Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
part of the regulatory state, even though they are employed by the state.
Growers' attitudes further complicate this situation: although advisors may
feel that they are acting in the interest of the farm industry by working
on environmental problems, there is a danger that growers might confl ate
advisors' work with a political agenda identifi ed with environmental activ-
ism and the regulatory state. In practice, this means that advisors' research
must be perceived either as neutral science (providing key information to
infl uence new practices) or as a kind of moderate environmental politics
based on “leadership” (guiding the industry through the perils of change
for its own good).
As a consequence of these dynamics, one might expect that advisors
would act in accordance with the cynical view of science and environmen-
tal politics, essentially acting as an appendage to the farm industry and
conducting research that supports its short-term interests (as in Beck's
view). After all, despite the structural and fi nancial links advisors have to
the local farm industry, their status as insiders is not granted automatically.
On one hand, their local position in the valley helps to ensure them insider
standing, but on the other hand, a strong association with environmental
concerns and activism is one of the easiest ways to mark oneself as an
outsider. Overall, in a situation where the boundary has been drawn this
starkly, the simplest choice might be to position oneself on the safe side
of this boundary, especially given the close relationship that advisors have
with the farm industry (and their relative lack of contacts with campus-
based UC researchers).
However, during my research with the farm advisors I found that their
work—and the way they talked about it—was more complex than this.
Advisors spent a great deal of their time working on environmental prob-
lems, testing and promoting new, “environmentally friendly” techniques
of production to their grower clientele. Yet, they strove to temper any
image of environmental activism by emphasizing that their work on these
issues was in the long-term interests of the farm industry. They often justi-
fi ed this claim by contrasting their approach with the methods of the regu-
latory state. To better understand how advisors balanced their work with
the farm industry and their attention to environmental issues, I asked
them whether they considered themselves environmentalists. I expected
that they might feel somewhat uneasy applying the term to themselves,
given the kind of radical connotations often attached to it.
8
In fact, all the
