Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 1 (2022), p. 163

New Mexican farmers have been known for producing apples, cotton, and chile. During the twentieth century, these crops defined the state’s agriculture and the people who raise them. William Carleton, editor of Edible New Mexico, traces the emergence of apples, cotton, and chile from traditional crops raised by Hispanic farmers to heavily capitalized Anglo, industrial-scale production. In each case, while university scientists developed new varieties, processors and marketers changed the history of each crop to help make them appeal to a broad spectrum of consumers, often by promoting them as traditional crops while using science to change them for commercial purposes.

Carleton argues that industrial agriculture and traditional farming systems co-exist and influence each other in New Mexico. He examines apple production during the early twentieth century regarding the quality of the fruit and its cultural and environmental landscape as well as its association with Anglo-driven modernity and sense of virtue. His development of cotton farming between the wars emphasizes immigration from the South and reliance on the state’s land-grant college and experiment station for the development of new varieties. As a result, a Southern-style paternalism developed that aligned with modern concepts of scientific management and industrial efficiency to create a new agricultural landscape. Carleton also traces the transition of the state’s most iconic crop, chile pepper, from a traditional crop raised by small-scale farmers for home use to a crop bred for Anglo tastes and a national market.

Carleton emphasizes the ways that apples, cotton, and chile changed the agriculture and culture of New Mexico. The success of each crop depended on modernization in the form of technology, specialization, and government assistance. Newcomers considered traditional crop varieties as inferior and indicative of agricultural based on tradition rather than science. Anglo investors and farmers homogenized the crop varieties. Railroads shipped the produce to distant markets. The traditional, small-scale Hispanic farmers could not compete. Improvement meant the adoption of Anglo varieties which, in turn, meant white cultural superiority. New Mexico’s commercial apples represented whiteness, science, and cultural superiority over Hispanic varieties, farmers, and cultural practices. Large, well-ordered rows of apple trees changed the landscape. New apple varieties required social controls, such as mandatory spraying for insects and orchard inspections, that changed the culture of apple raising. Apple production became identified with Anglo not Hispanic agriculture. Marketing also belied the truth about traditional varieties and ignored Hispanic and Native apple raisers. Many small-scale apple producers, however, blended traditional methods and new technologies to establish New Mexico as a major apple producing state.

Cotton also became an important crop between the two world wars. State land-grant scientists developed varieties suitable for the dry climate that also proved protective from the boll weevil and cross pollination. Federal government expenditures for irrigation, transportation, and research also made large-scale cotton farming possible. Newcomers often displaced Hispanic farmers, and tenancy and sharecropping emerged as new agricultural labour systems. Hispanics became the cotton workforce managed by Anglos. Racial tensions increased. Cotton farming became one-crop farming with a migrant labour force, and New Mexico became a winter waystation between the southern Great Plains and Arizona and California thereby changing the human geography of New Mexico as well as the look and physical use of the land.

Chile also represented New Mexico’s Hispanic and Native cultural heritage which Anglos denigrated in racist terms. When Fabián García at New Mexico’s land-grant college developed a new chile variety more appealing to Anglo tastes, it blended Hispanic and Anglo culture and gave New Mexico a new identity. His new variety had superior canning qualities compared to traditional varieties. Canned chile peppers meant progress and modernity. García drew upon the Mexican-U.S. borderlands for seed varieties that he crossed until he achieved the desired strain. The development of a new chile, however, also required changing consumer tastes and conveying that the new variety was mild, flavorful, and represented the best ingredient for authentic New Mexican cuisine. By the 1950s, farmers no longer merely raised chile pepper for local, seasonal consumption. Chile peppers had become a major crop for commercial sale. Marketers promoted chile-based foods and identified chile as a gourmet dish and rather than a poor Mexican crop and food. A north-south competition among chile farmers in the state developed over modern and traditional varieties, but fears of genetic engineering threatened to displace traditional and hybrid varieties and ruin place-based recognition for the crop. Hispanic farmers considered chile a symbol of their cultural heritage, but Anglo farmers associated their cultural identity with newly developed university varieties and touted them as traditional crops.

During the twentieth century, science merged with traditional practices to produce a new form of agriculture in New Mexico. Although Anglo elites intended to raise apples, cotton, and chile as evidence of white, cultural superiority and expertise, environmental and cultural realities forced adjustments based on unforeseen circumstances. Carleton emphasizes that agricultural industrialization and modernization does not preclude the incorporation of traditional practices. He also contends that boosterism and advertising created false cultural identities regarding these crops that frequently departed from the scientific truth.

This clear and well-written, solidly researched study traces the ways in which traditional agricultural practices have influenced science-based, industrial agriculture regarding the production of apples, cotton, and chile in New Mexico. Science and the spoken and written word combined to explain the development of these crops often defined by cultural differences between Hispanics and Anglos. American agricultural historians will find this study revealing and suggestive for similar investigations regarding the development of modern agriculture across cultural borderlands where competing ideas and traditions merge to change the agricultural landscape for crops, people, and the land. It also is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of New Mexico. Carleton has written an informative and engaging agricultural history for New Mexico that significantly contributes to the larger agricultural history of the United States.