For more than a decade the trend toward increased mechanization in U.S. agriculture has been the source of farm worker protests, legislative hearings, and lawsuits. (The recent case pitting the University of California’s prestigious agriculture research establishment against Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers is a prominent example of such litigation.) A key question in the controversy is whether federal and state governments should continue to invest more than $1 billion per year in the development of large-scale, capital-intensive technologies known to have significant social costs. Opponents of continued public support for these new technologies argue that they will eliminate thousands of farm jobs when the nation already suffers from a serious unemployment problem; proponents contend that such capital-intensive technologies keep food prices down for consumers while generating the potential for increased wages for farm workers. This book explores both sides of the debate, tracing the history of the mechanization issue and assessing the economic and sociological bases of the opposing positions. Maintaining that present methods of analysis are not adequate for resolving the conflict, Professor Price suggests an alternative approach, highlighted by a detailed case study of the costs and benefits generated by a new harvest technology adopted in the tomato-processing industry in California. He singles out the role of market structure as the most important variable in the distribution of benefits resulting from mechanization. Finally he relates his research findings to policy alternatives concerning farm mechanization in general, as well as to other problems involving technological change.

Although formal social impact assessment of changing technologies in U.S. agriculture is still in its infancy, scholars have been documenting the effects of new technology throughout the twentieth century. In this collection, Prcfessors Berardi and Geisler bring together historically relevant research and a carefully chosen cross section of contemporary work. Their review of the literature is followed by an evaluation of the effects of mechanization on labor and production, written in 1904, which provides a backdrop for papers from the 1940s and 1950s examining the mechanization of agriculture in the South, in the Midwest, and in rural areas in general. Subsequent chapters offer present-day insights on such topics as the socioeconomic consequences of automated vegetable and tobacco harvesting, center-pivot irrigation, and organic and no-till cultivation. The authors also look at compensation and adjustment programs for displaced labor, the relationship between technology and agribusiness growth, and the effectiveness of university programs that prepare students to perform social impact assessments in agriculture. The edited proceedings of a spirited roundtable discussion on new directions for the study of the social impacts of farm technology and the political economy of agriculture provide the thought-provoking conclusion to this overview of the field.

"Mechanization and improved farm technology are leveling out the peaks of high seasonal labor use in Kern County. The trend is explored in the present report, and suggestions are made to expedite the change toward a stable local labor force"--Preface