Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
[I got] contacted from growers and . . . from the [county] planning depart-
ment. You get involved in—I guess you could call them political actions—
but it's more because of what you know. Not because you're out there
trying to promote one side or the other. I think most of us should stay
pretty much neutral in those political type of issues.
Although both of these advisors ruled out protest or other radical meas-
ures, their concern about environmental issues is evident. It is clear that
they had thought out the bounds of their concern, an appropriate set of
possible responses, and how to sell these possibilities to the farm industry.
In sum, advisors typically framed this process as leadership, subtly yet
actively leading the farm industry toward more environmentally sustaina-
ble practices:
CRH:
Can you say generally your sense of how environmentalism, the
environmental movement, and environmental regulations from the state
have had an impact on your job?
Entomol:
That's a really good issue because it's a situation where you can
either be a leader or you can just follow along. And I think if you're not
willing to accept that environmental issues are important and that they
are going to change the way agriculture is done, then you're just going to
be following along and you're going to get left behind. I think, in this
time, you have to realize that there are changes occurring and you have
to help the growers deal with those. And you have to fi nd a way to present
those issues to the growers that makes them realize that this is something
they have to deal with whether they like it or not. . . . As long as you explain
to [growers] that you're doing this because you feel it's a future direction
and something that's of importance instead of just saying, “What you're
doing is wrong,” I think it can be done very carefully. . . . And I think that
the farm advisors should be responding to [environmental issues] and
trying to be in a proactive mode rather than strictly a reactive mode.
This advisor described his leadership as both environmentalist and politi-
cal; he implicitly invoked the role of the state and environmental regula-
tion as a “future direction” of California agriculture. At the same time, he
acknowledged that his own place in the ecology of farming required that
this work be “done very carefully.” He framed environmental change as
an impending reality for which he could provide leadership, shepherding
the industry through a period of turbulent political change.
