The New Zealand pipfruit industry has changed dramatically over the past fifteen years due to major industry restructuring and deregulation, and also due to the adoption of more environmentally sustainable growing strategies. This thesis traces the socio-political context of pesticide use in the pipfruit industry over the past ten years (couched within a hundred year trajectory), through a content and discourse analysis of appropriate print and electronic material. The content analysis addresses the ways in which pesticide use has been framed in New Zealand's fruit journal entitled The Orchardist, and tracks its promotion of the ENZA Integrated Fruit Production program that was introduced to New Zealand pipfruit growers during the summer of 1997/98. The Foucauldian discourse analysis explores how print media reflects and produces knowledge, and how such knowledge causes transformation within the pipfruit industry. Identified in the print media are several central ideologies and themes that frequently serve as conceptual frameworks for interpreting issues that arise in the pipfruit industry, the most prominent of which, is risk. Therefore, risk is the key discourse explored in this thesis. The combined content and discourse analysis signal ways in which power operates through discourse to influence ideologies, world-making and modes of production.