By Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, Giannini Foundation Of Agricultural Economics
The history of California agriculture entails a story of innovation and conflict as farmers and their allies repeatedly remolded their environment to create an extraordinarily diverse and productive agricultural-industrial complex. This is not just a story of the triumph of individual entrepreneurial initiative in a largely unfettered competitive economy, because the actual outcomes often depended far more than commonly realized on aggressive government interventions that defined access to land, water, markets, technologies, and labor. These interventions helped, often despite farmer objections, control potentially catastrophic plant and animal diseases.
Excerpted from California Agriculture: Dimensions and Issues, 2nd Edition.
