Adam Romero wins 2017 Vernon Carstensen Award

IAS faculty member Adam Romero has won the 2017 Vernon Carstensen Award for best article in Agricultural History, the journal of record in the field. Romero's article, “‘From Oil Well to Farm’: Industrial Waste, Shell Oil, and the Petrochemical Turn (1927-1947),” explores the emergence of petroagriculture in California in the interwar period. It tells the story of how two industrial waste products of California’s petroleum industry became industrial agriculture’s chemical salvation, providing both the soil disinfection power and the soil nutrition that made the massive yield increases following World War II possible. Romero provides new insights into both the role of industrial waste in the industrialization of agriculture and the role of industrial agriculture as an environmental sink for industrial waste.

Congratulations Adam!