Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
production to aid the war effort focused advisors' attention on those
factors that would most quickly stabilize and increase farm production; at
the same time, farm labor was a very contested element of the farm
system, and advisors struggled to balance competing interests.
To investigate these issues, I continue my focus on the Salinas Valley's
vegetable industry but also include extensive discussion of the beet sugar
industry, especially the case of the Spreckels Sugar Company. Spreckels was
a beet sugar company that at one time operated the world's largest beet
sugar processing plant on the outskirts of Salinas (in the area that is now
actually a small town called Spreckels). Spreckels worked with government
organizations on all levels to address its labor needs during World War II,
importing Mexican labor under the Mexican National and Bracero pro-
grams and seeking to mechanize the production of sugar beets. In these
endeavors, Spreckels worked closely with the UC and local farm advisors.
The company's situation during and after the war illustrates my analysis
of farm rationality, industry power, and repair because Spreckels “tried on”
different constructions of crisis and repair at that time. In addition, the
Spreckels case provides an interesting example of how different actors
within the farm industry negotiated the meaning of the labor crisis. Because
Spreckels relied on growers to grow sugar beets for its processing facility,
it wanted these beet growers to perceive labor problems in the same way
the company did and to accept the company's suggestions for repair.
Unfortunately for Spreckels, growers often had their own agenda, and this
balance of cooperation and confl ict provides a very rich case for studying
the negotiation surrounding problems, their defi nition, and frameworks
for repair.
California's Growers and the Ongoing Farm Labor Problem
The labor practices of California's niche agricultural markets fi rst took
shape in the 1880s, when many growers in California began to abandon
extensive crops like wheat and barley to cultivate intensive crops like fruits
and nuts. Intensive crops often have much higher production costs than
other crops, and labor costs are likely to make up half or more of this total
cost (Taylor and Vasey 1936a; 1936b; Wells 1996). Thus, intensive crop-
ping systems are sensitive to the cost of labor, and growers spent the fi rst
decades of niche market production experimenting with different methods
