IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB755406753

“From Oil Well to Farm”: Industrial Waste, Shell Oil, and the Petrochemical Turn (1927-1947) (2016)

Romero, Adam (Author)

Agricultural History
Volume: 90
Issue: 1
Pages: 70-93

URI: www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2016.090.1.70

DOI: 10.3098/ah.2016.090.1.70

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Industrial agriculture Pesticides; insecticides Fertilizers Agriculture Petroleum industry 20th century California (U.S.)

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.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB755406753/

Citations Indexes

Similar 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/)

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 Dvera I. Saxton; (2021)
The Devil's Fruit: Farmworkers, Health, and Environmental Justice (/isis/citation/CBB347232041/)

Book Mitchell, Don; (2012)
They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era California (/isis/citation/CBB001421811/)

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/)

Article Jane Insley; (2006)
Little Landscapes: Agriculture, Dioramas and the Science Museum (/isis/citation/CBB447845021/)

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 Uekōtter, Frank; (2014)
Why Panaceas Work: Recasting Science, Knowledge, and Fertilizer Interests in German Agriculture (/isis/citation/CBB001320830/)

Thesis Cushman, Gregory Todd; (2003)
The Lords of Guano: Science and the Management of Peru's Marine Environment, 1800--1973 (/isis/citation/CBB001562088/)

Article Carey, David, Jr.; (2009)
Guatemala's Green Revolution: Synthetic Fertilizer, Public Health, and Economic Autonomy in the Mayan Highland (/isis/citation/CBB001020838/)

Article Venus Bivar; (2019)
Agricultural High Modernism and Land Reform in Postwar France (/isis/citation/CBB796568829/)

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 Owens, Brian; (2013)
Long-term Research: Slow Science (/isis/citation/CBB001320432/)

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 Saha, Madhumita; (2013)
Food for Soil, Food for People: Research on Food Crops, Fertilizers, and the Making of “Modern” Indian Agriculture (/isis/citation/CBB001253139/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}