GEOG 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Wage Labour, Intensive Farming, Pedogenesis
Califoria – Exeptio or Rule? February , 7
• How is California exceptional?
o Production: 76 crops that CA grew in larger quantities than other states (ie: walnut, alfalfa)
o Climate: Mediterranean climate (ie: 50-75 degrees = always growing season)
▪ A couple vegetables/fruits that is grown all-year round
o Topography/geology: multiple mountain ranges, deserts, wet/dry areas
▪ Pronounced effect on temperatures and soils (seismic activity affects soil formation)
▪ Various conditions that give us a lot of variation in our climate
o Climatic variation: can alter what can grow there
o Biotic diversity
o History
▪ Spanish missionary period, Mexican racherías, gold rush (abrupt influx of people),
urban metropoles in state (not in the East Coast; ie SF by borrowing money from
themselves), migrations and cultural diversity, and economic behemoth
▪ Easier to keep the wealth in the state if they borrowed from the state
o Variety of crops
▪ When a crop is no longer as profitable, it is usually replaced by another crop
o Irrigation: establishment of aqueducts and other methods
o Real estate loans: SF banks gave loans
• CA agriulture is’t that exeptioal
o Argues that it is capitalized, industrialized agriculture
o CA has led the way in that pattern
o CA, TX, and Iowa are the top 3 agricultural output states – pattern for output per farm is fairly
similar over the 130 year period
▪ Rural population: CA has seen a greater drop in their rural population, but still a
similar pattern overall
• Overall dynamics and practices in CA agriculture rapidly spread to the rest of the country (ie:
pesticides and insecticides)
o Differs in gross through labor
o Aer of wage laor:
▪ CA has employed wage labor from the outset of US settlement
▪ Series of groups (migrant farm laborers) from all over the world that the rural areas
in Iowa did not have
• Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Vietnamese
• Racialized labor exploitation – classified and treated, mainly by prejudices, by
their ethnic background and more easily exploited for that very reason
o CA in its history differentiates them from other states; other states ehaized ad do’t
need as many wage laborers
o Population and pollution are highly correlated
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