This paper traces two stories of agriculture that merged in late autumn 1944 on a lettuce field in California’s Salinas Valley. On that field, two transmuted industrial waste products from California’s rudimentary petroleum economy were at once injected into the soil and into agricultural production, spurring a radical transformation of crop rotation and recasting the organizational possibilities of industrial agriculture. Taken together, these stories tell a tale of capital and chemistry overcoming an ecological contradiction of agro-industrialization. This paper considers an earlier history of petroleum-based agrochemicals, situating their development in the interwar years and within the context of California’s emerging petroleum complex. It argues that, in the late 1920s, agriculture began its transformation into a new and immensely productive agricultural regime organized around the oil industry and its waste byproducts. The petrochemicals and subterranean chemical warfare that were developed during this time became industrial agriculture’s chemical salvation, providing both the soil disinfection power and the soil nutrition that made the massive yield increases in agricultural production following World War II possible.

中文翻译：

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“从油井到农场”：工业废物、壳牌石油和石化转向（1927-1947）

本文追溯了 1944 年深秋在加利福尼亚萨利纳斯山谷的一片生菜田上合并的两个农业故事。在那个领域，加州初级石油经济产生的两种转化工业废物同时被注入土壤和农业生产，刺激了轮作的根本转变，并重塑了工业化农业的组织可能性。总之，这些故事讲述了一个资本和化学克服农业工业化生态矛盾的故事。本文考虑了以石油为基础的农用化学品的早期历史，介绍了它们在两次世界大战之间的发展以及加利福尼亚新兴石油综合体的背景。它认为，在 1920 年代后期，农业开始转变为围绕石油工业及其废弃副产品组织的新的、生产力极高的农业体制。这一时期发展起来的石油化工和地下化学战成为工业化农业的化学救星，提供土壤消毒能力和土壤营养，使二战后农业生产的大规模增产成为可能。