During Steinbeck’s childhood, an agricultural shift was taking place in California. In the 1800s, large ranches and grain farms dominated the state’s economy. More specialty farms later developed that cultivated fruit crops such as oranges and grapes. This shift was enabled by the increased use of irrigation, which transformed many desert areas into productive cropland. By 1929 irrigated land made up about 16 percent of the farmland in California. Irrigation provided the water fruit farms requir
