Mexican immigrant family farms in the California strawberry industry (Mexico)

Mexican immigrants have recently entered California's capitalist agriculture as family farmers. This contradicts the foretold demise of the family farm and the general course of agrarian capitalism. It questions studies on California's corporate structure preventing working class immigrants from farm making. It challenges the view on the increasing pressure of family farmers who must “get big or get out” of agriculture. Mexican family farms are definitely not part-time farmers, tending the strawberry crop during the entire production cycle.; Social scientists have debated the development of capitalism and the family farm. K. Marx theorized that capitalism separated the English peasantry from the means of production becoming industrial wage-workers. V. I. Lenin studied rural Russia, where capitalism was causing the “depeasantization” or polarization of the peasantry along class lines. A. V. Chayanov opposed the development of capitalism, arguing that family farmers had a non-capitalist mentality, because the internal structure and consumption of the family differed from capitalist enterprises.; The commercial production of strawberries requires considerable amounts of capital and labor investments per acre. In 1988/89, total costs were calculated at {dollar}17,903.91 out of which labor amounted to {dollar}7,356.80 per acre (Cooperative Extension: Sample Cost Sheet). Scholars have documented that “high tech” strawberries require up to 2000 man/hours, yielding 40 tons per acre (Palerm 1999; Wells 1996). Strawberries for the fresh market demand special harvesting skills because rough handling can quickly damage it. The large capital, labor, and non-mechanized requirements of strawberries have given rise to a significant number of Mexican family farms in Santa Maria, California.; Strawberry farming is surely a capitalist industry requiring large capital and labor investments, yet sharecropping contracts have been the means by which immigrant families apply non-wage labor to land, and save sufficiently to either acquire land on lease rentals or buy it outright. I hypothesize that capitalist agriculture creates opportunities for family farmers securing its own reproduction. Family farming provides non-wage labor as a key resource in the production of a labor and capital intensive crop. Family farming diminishes costs, and buffers risks associated in the cultivation of a highly perishable, yet lucrative crop.