Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
science research on the role of economic discourses, in particular, shows
that even abstract economic theories create a logic and a symbolic context
that can have a “market effect” of their own.
3
And yet, many of the exam-
ples I described in previous chapters point to the limits of economic and
technological imperatives. For example, in chapter 4, I described the
Spreckels Sugar Company's attempts to encourage new technologies that
could reduce or eliminate the use of migrant labor for thinning and har-
vesting sugar beets. The continuation of the Bracero Program until the
mid-1960s gave growers a cheap and pliable source of labor that proved
hard to give up. Although Spreckels could marshall economic, political,
and even moral arguments to support its claims for the superiority
of mechanized beet production, use of migrant hand labor was a long-
established and seemingly vital element in growers' control over labor
relations and practices. Similarly, in chapter 6, I described contemporary
attempts by farm advisors to reduce the environmental impacts of inten-
sive vegetable production in the Salinas Valley; growers clearly did not
always choose their practices and technologies in terms of strict economic
rationality. In fact, in the case of the weather stations implemented to track
the threat of downy mildew and help growers make better choices about
use of pesticides, the farm industry invested a considerable amount of
resources in them in spite of their ineffectiveness.
Although one of my interview subjects claimed, “Any way that [growers]
can use less pesticides, less inputs, they're gonna be happy because they're
saving money,” the effect of economic and technological incentives is
actually contingent on a web of factors stemming from the place, practices,
and institutions that structure how growers produce their crops. The
common theme in these examples is the role of existing structures, includ-
ing everything from the routine details of how growers manage to conjure
crop after crop from a small valley to the wealth that allows them to infl u-
ence the research priorities of agricultural scientists and the legislative
agenda of the state. The ecological approach I have taken in this topic
brings these diverse factors together in order to clarify the structures and
motivations of actors working in a complex system of food production. In
addition, while my focus has been on agriculture here, the concepts of
repair and ecology are applicable to other settings, especially those where
actors have invested considerable resources in a particular form of produc-
