Trouble in Kiwi Country

My dad, who spent much of his working life in the cattle trade, has a peculiar way of describing people who don’t know much about agriculture. So-and-so, he will complain, “doesn’t know which end of a cow goes to water.” Now myself, I’ve never been quite sure what he means by this, and frankly I’ve never been inclined to puzzle it out. I just don’t want to think too hard about which end of a cow, etc. And anyway, it’s a free country. Let the cow decide for herself.

Such agrarian ignorance is hardly novel, not even here amid the vast croplands of central California. The fact is most Californians don’t know which end is up when it comes to agriculture. It is a foreign world they encounter though the car window, something to look at while speeding from City A to Beach B.

In this blissfully uninformed state, members of the general public--as the farmers invariably call all non-farmers--tend to imagine agriculture as a mighty juggernaut. They envision a well-disciplined army of like-thinking thing-growers working together to plunder water, spread pesticides and, yes, feed America. The truth is quite different.

Come out of the car and into the vines and fields and the farm monolith begins to splinter into a million little pieces--a crazy quilt of feuds and factions, of farmers working at cross-purposes against farmers. They can divide in any number of ways, by geography, by crop, by place on the food chain. Dave Moss here, he knows all about it.

*

The 54-year-old farmer was in his workshop, fiddling with a homemade sundial. “I got the hard work done early this morning,” Moss said, extending a strong, leathery hand. He wore work boots, jeans, a short-sleeved plaid shirt and suspenders. His neck and face were red from too much sun. Or was it anger?

Moss has been at war with the California Kiwifruit Commission for eight years. He has been sued and has counter-sued. He has been jailed--for “running his mouth,” as he put it, about what he might do to a judge should things not go his way. Ostensibly, this is a dispute over $2,500. It goes back to 1988, when Moss quit paying the annual crop fees charged to each of California’s 600 kiwi growers by the state Kiwifruit Commission.

The money is supposed to finance generic ads, giggly suggestions that kiwis go down better than bananas. That sort of deal. The fee is assessed under terms of a special marketing order. This is common practice in California agriculture. Marketing orders allow various crop producers to sidestep antitrust rules and pool money for generic ads, and also to enforce uniform quality standards and so forth. They are the mechanisms that have given rise to dancing raisins and celebrity milk mustaches and “it’s the cheese” billboards.

Moss wanted none of it. He argues it’s a matter of free speech. He argues that forcing generic advertising doesn’t make sense for California kiwis, since half the year--the late spring and summer--supermarkets are stocked with kiwi from Chile and New Zealand. He argues that marketing orders are New Deal relics and a tool for big packers to force little farmers to subsidize their marketing programs and just plain “un-American.”

*

His revolt, however, wouldn’t have amounted to a pile of dried kiwis--which, incidentally, Moss suggests make a healthy substitute for potato chips--except for one thing: He is winning. In late May, a state appellate court sided with the farmer, finding that the mandatory advertising assessment was a violation of his free speech. The ruling was followed Tuesday by a U.S. Supreme Court decision to consider the same question via a parallel case.

As a result, agriculturists who believe in marketing orders--be they growers of kiwis, or raisins, or cattle--see a part of their world in peril. It’s not difficult to find farmers who swear by the system. Of course, it also is not difficult to find farmers who, like Moss, swear at it. Farmers can’t all just get along, either.

At the Kiwifruit Commission office, the marketing order is defended as a wonderful tool that’s helped kiwi farmers gain supermarket shelf space and increased “stomach share.” Statistics are produced, along with kiwi recipes. And now, the president sighs, it might all go down, simply because of “one little guy.”

Moss feels no guilt. “I didn’t start this,” he said grimly as he said goodbye. “It didn’t start as a crusade. It started with a little guy who just wanted to be left alone. They sued me, remember? They figured I would knuckle under. They were wrong.”

It can get rough out here in Kiwi country.