The agricultural sector of the U.S. economy experienced fundamental changes throughout the twentieth century. As the concentration of landownership and mechanization increased, the mythologized vision of a Jeffersonian“family farm” increasingly gave way to industrialized agriculture—characterized by large-scale agribusiness operations and dependent on a racialized labor force. All the while, agribusiness elites across the country used their economic, political, and social power to influence the development of agrocapitalism to suit their interests. By probing the business, labor, and political history of agriculture during this period, this panel demonstrates the diverse strategies that agribusiness elites employed to retain and further strengthen their domination over the industry.
Three researchers make up this panel, and each presentation focuses on a particular case study to illuminate larger trends in agribusiness history. Cristian Roberto Walk begins by complicating the monolithic category of an agribusiness elite. In analyzing the class divisions among the growers during the Ventura County Citrus Strike of 1941—one of the longest agricultural strikes in U.S. history—he reveals how the largest growers used their power to enforce class cohesion in a successful effort to stave off the demands of Mexican American farmworkers. Next, Dr. Victoria Saker Woeste forces us to reconsider the role that the ideology of the “family farm” has played in twentieth century politics. She uses the 1945 repeal of the Farm Security Administration to show how strongly Congress believed that the key to maintaining democracy was to encourage fee simple ownership. This resulted in the encouragement of state structures that slowly but firmly discouraged what remained of small-scale, non-ownership farming. Finally, Devin Jerome probes how agribusiness elites maneuver labor markets amidst extraordinary political and economic change during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II. He provides crucial insights into how Mississippi and Arkansas cotton planters gradually came to rely on Mexican guest workers furnished by the Bracero Program. As Jerome argues, Delta planters increasingly came to prefer highly-mobile racialized migrant guest workers over permanent racialized tenant farmers.
Though eclectic in regional focus, source work, and categories of analysis, each panelist is chiefly interested in how agribusiness elites have shaped capitalism in the United States. All three are also intimately concerned with the relationship between agribusiness and democracy—and its consequences for American society.