{"id":146,"date":"2011-01-17T01:57:27","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T01:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2022-04-17T05:07:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-17T05:07:31","slug":"farmworkers-climbing-the-organic-food-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Farmworkers Climbing the Organic Food Chain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published in Grist<\/a>, January 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

The strawberries, purchased in November, in a rainy parking lot behind a community clinic, feel like they\u2019ve traveled in time from summer to here. Out of season, strawberries usually taste like rainwater. These have a taste that is sharp and unexpected.<\/p>\n

The North Oakland farmers market<\/a> is almost deserted \u2014 it\u2019s a new one, just getting off the ground. The people here selling their wares look soggy and wan and not especially thrilled to be here. Nor does the wet goat that a couple in rainproof anoraks are trying to coax onto a milking platform.<\/p>\n

But Rigoberto Bucio, arms folded, flanked by an army of beets, carrots, chilies, chard, kale, and baskets of the surprisingly sweet strawberries, surveys the scene with equanimity. He\u2019s encountered all kinds of weather working in the fields. At least here he\u2019s standing under a white plastic tent and selling what he grew himself, at Bucio Farm.<\/p>\n

Bucio got into farming out of a certain pragmatism. \u201cIt\u2019s the best thing that I know how to do,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t want to work in a closed space. And I love it when people tell me my produce is very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he looks older, until he cracks one of his shy smiles, he is just 25 years old \u2014 astonishingly young compared to the average age of U.S. farmers, which is 55. He is also in a distinct minority: not only does he farm organically, but only 2.5 percent of all U.S. farm operators are Latino (or Hispanic, as the USDA\u2019s 2007 Census of Agriculture records it [PDF<\/a>]).<\/p>\n

Bucio is one of a growing number of young migrant workers who, thanks in part to changes in the Farm Bill<\/a> that freed up funding to train and otherwise assist beginning farmers, are no longer making pennies per bucket picked but working for themselves, running CSAs, and introducing new blood into American farming.<\/p>\n

Bucio is still getting used to the changes that this occupational switch involves. As a farmworker, he was part of a class of people that is culturally invisible in America \u2014 abstract because to think of it too closely makes people feel uncomfortable. Organic farm work is arguably healthier than conventional farm work, but it\u2019s still work that not many people fantasize about doing<\/a>. Now, he\u2019s something else, the Farmer \u2014 that archetype revered by many Americans. More so than a politician or a lawyer or a plumber or an executive director of marketing, the small-time farmer is America as America would like to see itself.<\/p>\n

Pick your poison<\/strong><\/p>\n

California supplies more than half of the country\u2019s produce, and unlike corn and soy, fruits and vegetables have proved one of the most difficult crops to mechanize<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Salinas Valley produces a lot of cool-season, high-value crops like strawberries, and these attract a largely low-skilled and low-paid labor force. Over a quarter of the population of the surrounding county works in agriculture or processing, but the area itself is a food desert \u2014 food is shipped out as soon as it is picked or processed, and is often too expensive for the people who work farming it. (Look for the next story in the California series, on te food desert in the middle of the Central Valley.)<\/p>\n

\"Rigoberto<\/p>\n

Rigoberto Bucio.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bucio dropped out of middle school in Mexico to come to the States and work in the strawberry fields of California. Americans eat 75 percent more strawberries than they did 20 years ago, but the plant itself has remained stubbornly resistant to attempts to mechanize its production. It wants to be picked by actual people. The closest thing to industrialization the crop has seen is the conveyor-belt system that radiates out from the center of the field to the edge, so that workers don\u2019t have to carry the full flats of berries to the trucks parked nearby.<\/p>\n

As a farmworker, Bucio only worked on organic farms. \u201cBecause I like to eat the strawberries as I harvest them\u201d is what he says, but it\u2019s also well known by farmworkers that the people most at risk from pesticides are not people buying their produce at the supermarket, but the person working in a recently sprayed field.<\/p>\n

In the last 10 years, Bucio has learned a lot about strawberry plants, and almost nothing of English. He hasn\u2019t really needed to \u2014 in California, the language of farming is Spanish. As the number of overall farms in Monterey County, the area around Salinas, has dropped due to consolidation and development, the number of Latino farmers has increased by 70 percent since the late \u201890s, according to the USDA census.<\/p>\n

Bucio would seem like an unlikely candidate for the tangle of regulatory obligation, self-promotion, and epic paperwork<\/a> that is modern organic farming. But he\u2019s ambitious, and he was lucky enough to get help from Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association<\/a> (ALBA), a business incubator that works with people \u2014 mostly Latino, mostly low-income \u2014 to set them up as independent organic farmers. ALBA is funded by the EPA, the USDA, a patchwork of nonprofits and corporations, and through the sale of the produce grown by its members, under the name ALBA Organics. Four out of five students enrolled in ALBA\u2019s free six-month training program make $32,000 or less in yearly income.<\/p>\n

To get into ALBA\u2019s program, Bucio had to fill out a five-page application that asked, in English and Spanish, questions such as \u201cCan you operate a tractor? Can you weld? Can you read and write? What would you plant if you could plant anything?\u201d Classes at ALBA cover not only farming, but how to navigate the business culture around it: How to start up a CSA. How to sell to restaurants. How a certain kind of customer is more likely to buy produce if it\u2019s displayed in little wicker baskets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a whole spectrum of knowledge,\u201d says Gary Peterson, deputy director of ALBA. \u201cThere\u2019s harvest. Post-harvest handling and packing. When should you harvest that bok choy? In the morning? In the afternoon? If you\u2019re packing a box for the wholesale market, what is it supposed to look like? Is it going to make a person at a market take the box, or just reject it outright?\u201d<\/p>\n

During the course, each student has to write a business plan, and present it before a panel of farmers in what Peterson describes as \u201cAmerican Idol<\/em> for small-time farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The land that Bucio farms is part of an 110-acre spread that is shared by about 40 ALBA farmers \u2014 a parcel bought originally from a local judge for a program that was part of Lyndon Johnson\u2019s War on Poverty<\/a>, defunded during the Reagan administration, and ultimately taken over by the organization that became ALBA.<\/p>\n

Seen from the air, the ALBA parcel looks quirky. Surrounded by a plain of flat, monotonous rectangles, the land is a patchwork of more than 50 crops flanked by hedgerows \u2014 a technique that most farmers don\u2019t use anymore, because they take up farming real estate, but which provide habitat for insects that can bo
\nost pollination.<\/p>\n

Managing an area farmed by novices is complex. It\u2019s a tricky business to keep them from accidentally flooding each others\u2019 land and up to date on the paperwork for the 11-plus different regulatory agencies they need to be in compliance with \u2014 including (but not limited to) the water board, the agricultural commissioner, and the California department of food and agriculture.<\/p>\n

Paperwork, it\u2019s emphasized, is critical. Not all of the farmers can read and write, in Spanish or English, but paperwork still needs to get done, even if through an intermediary. Once, a farmer who couldn\u2019t produce the paper trail to prove that his stakes weren\u2019t treated with pesticide had to pull them all up. One of the first homework assignments is to go down to the Monterey County office and register as a farmer.<\/p>\n

\"Maria<\/p>\n

Maria Catalan (right) is one of ALBA\u2019s success stories. She sells at 13 farmers markets.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ground breaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maria Catalan, one of ALBA\u2019s greatest success stories, once started like Bucio, at a few farmers markets. Now Catalan Farms cultivates 14 acres and sells at 13 farmers markets as well as to high-end restaurants in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

A few times, Catalan has been invited to dinner at these restaurants. \u201cIt\u2019s sometimes very luxurious and it\u2019s free, but at one of the restaurants they gave me a small tortilla \u2014 very small. And it had zucchini and it was so small and I thought, \u2018This is zucchini?\u2019 In my house, when I make zucchini, I make a huge pot of them,\u201d she tells me, through a translator. \u201cThe only thing that I like about the restaurants is the wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she crossed the border into the United States 22 years ago, she became a third-generation migrant farmworker \u2014 an occupation that began when her grandparents first crossed the border to pick vegetables in Texas.<\/p>\n

Catalan has the air of toughness you might expect from someone who once worked for as many as 12 different companies in a single year, cultivating broccoli, spinach, parsley, and anything else that needed cultivating.<\/p>\n

\"Maria<\/p>\n

Maria Catalan.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start working as an immigrant, you become a number instead of a person,\u201d she says. It is an exponentially more difficult job for women<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

These days, when someone accidentally calls Catalan a farmworker, she corrects them kindly but firmly. A farmworker, in her opinion, is someone who doesn\u2019t have control over their own life. She wants to make it perfectly clear that she is not that person anymore.<\/p>\n

The people on her farm, she says, work without supervisors. This management style owes something to her years of being supervised, but it also has more than a little to do with the fact that most of her staff is related to her. The attrition rate at ALBA can be high at times \u2014 the training may be free, but farm work doesn\u2019t pay well, and often people who would be taking classes are financially supporting other family members.<\/p>\n

Several people in Catalan\u2019s family, including all of her siblings, wanted to become farmers themselves but dropped out before the six months of classes were finished. Catalan had a boyfriend while she was in the program who was helping her with the bills, though he left in a fit of pique after he realized that the classes were making her less inclined to listen to his farming advice.<\/p>\n

Catalan\u2019s farming style is a mixture of what she learned at ALBA, and her family\u2019s own folklore and hard-won knowledge about how to make plants grow. She grows varieties of corn that are mostly grown in Mexico. But she also grows kale, which she\u2019d never seen before she came to California. She decides when to plant by following the phases of the moon, because that\u2019s the way that her family has always done it, and because, in her opinion, it makes the crops grow better.<\/p>\n

Catalan grows organically because that\u2019s how her grandfather, who once owned a farm in Guerrero, Mexico, grew his peanuts, corn, cotton, beans, chilies, and sesame seeds. Everyone in Mexico did back then.<\/p>\n

\u201cOrganic,\u201d Catalan says, \u201cThat\u2019s our farming. We know how to do that already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loan rangers<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been said that 90 percent of being a farmer is figuring out how to get your crops to the people that eat them without going completely broke. Catalan credits her success to working, relentlessly, to get a spot at the Berkeley farmers market. Bucio believes it\u2019s about working hard, but isn\u2019t sure if he\u2019s going to be a success.<\/p>\n

ALBA\u2019s funding has increased, and beginning and low-income farmers now have access to a few loans and benefits like conservation incentives that were previously only available only to large farmers. Loans, such as they are, exist in very low amounts. In some ways, this is just as well, says Peterson, as micro-loans prevent beginning farmers from getting into more debt than they can handle.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that any of these farmers will ever own their own land. For all of our image of farmers as rugged, property-owning American individualists, over 40 percent of American farmland is rented<\/a> [PDF]. And California has some of the most expensive farmland in the world \u2014 the going rate to rent an acre near where Bucio farms ranges from $1,300 to $2,000 for an acre, for a year. Since this is his first year, Bucio is paying $250 per acre, per year, to ALBA. Each year, that rent will increase slightly.<\/p>\n

Ana and Eleazar Juarez, who graduated from the program seven years ago, are now paying full rent on the land for their farm \u2014 Rio De Parras Organic. They\u2019re counted as one of the program\u2019s successes \u2014 Eleazar now farms full-time and Ana, who worked full-time as the stock-room manager at the Salinas Target while she was taking classes at ALBA, now only works at Target during the winters.<\/p>\n

Seeding the Salinas Valley with small farmers is another one of ALBA\u2019s eventual goals. Most organic farmers don\u2019t look like Bucio and Catalan, and organic food, rightly or wrongly, is seen as unaffordable by agricultural workers in the valley. Would those workers buy more fruits and vegetables if the farmers looked like them? Could those people who farm on the 110 acres make a good living selling to the people in their own community?<\/p>\n

They\u2019d like to. ALBA just carried out a strategic planning process with the farmers that it has been training. Ana Juarez was one of the people at the table. How, ALBA wanted to know, would its success be measured? When you\u2019re training people for one of the hardest, least well-paying gigs in America, what does success look like?<\/p>\n

The answer was this. The farmers got together and decided that they would know they were successful when they had enough to give away \u2014 to the food bank, to the community. Once they\u2019re able to give back to Salinas, they\u2019ll know that they\u2019ve arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published in Grist, January 2011 The strawberries, purchased in November, in a rainy parking lot behind a community clinic, feel like they\u2019ve traveled in time from summer to here. Out of season, strawberries usually taste like rainwater. These have a taste that is sharp and unexpected. The North Oakland farmers market is almost deserted \u2014… Continue reading Farmworkers Climbing the Organic Food Chain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}