| This dissertation reports on a seminal study of the genesis, development, and current character of organic production in California. It shows that the recent boom in organic production is a result of four factors: (1) changes in consumer demand and the way demand is mediated by buyer-led institutional configurations; (2) the search for value in a rapidly changing agricultural economy; (3) changes in the regulatory environment affecting agriculture, specifically in the legal and discursive climate of pesticide use; and (4) a set of issues around land and land values, reflecting demographic change, economic growth, and political struggles around land use, particular to California.;Despite its origins in the counterculture, the organic sector replicates many aspects of conventional agriculture. One reason is that organic production has been layered onto an already existing landscape of agricultural industrialization. Particular patterns of crop specializing and input dependence, modes of extension, marketing outlets, and labor markets are already in place, creating a sort of path dependency. More significantly, since past rounds of intensification and innovation have been capitalized into land values, organic growers are bound by a value-seeking logic of intensification, which undermines the practical basis of an ecological farming strategy and structurally "locks in" existing social relations.;Organic agriculture has also been limited by the particular vehicle of regulation adopted by the organic farming movement to promote its goals. While expressed in the language of consumer protection, organic regulations have had the effect of fetishizing particular product attributes, making the organic commodity the centerpiece of the movement and creating a fundamental tension between growing the sector for its environmental benefits and protecting existing participants. The institution of certification, a privatized means of verifying that practices fall within organic definitions, has given centrality to inputs as a proxy for production practices and has done so in politicized ways. This technical focus has had a middling effect on grower practices. Finally, organic regulation has erected a set of rent-creating vehicles which both attract entry into the sector and, at the same time, undermine the ability to subvert industrial processes because they, too, contribute to land values. |
