n029  1006  11 Feb 80
 
BC-FARMS
By ROBERT LINDSEY
c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service
    LOS ANGELES - Backed by unexpectedly strong support from the Carter
administration, supporters of Mexican-American farm workers whose
jobs are threatened by mechanical harvesting systems appear to be
making headway in efforts to slow the development of such machines.
    A California Superior Court judge ruled last week that the
University of California must participate in a trial to defend
charges that it has unlawfully subsidized the development of
labor-saving agricultural machines that benefit private agri-business
concerns.
    The ruling followed by less than a week a speech by Secretary of
Agriculture Bob Bergland in which he strengthened a month-old policy
statement declaring that as a general rule the Agriculture Department
would not finance farm research whose major impact would be ''the
replacing of an adequate and willing work force with machines.''
    A federally financed legal aid group, California Rural Legal
Assistance, brought the suit against the university, whose Davis
campus near San Francisco has for many years been regarded as one of
the world's most successful developers of mechanical harvesters.
    Researchers at Davis, for example, have developed a family of huge,
wheeled machines that pick canning tomatoes using a small fraction of
the manpower required when the picking was done by hand. Mechanical
harvesters have also been developed for other crops, and now Davis
researchers are further expanding the technology to include
development of machines to harvest lettuce and wine grapes.
    Among other things, California Rural Legal Assistance charged in its
suit that the university research benefited a relatively few farming
organizations because it tailored its research project to their
needs. It also accused several university regents of conflicts of
interests because they had direct or indirect ties to companies
involved in food production.
    Attorneys for the university have denied the allegations made in the
suit and sought to have it dismissed, contending that the university
had a lawful right to choose what field of research it pursued and
defending its agricultural studies as a valid area of academic
research in seeking to improve the productivity of commercial
agriculture.
    But at last week's hearing, Superior Court Judge Spurgeon Avakian of
Alameda County ruled that the allegations of outside influence on
university research decisions were substantive enough to bring the
case to trial. The trial is not expected to begin until late this
year.
    The debate over whether government money should be used to help
underwrite development of labor-saving agricultural machinery is
occurring against a backdrop of economic change in California
farming. The state leads all others in total output of agricultural
products.
    Under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm
Workers Of America, workers and many of the state's agribusiness
concerns last year won pay increases of more than 40 percent, to $5
an hour for basic unskilled labor, and many are scheduled under union
contracts to receive further increases, to $6 or more this year.
    Many farmers have asserted that, combined with higher costs for
fringe benefits, labor costs have become so high that the California
farmers cannot compete with farmers in other states, Mexico and
Central America. As a result, they say there is a growing economic
incentive to invest in mechanical harvesting devices and to adapt
them to crops that now must be picked by hand.
    Chavez calls the mechanical harvesters ''monsters'' and has been
seeking help from his political supporters to block their further
development.
    Some farmers assert that it is now already a moot point whether
Government funds should be spent to underwrite development of the
machines because private business is moving actively into the market.
    The university is getting $2 million a year in federal funds for
mechanization, an officer of the California Farm Bureau said in an
interview last week. ''When you consider how fast labor is going up,
that's a pittance,'' he said. ''The private sector will just move in
and develop the machines regardless of what the university does; you
can already see that in some crops, like fresh market tomatoes.''
    In a Jan. 31 speech at Reston, Va., Bergland said his department
would not support research ''where careful review and analysis
clearly indicates that the direct and immediate benefits will go to a
relative few and a limited number of locales while neither serving
the national interests nor benefiting the general public.''
    He added, ''We will not put federal money into research where, other
factors being equal or neutral, the major effect of the research will
be the replacing of an adequate and willing work force with
machines.''
    Charles Hess, dean of agriculture and environmental science at the
Davis campus, issued a statement saying that the federal policy
''runs counter to needs for more food in many parts of the world.''
    
ny-0211 1306est
***************