This is the fourth report from the Reedley Peace Center’s Speakers Series “In the Struggle.” Interested readers can learn more about the series by visiting www.reedleypeacecenter.org.
In a piece I wrote for the Bee last
month, I started with the fire at the Suntreat packinghouse in Lindsay, describing
the loss of jobs and income for the community.
I speculated on the problems for rebuilding that plant due to the
changes in crops and land ownership occurring on the land surrounding our
town. And I lamented the problems I’ve
had since I came here getting city leaders to realize there’s a connection between
the problems our farmers face and the economic difficulties inside the city
limits.
Dean MacCannell was the fourth
speaker featured at the Reedley Peace Center’s forum. Dean was full professor
of Applied Behavioral Sciences at UCD when I moved to Davis to work with him in
1985. For almost 10 years he had been
conducting statistical studies on the relationship between farm structure and
rural community development using techniques called “macrosocial accounting”
developed at Cornell. I hoped his knowledge
and support would help me finish the more qualitative study I had begun at UCB
under Paul Taylor’s influence.
In different ways we both were
updating Walter Goldschmidt’s seminal study of farmland ownership and community
development in his comparison of two towns, Arvin in Kern County and Dinuba,
here in Tulare. That study documented
the positive socio-economic contributions of smaller, owner-operated farms to
the quality of rural communities, as well as the negative impacts of
large-scale, absentee farm operations. Goldschmidt published his study in late 1946,
followed in 1947 by the publication of his book As You Sow, which described his first study in Wasco as well as two
brief chapters on Arvin and Dinuba (although the towns were not identified by
name.)
The book was republished in 1978 under
the title As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of
Agribusiness. It contains the full
Arvin-Dinuba study as well as a chapter describing the political history of the
studies, which was marked by suppression in the early years, repudiation in
later years. That story included the
success of the large growers in killing the plan for a follow-up study of many
communities in the San Joaquin Valley, which would have removed all doubt about
the negative consequences of large-scale, absentee-owned farming operations on
the development of rural towns.
MacCannell began that study shortly
after he arrived at UCD in 1975. Telling
that story in Reedley, he described the academic hindrances to that research,
as well as some of the miracles that helped him avoid being stopped. He described some of the difficulties
building a data base that incorporated farm size and structure variables with
social, economic and political data, and his efforts to ensure the scientific
validity of the research.
The stories people appreciated most
were about his encounters with Westlands growers. His UC superiors had advised MacCannell that
these folks had intense interest in suppressing the evidence he’d uncovered,
and went to some length to shut him up. He
also mentioned the “one bad thing” he did in his entire career, which was to
release a study he conducted on Westlands to the National Farmers Union, which
helped preserve the acreage limitation provisions in a battle to eliminate them
in 1982. But in one of my favorite anecdotes, he told
of his first field trip into the Valley when he realized that anyone could see
the differences between small-farm and large-farm towns with their own eyes.
MacCannell’s conclusions from an
academic career spent swimming upstream and sharing his results with audiences mostly
unfriendly to the notion of public policy supporting the small farm were
these: The science is done. Goldschmidt’s Hypothesis has been proven
correct, and those who contend otherwise are simply waging war on the truth to
keep their own interests intact. “It’s
time to organize,” he said, even knowing the limitations of previous efforts to
organize when we had many more small family farms than we have now.
This Friday we’ll hear about
organizing from one of the premier academic practitioners of that art: Isao Fujimoto, also retired from UCD’s
Applied Behavioral Sciences, beloved friend and advocate for the power of
diversity. Please join us at 6:30 for
the potluck in the First Mennonite Church’s fellowship hall, followed at 7 pm
by Isao’s empowering presentation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trudy Wischemann is a researcher-in-residence who writes from her outpost in Lindsay. You can send her your reflections on small town life c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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