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Learning, Capital Accumulation, and the Transformation of California Agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Paul W. Rhode
Paul W. Rhode
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research
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Abstract

Between 1890 and 1914, California agriculture rapidly shifted from extensive to intensive crops, emerging as one of the world's major suppliers of Mediterranean products. Based on an analysis of new data on price and quantity movements, this article calls into question the traditional emphasis on changes in transportation, water, and labor market conditions as explanations for California's transformation. It argues that increases in fruit supply outpaced increases in demand and that declining farm interest rates and biological learning played crucial, if relatively neglected, roles in the intensification process.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 773 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1995

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