Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite the great amount of initial enthusiasm for extension work in
California, advising often proved to be an uphill struggle. This was espe-
cially true after the war, when problems of land distribution, overproduc-
tion, and low commodity prices plagued the state's farm industries. These
problems were prevalent throughout the nation, but they were especially
pronounced in California because of the unique challenges of the niche
market industries (see chapter 1). Many of the early struggles of niche
industry growers, and farm advisors' attempts to address these problems,
can be traced back to changes in the land tenure structure of California
agriculture that began in the late nineteenth century. Prior to about 1890,
California agriculture was typifi ed by a relatively small number of enor-
mous ranches. These unusually large landholdings dated back to the system
of Spanish and Mexican land grants that defi ned land ownership before
the United States took control of California. This system of land distribu-
tion allotted huge tracts of land to wealthy and infl uential petitioners.
14
When U.S. control of California began in 1846,
Californios
, the Mexican
landowners who owned and made claims on some of the largest of the
tracts, controlled many of the largest ranches. These landowners found it
diffi cult to maintain their land in the face of increased white migration
and the collapse of the Mexican cattle industry in the early 1860s. A par-
ticularly bad drought in 1863-1864 ruined many of the
Californios
, who
had already been weakened by rising land prices (and the accompanying
increase in taxes), the high cost of litigation, and predatory white mer-
chants and fi nanciers.
15
In many cases, although land was not transferred
directly from
Californios
to white speculators, the Mexican land grants were
divided among a few particularly crafty or infl uential white settlers.
Many of these large plots were initially used for “bonanza” wheat
farming, wheat grown on a scale measuring thousands of contiguous acres.
Wheat farming and cattle ranching were the main uses of these large hold-
ings throughout the 1860s and 1870s, but at the end of this period the
bonanza wheat growers found that wheat was no longer particularly lucra-
tive and that continuous monocropping on such a large scale was rapidly
depleting the fertility of soils. Many began to switch to more intensive
orchard crops, especially oranges, peaches, almonds, and grapes. This
switch seemed like a natural choice, given California's climate, but many
of the largest landholders soon realized that their huge acreages were not
