6.1: California’s Agricultual Past
In recent years, California has accounted for over one-tenth of the value of the entire U.S. agricultural output. Perhaps more impressive than the value of farm output is the great diversity of crops, the capital intensity, the high yields, and the special nature of the state’s agricultural institutions. California's agriculture evolved differently from what was found in the home states and countries of the immigrants who settled and farmed its soils. These differences were not just an outcome of the state’s distinct geoclimatic features; they were molded by the farmers, laborers, researchers, railroad barons, and policy- makers who interacted to create one of the most productive and dynamic agricultural-industrial complexes in the world.
Want to learn more? Either scan the QR code or visit this link to watch a lecture that introduces the history and future of California’s agriculture. (Video length: 27 min).
The Beginning - 1850
There's been a long-standing debate about whether pre-contact California societies practiced agriculture. Europeans typically defined agriculture by plowing fields, planting crops in rows, and raising domesticated animals. While California's Indigenous peoples didn't follow this model, relying more on hunting and gathering, the argument is that their practices still constituted a form of agriculture.
This perspective hinges on the idea that Indigenous Californians actively managed the ecosystem to maximize resource output. They used fire management techniques to manipulate the land and focused on cultivating specific native plants. In this sense, their approach can be seen as a form of resource management, even if it differed vastly from the European model of intensive agriculture.
Some California hunter-gatherer tribes, including the Owens Valley Paiute, developed irrigation. Native Californians were skilled at gathering resources from plants at all times of the year, allowing the consistent plethora of materials in all seasons. Depending on when the succulents, flowers, and trees bloomed or became ripe, different aspects of the plant could be accessed or harvested by Native California peoples.
Native Californians also developed strategies when it came to competing with animals for resources. The Kashaya Pomo, for example, timed their harvest of dogwood to be before insects and worms would be able to access the inner parts of the plant. Indigenous Californians also developed strategies for acquiring black oak acorns directly from tree branches using a long pole, increasing harvest yields that would otherwise have been disturbed by animals.
Black oak acorn harvests were further increased by cultural burning, which stimulated acorn growth and increased biodiversity in the area. Cultural burning was commonly practiced by throughout California to maintain a healthy landscape that produced quality resources. The Karuk, Yurok, Hupa peoples all regularly burned areas of bear grass and California hazelnut and to encourage the growth of stronger stems that could be used for basketry.
In the late 1700s, Franciscan missionaries established Spanish missions in California. Like earlier Spanish missions established in Baja California, these missions were surrounded by agricultural land, growing crops from Europe and the Americas, and raising animals originating from Europe. Indigenous workers from Baja California made up a large part of the initial labor force on California missions. In the early 1800s, this flow of laborers from Baja California had largely stopped, and the missions relied on converts from local tribes. By 1806, over 20,000 Mission Indians were "attached" to the California missions. As missions were expected to become largely self-sufficient, farming was a critically important Mission industry. George Vancouver visited Mission San Buenaventura in 1793 and noted the wide variety of crops grown: apples, pears, plums, figs, oranges, grapes, peaches, pomegranates, plantain, banana, coconut, sugar cane, indigo, various herbs, and prickly pear. Livestock was raised for meat, wool, leather, and tallow, and for cultivating the land. In 1832, at the height of their prosperity, the missions collectively owned over 150,000 cattle and over 120,000 sheep. They also raised horses, goats, and pigs.
While the Spanish were the most successful farmers active in California in the early 1800s, they were not the only ones. In 1812, the Russians established Fort Ross in what is now Sonoma County, California, and intended the fort in part as an agricultural supply point for other Russian activity on the west coast, such as collecting otter pelts. Despite Russian plans for the colony, agriculture at Fort Ross had low yields, significantly lower than the California missions. Inefficient farming methods, labor shortages, coastal fog, and rodents all contributed to limit agriculture at the fort.
The Spanish (1784–1810) and Mexican (1819–1846) governments gifted many land grants to private individuals from 1785 to 1846. These ranchos included land taken from the missions following government-imposed secularization in 1833, after which the missions' productivity declined significantly. The ranchos were focused on cattle, and hides and tallow were their main products. There was no market for large quantities of beef (before refrigeration and railroads) until the California Gold Rush.
1850–1900
In 1848, before the Gold Rush, the population of CA was approximately 15,000, not counting Native Americans. By 1852, there were over 250,000 people in the state, and by 1870, 560,000 people. This rapid population growth drove an increase in importation of agricultural products, and, within a few years, a massive growth in in-state agriculture. These early settlers found an ideal environment for raising wheat: great expanses of fertile soil and flat terrain combined with rainy winters and hot, dry summers. By the mid-1850s, the state’s wheat output exceeded local consumption, and California’s grain operations began to evolve quite differently from the family farms of the American North. The image is vast tracts of grain grown on huge bonanza ranches in a countryside virtually uninhabited except at harvest and plowing times. California grain farms were very large for the day and used labor-saving and scale-intensive technologies, pioneering the adoption of labor-saving gang plows, large headers, and combines. Californians vigorously pursued the development of technologies and production practices suited to early California’s economic and environmental conditions. This search for large-scale, labor-saving technologies culminated in the perfection of the world’s first commercially successful combined grain harvesters by the Holt Manufacturing Company and other local manufacturers in the early 1880s. Combines became common in the California grain fields by 1890), when California was the second largest wheat-producing state, following only Minnesota.
Some bonanza farms planted thousands of acres and were far larger than Midwestern operations. They would establish many precedents. Most of the wheat and barley was shipped to European markets, setting a pattern of integration into world markets that has characterized California agriculture to the present. Their size, the extent of mechanization, and a reliance on hired labor would also become hallmarks of the state’s farm sector.
In the first years of the gold rush, the state relied on agricultural imports arriving by ship, from Australia, Chile, and Hawaii. During these years, there was rapid growth in vegetable farming for local markets. This was followed by an expansion of grain farming. A shift in the economic dominance of grain farming over cattle raising was marked by the passage of the California "No-Fence Law" of 1874. This repealed the Trespass Act of 1850, which had required farmers to protect their planted fields from free-ranging cattle. The repeal of the Trespass Act required that ranchers fence livestock in, rather than farmers fencing cattle out. The ranchers were faced with either the high expense of fencing large grazing tracts or selling their cattle at ruinous prices. By the 1890s, California was second in US wheat production, producing over one million tons of wheat per year, but monocrop wheat farming had depleted the soil in some areas resulting in reduced crops.
Irrigation was almost nonexistent in California in 1850, but by 1899, 12 percent of the state's improved farmland was irrigated.
1900–1950
The 1902 Newlands Reclamation Act funded irrigation projects on arid lands in 20 states including California.
In 1905, the California legislature passed the University Farm Bill, which called for the establishment of a farm school for the University of California (at the time, Berkeley was the sole campus of the university). The commission took a year to select a site for the campus, a tiny town then known as Davisville. UC Davis opened its doors as the "University Farm" to 40- students (all male) from UC Berkeley in January 1909.
In 1919, the California Department of Food and Agriculture was established. The department covers state food safety, state protection from invasive species, and promoting the state's agricultural industry.
In 1933, the state saw several agricultural labor strikes, with the largest actions against cotton growers. Cherry, grape, peach, pear, sugar beet, and tomato workers were also involved.
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s drove many people from the American prairie, and a significant number of these economic migrants relocated to California. Poor migrants from Oklahoma and nearby states were sometimes referred to as Okies, generally a pejorative term. Another turning point in California’s agriculture came during World War I when high prices of cotton, coupled with government research and promotional campaigns, encouraged farmers in the Imperial, Coachella, and San Joaquin Valleys to adopt cotton as a primary crop. The tremendous absolute increase in California’s cotton acreage from the 1920s to 1980 contrasts with the absolute decline nationally. California’s acreage in cotton ranked 14th out of 15 cotton-producing states in 1919; by 1959 it ranked only behind Texas.
In 1942, the United States began the Bracero program. Lasting until 1964, this agreement established decent living conditions and a minimum wage for Mexican workers in the United States.
Also in 1942, the Incarcerated Japanese Americans in California during World War II played a crucial role in growing food for the internment camps. Forced to abandon their farms upon being placed in camps, many internees possessed valuable agricultural skills. The camps, aiming for some level of self-sufficiency, turned to farming to provide food for the internees themselves. Despite the challenging conditions and limited resources, the internees adapted by cultivating vegetables suited to the local climate. Their success in producing a significant portion of the camps' vegetables, with some even having surpluses sent elsewhere, highlights both the resilience of Japanese Americans and the disruption they faced during this period (Figure 6.2)
1950–2000
In 1965, the Williamson Act became law, providing property tax relief to owners of California farmland and open-space land in exchange for agreement that the land will not be developed.
The 1960s and 1970s saw major farm worker strikes including the 1965 Delano grape strike and the 1970 Salad Bowl strike. In 1975, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 was enacted, establishing the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers in California, a first in U.S. history. Individuals with prominent roles in farm worker organizing in this period include Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong, and Philip Vera Cruz.
In the late 1980s the Ives flower ranch was the site of a notorious employment case. This ranch was in Ventura and involved Mixtec farm workers (from the Oaxaca state of southern Mexico) and illegal employment conditions. The ranch paid $1.5 million in unpaid wages and fines.
Through 1995 there were 50,000 Mixtec’s every year in California agriculture. They were about 70% of the 10,000 agricultural laborers in San Diego County and had been spreading northwards to also work in Oxnard, Santa Maria, and Madera County, and even into Oregon and Washington. They were usually not the only indigenous Mexican ethnic groups – Zapotecs and Mayans were also usually working the same jobs. In the 1990s it was common to arrive in Arizona first, work on an Arizonan farm, and then move here.
Dairy and poultry operations represent exceptions to the general pattern of slow growth of livestock farming in the first decades of the twentieth century. These activities steadily expanded, primarily to serve the state’s rapidly growing urban markets. In 1993, California replaced Wisconsin as the nation’s number one milk producer
2001–Present
In the 2000s and 2010s, Californians voted for propositions which established new protections for farm animals. 2008 California Proposition 2 and 2018 California Proposition 12 both established minimum requirements for farming egg-laying hens, breeding pigs, and calves raised for veal. Few veal and pig factory farm operations exist in California, so these propositions mostly affect farmers who raise California's 15 million egg-laying hens.