This article focuses on perceptions and memories of the “Groundnut Scheme”, an enacted peanut monoculture in East Africa and one of the largest colonial agricultural development initiatives in history, trying in particular to trace the different functions that were assigned to the social and ecological landscape of Tanganyika.

Using the Central Coast of California as a case study, this article argues that a nexus of ambitious growers and a growing state agricultural bureaucracy worked to create a “brand name” and teach cultivation approaches with increased production and expanded markets. But these same actors also made efforts to keep the long-term health of the industry and the community in mind.