CONSEQUENCES OF AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIALIZATION: ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE SALINAS VALLEY, CALIFORNIA 1945-1978

In recent years students of American agriculture have become concerned with a substantial shift in the structure of control of agricultural production, from the traditional family farm to large agricultural corporations. At the same time, the role and well-being of farm workers and the environmental consequences of agricultural activities have drawn increasing attention. Agriculture in the Salinas Valley presents a well-developed example of each of these issues.; This dissertation is an analysis of the sources of change in the structure of capital in Salinas Valley agriculture and of the consequences of such change for labor and for the natural environment. Empirically, the study is based on field observation, archival research, analysis of government documents compiled at federal, state and local levels, and interviews. Integration of this information employs a theoretical model derived in part from the writings of Karl Marx, Bertell Ollman, David Harvey and others. Within this mode of analysis, capital, labor and nature in the Salinas Valley are considered as historically-derived social relations, within and among which certain tendencies and contradictions required examination.; The study reveals the interdependence of changes in the structure of capital, in the composition and control of the labor force and in the labor process, and in the incorporation and transformation of land, water and other aspects of the natural environment in this region. I show that the high potential rate of profit in fresh produce production, coupled with the relatively great risk and uncertainty associated with these commodities, accelerated the consolidation of control of this production in the hands of a few large firms. Occupying a central and more secure competitive position, these firms could then adjust more easily to changes in the availability of casual labor, by coordinating production both within and without the Valley, by investment in partial mechanization of field activities to take advantage of workers' increasing skills, and by investment of capital individually and collectively in modification of the natural environment, in weed and pest control and irrigation. Some part of the initiative for this systemic change arises from tendencies inherent in the nature of capitalist production, within the social relation of capital but also arising in the resistance of workers and in the long-range incompatibility of capitalist production of commodities with the maintenance of an ecologically-sound relation with nature. So, problems of salt-water intrusion and other groundwater contamination, of pesticide accumulation in local ecosystems, and of soil degradation and erosion arise not merely from technological change but more importantly from the production imperatives of capitalist competition.