Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The subdivision of large landholdings gave small growers new opportuni-
ties, but these offered very mixed prospects for success. This situation
provided farm advisors with an opportunity of their own: to address the
problems of small farm communities and fulfi ll the mandates of their
mission. Crocheron's feelings on this issue appear confl icted. Although he
expressed concern about the plight of the colony farmers, he also chastised
them for naïveté and the “scrambled mess” that California agriculture had
become:
If only you could unscramble eggs it would make things easy. If you could only take
the farmers off the bad land and put them onto good land it would help a lot. If
you could take the fellows on the little acreages, consolidate them into economic
farm units and let the surplus farmers work elsewhere; if you could grub out all the
bad orchards and let the good ones fi ll the market:—all these would bring relief to
agriculture. But you can't unscramble eggs. The land is divided and settled and
planted. Nobody knows how to unscramble the mess. Apparently the only way is
to let nature take its course. Economics adjusts itself in the long run. The bad land
goes back into pasture; the little farms consolidate themselves through failure and
despair; the bad orchards pass out in time.
But it's a hard doctrine. To anyone with a touch of human kindness—most of all,
to the members of the Extension service who carry the welfare of farm people on
their hearts—it's a heart-breaking business. (August 1927, 2)
This excerpt packs a lot of metaphors about farming and economic forces,
and reveals the ambiguities that challenged advisors in California. Croch-
eron's use of the “scrambled eggs” metaphor and his desire to unscramble
them point to the kind of progressive repair and redemption that inspired
extension work in the fi rst place. All the sentences that begin “If you
could . . .” represent a hope for intervention, for a more rational California
agriculture where the eggs remain uncompromised. But Crocheron can see
no way out of this mess, despite the advantages of the latest agricultural
knowledge. Further, his comment about “nature taking its course” natural-
izes this state of affairs and portrays these small landholders as evolution-
arily challenged in the ongoing march of economic progress. In all, this
excerpt clearly refl ects the major themes of scientifi c progressivism, where
expertise could solve both technical and moral failings, but Crocheron also
implies that the colony growers' failure was an inevitable outcome of
economic processes.
Other excerpts from Crocheron's reports further confi rm his ambiva-
lence toward small niche market growers. On one hand, he clearly believed
