Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
inequalities in the extent to which underserved grower populations could
benefi t from extension services.
In addition, these advisors' assertions about an “open door” veils the
extent to which they actually resisted the new programs. Many of the
retired advisors simply viewed these programs as a waste of time and used
their support from commercial growers to cover this resistance. In some
cases, the advisors also voiced a kind of evolutionary argument to rational-
ize their actions. Just as Crocheron had lamented the “scrambled eggs”
pervading California farming in the early days of UC Cooperative Exten-
sion and predicted that economics would eventually weed out disadvan-
taged growers, one retired advisor claimed, “Ever since the beginning of
time, a trend has been taking place in agriculture . . . with a consolidation
of a lot of farming interests into a few, large growers.” In this way, the
advisors could justify their opposition to the new programs and limit their
efforts to half-hearted attempts at satisfying the new affi rmative action
requirements.
These attitudes likely represent the same kind of social conservativism
that a retired advisor attributed to (white) industrial agriculture in the
excerpt above. This advisor emphasized the support the industry had given
to extension work and how Monterey County was lucky to remain in the
good graces of the farm industry. His stress on this point reveals the danger
advisors felt, and still feel, in jeopardizing their relationship with the farm
industry by spending more time with small growers. In my interviews with
commercial growers, I found that they held advisors in high esteem but
were in fact suspicious of the motives of the UC system. Although the
growers disapproved of the UC's “social programs,” they attributed them
to the political machinations of UC administrators, not farm advisors:
Grower:
I have this problem with some of the politically correct crap that
comes from Davis and Berkeley. . . . I think [Cooperative Extension] has
been diverted—and I'm not a bigot at all—but I think that extension has
been diverted into
cooperativa
farms in this county and in Santa Cruz.
People are spending a hell of a lot of time out there with a guy that grows
an acre and a half of strawberries. They're funded, but they don't make
any money—they get government funds to grow it and extension people
to show 'em how to grow it, and it's ineffective as hell. The minute you
pull the support out from under 'em, you know, that's it. And I'm not
bigoted against Hispanics—believe me. We have 99 percent Hispanics
