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" The Alchemy of Capital: "
Romero, Adam M.
Sayre, Nathan F
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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904365
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TL2rh0d4df
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| Main Entry
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Romero, Adam M.
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| Title & Author
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The Alchemy of Capital:\ Romero, Adam M.Sayre, Nathan F
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| College
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UC Berkeley
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| Date
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2015
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2015
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| Abstract
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Along with mechanization and scientific plant breeding, modern forms of industrial agriculture are premised on the use of synthetic chemicals to sustain yield, irrigate fields, decrease erosion, and provide defense against pests and disease. Chemicalized agriculture has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the presence of industrially produced chemicals became available on domestic and international markets, as crop production specialized, and as scientists, farmers, and policy makers turned to chemicals to “fix” fertility, pest, and labor issues. While the use of agricultural chemicals has created the conditions for astonishing yields, their generalized use has also resulted in the pollution and degradation of ecosystems, harmful effects on consumers and farm workers, and large greenhouse gas emissions. This dissertation investigates the relationships between the late 19th and early 20th century US mining, chemical, and petroleum refining industries, their waste byproducts, and the promotion and naturalization of economic poisons in US agriculture. Specifically, I explore the transition from the ad hoc use of economic poisons on US farms to the use of economic poisons as an agricultural necessity by focusing on the complex and multidirectional links between industrial and chemical waste and the use of a rapidly industrializing and specializing agriculture as an efficacious and profitable outlet for industrial byproducts. Drawing from fourteen archives across the US, I use the history of mining and smelting companies, chemical and petrochemical manufacturers, marketers and dealers, industrial R&D, governmental institutions, university scientists and extension agents, capital investment, environmental regulation, the military, along with politics of an inchoate toxicological science, to narrate the political economic thresholds of industrial waste’s transmutation and US agriculture’s chemicalization. In other words, I relay the historical and political economic origins of economic poisons in US agriculture from the mid 1860s to the end of WWII through the lens of industrial waste.
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Sayre, Nathan F
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UC Berkeley
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