmental problems
is a signifi cant part of their efforts. At the same time, they are not an offi cial
