Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Amadeo established relationships with farmers up and down the state, mailing cold-call letters. He encouraged Lorenzo to make small loans to the farmers they worked with and to use the company’s knowledge of the urban market to nudge them toward profitable planting decisions. The more Scatena and company behaved like investors, the more they turned truck farmers into specialized suppliers, which allowed them to scale up their plots.