Eradicating Orange Blossoms Along With the Medflies

This is about mythology, orange blossoms and malathion.

A century ago, during the first mass migration of Yankees to California, speculators and the railroads discovered that promoting dreams of agricultural riches here was a powerfully effective way to sell land and train tickets to economic pilgrims.

So was born the myth of the orange blossoms: People everywhere have come to associate California with amazing agriculture, from artichokes to avocados and walnuts to wine grapes. And, more important for the propagation of the myth, not just amazing agriculture but also fat-city farmers.

The Joad family in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” bought the myth; so have generations of immigrants arriving from all over the world.

And so, too, have California governors, including George Deukmejian. Protecting California’s agriculture industry from all enemies, insect or human, has been virtually an unwritten tenet of the state Constitution.

These days, however, the state seems to be pulling away in a hundred directions economically, with its traditional industries lagging. There is less consensus than ever about economic policy--especially regarding agriculture, which seems a bit old-fashioned to many of the new Californians, who show no signs of buying the myth.

In the past, it was simply accepted that more is at stake than the simple cash value of crops, huge as that may be. No matter that California farming has never been as gentlemanly or as profitable as the brochures made it out, or that the value of farm crops as a portion of the total state product has dropped to a minuscule 1.9% in recent years, or that making blouses and even flipping hamburgers have become bigger businesses in the state if you count only the dollars they generate directly.

What’s grown in the soil here is California to much of the world. The intangible value of that reputation has been considered so precious by most of the state’s Powers-That-Be that protecting California agriculture has usually required only a knee-jerk reaction and virtually no political risk.

And that is what has made the current controversy over urban malathion spraying to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly so wrenching.

Chemical pesticides and fertilizers made possible a dramatic increase in crop yields for American farmers after World War II. Nowhere was that more true than in California, where the rich soil and warm climate already produced bountiful harvests.

By chemically eradicating pests and enriching the soil, farmers could produce twice as many peaches, three times as many tomatoes, six times as much lettuce. Fresh California produce became available all over the world, at all times of the year.

Chemically enhanced farming, in fact, seemed to make reality out of the myth of the orange blossoms for the grandchildren of those starry-eyed California immigrants who got off the trains two or three generations before.

But California changed dramatically in the 1980s. A flood of immigrants, mostly from Central America and Asia, increased the state’s population by more than 20%. Unlike earlier waves of immigration to California, most of these new people stayed in the cities.

In the southern part of the state, expansion of housing and industry has driven out much of the farming. For example, Riverside County, the largest agricultural county in Southern California, has lost nearly 5% of its farm land in the last five years--most of it in the increasingly urbanized western end of the county.

State officials used urban spraying of malathion to eradicate the fruit fly earlier, around San Jose in 1981-82. It stirred up a hornet’s nest then, too.

But this time, the voices seem louder and angrier. In school auditoriums and living rooms across Southern California, an increasingly militant opposition to spraying is gathering momentum. The rhetoric is fierce: “We’re letting the governor and the agriculture industry dictate the terms of the spraying while the rest of us are being ignored,” a Studio City housewife complains.

The opponents worry about reports of nausea and shortness of breath, potential tumors and miscarriages. They dismiss all the assurances of state officials about the safety and importance of spraying. And they rail against agribusiness greed and a state government they claim is manipulated by campaign donations from chemical companies and farm lobbies.

“The farmers are brainwashed into believing they have to use chemicals,” says Burbank housewife Adelaide Nimitz, a leader in the anti-spraying campaign. “We can’t protect our own homes from this invasion of our health and privacy.”

Nimitz sees a connection among the anti-spraying movement, the 20-year battle by the United Farm Workers union against effects of agricultural chemicals on farm laborers, the effort by some Vietnam veterans to win compensation for health damage done by the defoliant Agent Orange and the burgeoning Save the Earth movement.

The latter, largely an urban phenomenon, is a growing political movement that encompasses support for everything from recycling to restrictions on development. Its power at the ballot box is only just beginning to be felt. Reminiscent of 1960s anti-war activism, anti-spraying placards are being waved, lawsuits are being filed and civil disobedience is being planned.

And politicians are getting the message: In their televised debate earlier this month, Democratic gubernatorial aspirants Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein both vowed to halt Medfly spraying permanently. Feinstein labeled spraying a “massive invasion” and likened it to the film “Apocalypse Now.”

For its part, the agriculture business appeared to be blindsided by the ferocity of the opposition to spraying and has been grappling for a response that will strike a sympathetic chord. So far, the effort hasn’t been successful.

“There wasn’t this kind of upheaval earlier,” says Bob Vice, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “Maybe we were lulled into thinking people were aware of the importance of eradicating this pest.”

Farm officials have stepped up their defense of the industry, arguing that a Medfly infestation would produce much higher food prices and perhaps loss of that treasured world market for California produce.

The nasty tenor of the controversy seems to confirm what some California watchers have been saying about the state’s growing economic diversity. It’s clear that there are fewer concentrations of economic power than there were. For example, a much smaller percentage of Californians make their livings from aerospace and agriculture now than a generation ago.

Instead, the state has become more dependent on small businesses and part-time or temporary employment to provide new jobs. And that almost certainly means there is less sense of economic community than there was when more people spent a career with one big employer, or at least in the same industry.

In other words, economic diversity may be aggravating the traditional geographical schism of California, pulling us apart in ways we are only beginning to understand.

And urban spraying may be eradicating the myth of the orange blossoms as well as the Mediterranean fruit fly.