“From Oil Well to Farm”: Industrial Waste, Shell Oil, and the Petrochemical Turn (1927-1947) (2016)
This paper traces two stories of agriculture that merged in late autumn 1944 on a lettuce field in California's Salinas Valley. On that field, two transmuted industrial waste products from California's rudimentary petroleum economy were at once injected into the soil and into agricultural production, spurring a radical transformation of crop rotation and recasting the organizational possibilities of industrial agriculture. Taken together, these stories tell a tale of capital and chemistry overcoming an ecological contradiction of agro-industrialization. This paper considers an earlier history of petroleum-based agrochemicals, situating their development in the interwar years and within the context of California's emerging petroleum complex. It argues that, in the late 1920s, agriculture began its transformation into a new and immensely productive agricultural regime organized around the oil industry and its waste byproducts. The petrochemicals and subterranean chemical warfare that were developed during this time became industrial agriculture's chemical salvation, providing both the soil disinfection power and the soil nutrition that made the massive yield increases in agricultural production following World War II possible.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Timothy Johnson;
(2016)
Nitrogen Nation: The Legacy of World War I and the Politics of Chemical Agriculture in the United States, 1916-1933
(/isis/citation/CBB249133708/)
Book
Dvera I. Saxton;
(2021)
The Devil's Fruit: Farmworkers, Health, and Environmental Justice
(/isis/citation/CBB347232041/)
Article
Nash, Linda;
(2004)
The Fruits of Ill-Health: Pesticides and Workers' Bodies in Post-World War II California
(/isis/citation/CBB000750328/)
Article
Julie Guthman;
Sandy Brown;
(May 2016)
Whose Life Counts: Biopolitics and the “Bright Line” of Chloropicrin Mitigation in California’s Strawberry Industry
(/isis/citation/CBB827594313/)
Book
Mitchell, Don;
(2012)
They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era California
(/isis/citation/CBB001421811/)
Book
Adam M. Romero;
(2021)
Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB940384528/)
Article
Testa, Stephen M.;
(2001)
Geologic Perceptions Regarding Oil Prospects and Future Growth and Development of California in the Post-Gold Rush Era
(/isis/citation/CBB000700903/)
Thesis
Spezio, Teresa Sabol;
(2011)
Rising Tide: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Its Aftermath
(/isis/citation/CBB001567325/)
Thesis
Wolfson, Mariel Louise;
(2012)
The Ecology of a Healthy Home: Energy, Health, and Housing in America, 1960--1985
(/isis/citation/CBB001567387/)
Book
Juri Auderset;
Peter Moser;
(2018)
Die Agrarfrage in der Industriegesellschaft: Wissenskulturen, Machtverhältnisse und natürliche Ressourcen in der agrarisch-industriellen Wissensgesellschaft
(/isis/citation/CBB477276060/)
Article
Venus Bivar;
(2019)
Agricultural High Modernism and Land Reform in Postwar France
(/isis/citation/CBB796568829/)
Article
Jane Insley;
(2006)
Little Landscapes: Agriculture, Dioramas and the Science Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB447845021/)
Article
Hajdik, Anna;
(2014)
A “Bovine Glamour Girl”: Borden Milk, Elsie the Cow, and the Convergence of Technology, Animals, and Gender at the 1939 New York World's Fair
(/isis/citation/CBB001421771/)
Article
Derek Byerlee;
(2021)
The Super State: The Political Economy of Phosphate Fertilizer Use in South Australia, 1880–1940
(/isis/citation/CBB126344986/)
Article
Saha, Madhumita;
(2013)
Food for Soil, Food for People: Research on Food Crops, Fertilizers, and the Making of “Modern” Indian Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB001253139/)
Article
Arnaud Page;
(2016)
“The Greatest Victory Which the Chemist Has Won in the Fight (…) Against Nature”: Nitrogenous Fertilizers in Great Britain and the British Empire, 1910s–1950s
(/isis/citation/CBB391098643/)
Article
Rooij, Arjan van;
(2007)
Methods for Innovation: The Varying Role of Industrial Research in DSM's Nitrogen Fertilizer Business, 1925--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB000830428/)
Article
Carey, David, Jr.;
(2009)
Guatemala's Green Revolution: Synthetic Fertilizer, Public Health, and Economic Autonomy in the Mayan Highland
(/isis/citation/CBB001020838/)
Article
Owens, Brian;
(2013)
Long-term Research: Slow Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001320432/)
Article
Uekōtter, Frank;
(2014)
Why Panaceas Work: Recasting Science, Knowledge, and Fertilizer Interests in German Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB001320830/)
Be the first to comment!