Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
growers] don't have their own plant pathologists. So, we have a niche to
fi ll there.
In these excerpts, the advisors emphasize their own specialization, their
participation in a kind of niche market of their own. Their characterization
of growers as progressive—they do their own research and are in many
aspects of vegetable production and distribution more knowledgeable than
advisors and other UC researchers—is tied to advisors' own narrowing of
the focus of their work. Perhaps the most telling statement comes from
the plant pathology advisor: “What would a lettuce farm advisor tell a
lettuce grower—how to grow lettuce?” With this question he distinguishes
himself and other advisors working on problems associated with lettuce
production from the standard meaning of what it means to be a farm
advisor. Accordingly, farm advising in Monterey County is portrayed as a
mode of work to which the old rules should not apply. By describing
growers as progressive, the advisors justify the way that their extension
work has been ordered in Monterey County.
Specialization and Advisors' Ties to the Farm Industry
In general, advisors who serve under the discipline-based model believe
that this is the best structure for extension work to accommodate the
research needs of the commercial growers in their county, growers
working with niche market industry crops on a relatively large scale. The
switch to a discipline-based system of extension work in Monterey
County helped to solve some of the identity problems that plagued
Cooperative Extension from its inception, particularly in California. By
focusing on, say, the diseases of fruit and vegetable crops instead of any
and all problems associated with the production of lettuce or a subset of
such crops, the advisors can tailor their program of work to specifi c prob-
lems facing the local farm industry. Three of the main advisor specializa-
tions that were implemented in the change to discipline-based advising
involved pest control: insects, diseases, and weeds. The timing of this
shift in the late 1950s corresponded to the availability of new and power-
ful synthetic pesticides for each of these types of pests, and growers in
the Salinas Valley remain intensive users of these technologies. In this
way, advisors' work was reshaped to conform to the practical and tech-
nological structure of the vegetable industry, so that growers could receive
