Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
cially active in making sure advisors are connected to these groups and
that small minority growers know how to use Cooperative Extension's
services. For instance, during the time of my fi eldwork with the advisors
in Monterey County, the director was running a night course in bookkeep-
ing to help small growers keep track of their farm operation's cash fl ow
and also worked to produce a bilingual (English and Spanish) outreach
video to educate growers about the services available from Cooperative
Extension. Similarly, some of the farm advisors worked with members from
local organizations that served as training and advocacy groups for small
growers.
Despite these differences, advisors still work within the same discipli-
nary-based system and have very strong ties to commercial growers and
their research funds. Just as the retired advisors worried about the percep-
tions commercial growers would have if they spent a lot of time working
with new clientele groups, the current advisors remain sensitive to the
politics of the industry and the kinds of ties that keep them connected
to industry-based sources of funding. The advisors often fi nd it diffi cult to
reconcile these divergent demands, and the small-farms clientele usually
gets less attention as a result. Recall the advisor's statement describing the
politics of working on problems of the lettuce industry and how it would
be unacceptable for him not to conduct research on lettuce.
Continuing Uncertainty: Cooperative Extension and Its Mission of Repair
More than 20 years after the criticisms leveled at the UC during the
late 1970s, the clientele of Cooperative Extension remained a source of
controversy. To fi nd out more about the perspectives of small growers, I
talked to some local advocates for smaller, minority farmers. These advo-
cates administered groups that educated and organized those interested in
beginning their own small farms, with memberships that consisted almost
exclusively of Mexican-Americans, most of them former farmworkers. In
my discussions with these advocates, they emphasized the educational
needs of these small growers and talked of their efforts to enlist the support
of Cooperative Extension advisors. Although their organizations had ben-
efi ted from meetings, workshops, and fi eld trials performed for them by
advisors, they felt that commercial growers still received most of the advi-
sors' attention, and called for change in this regard. This advocate, for
