Industrialised cotton production: from California to Australia's Namoi Valley

The industrialisation of agriculture was one of the most important agricultural developments of the twentieth century. The existing political economy literature has indicated the complexity of the process of agricultural industrialisation. Yet, the significant variation between different agricultural commodity systems suggests there is still much to be learned about how such diverse agricultural commodity systems have been affected by the process of industrialisation. This thesis utilises the case study of cotton production, one of the most highly industrialised agricultural commodity systems, to investigate the process of agricultural industrialisation more deeply. Specifically, this thesis explores the development of industrialised cotton production in California during the first half of the twentieth century and how, during the 1960s, that form of cotton production was introduced to the Namoi Valley in north-western New South Wales by a small group of Californian migrants.