Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
meetings for growers organized by the advisors, and farm industry
meetings.
A large portion of my time was also spent interviewing current and
retired farm advisors, their grower clientele, and other persons affi liated
with agriculture in the county, including representatives of other govern-
ment agencies and grower advocate groups. I used a snowball sampling
method to select potential interviewees, starting with recommendations
from the advisors and then branching further out into the farming com-
munity. The interviews were semistructured; though I came prepared with
questions, I let the subjects dictate the length of their responses and
allowed them to comment on any topic they wished. Nearly all the inter-
views were tape-recorded and transcribed later. In some cases, informants
asked not to have the interview recorded, their right to which was empha-
sized in an interview consent form. In a few cases, informants also asked
that I shut off the tape recorder during their discussion of issues they
deemed especially sensitive. Overall, however, I was surprised at how open
and extremely helpful informants were in my research. I had been particu-
larly curious about the reaction I would receive from growers—my expecta-
tion was that they would be suspicious of my research and hesitant to
discuss their company's research interests openly. In fact, just the opposite
was the case—in interviews growers were very open and seemed especially
grateful for the chance to express their opinions on the state of agricultural
research within Cooperative Extension and the UC more generally.
Many of the current and retired farm advisors were interviewed several
times, and every interview session with advisors focused on a set of topics
that I planned to discuss at that meeting. The following is a breakdown of
my interviews: 33 interviews with 11 current advisors in Monterey, Santa
Cruz, and San Benito counties;
3
10 interviews with 6 retired advisors; 8
interviews with 6 members of the advisors' technical staff; 3 interviews
with other UC and USDA researchers; 13 interviews with current and
retired growers; 4 interviews with representatives of other local govern-
ment agencies affi liated with agriculture; 4 interviews with representatives
of farm industry “interest groups,” including commodity boards; and 2
interviews with representatives of small farm interest groups, for a total of
77 interviews. In addition to the interviews I collected during my time in
Monterey County, I also draw from a set of 13 interviews conducted with
