Cotton in the San Joaquin Valley: A Study of Government in Agriculture

Abstract

R ECENT studies in agricultural geography hardly accentuate sufficiently the governmental factor in modern agriculture in highly organized states. Dunn's work,' for example an economist's analysis of the problems of agricultural economics, but valuable to the geographerpostulates the working of the market as a major factor in location; Weaver's studies of crop combinations in the Middle West,2 landmarks in the agricultural geography of the United States, are analyses of patterns at a series of points in time. Neither of these writers hints at the great changes and widespread repercussions that result from government intervention in agriculture. The most spectacular of such changes in the farming pattern of the United States occur when the Secretary of Agriculture is required, by law, to declare a national marketing quota for a given crop.3 In 1954 allotments in cotton planting had automatically to be applied, since the normal supply of cotton for the year had been overproduced in the growing season 1953-1954; in consequence, the national acreage of cotton under cultivation in July, 1954, was five and a half million acres less than in July, 1953. A report prepared in January, 1954, for the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics4 showed how states, and counties within the states, that had only recently increased their acreages of cotton would suffer disproportionately if the impending cuts were to be based on the average of a long period of years. It will be seen from Table I that the states of the West, where cotton is produced entirely under irrigation, did indeed experience generally a greater proportionate cut in acreage than the older-established states of the Cotton Belt, though production was not thereby reduced by as large a percentage as the average for the country.