Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
At the same time, although Cooperative Extension brought a vision of
modernity to agriculture, the roots of industrial agriculture in California
were already in place. Cooperative Extension was itself shaped just as much
as the farm industry during these early years, and Crocheron's reports show
how advisors struggled to reconcile their mission of improving farming
and rural life with changes to the structure of agriculture that seemed
out of their control. The ambiguity surrounding farm advisors' mission as
agents of progress and repair only exacerbated this tension, prompting
advisors to search for a stable sense of their own work and its moral and
political basis. Chapter 3 describes this process for the case of Cooperative
Extension and the farm industry in the Salinas Valley.
