he and four friends each had an acre and a half. He’s the last farmer standing, and has seen his operation swell to 155 acres, in total, and then shrink down to its current 55. Sustainable farming is his calling—he says he can’t imagine doing anything else. But it’s becoming harder every year. “It used to be that one out of every five or six years would be a bad year, depending on supply and demand, but now it seems like every other year is a battle just to break even,” he says. A labor deficiency is the main culprit: “Over the last five years, it’s been an increasingly difficult job to find enough farmworkers to do what needs to get done—what I mean by that is capable, professional farmworkers.” California farms have been struggling with an increasingly dire worker shortage for several years. At the root is the lack of comprehensive immigration reform that would allow capable workers to come to the United States to work in the ag industry. There’s the H-2A guest worker visa program, which has echoes of the beleaguered Bracero Program of yesteryear and is largely opposed by farmworker advocates and often spurned as too expensive and problematic by farmers. But an increase in border security, slowing of immigration from Mexico and spiking prices for border crossing—plus this area’s high cost of living and lack of affordable housing—have led to a drought of workers. “We’re not getting an influx of new labor,” says Keegan. “People are really discouraged and prevented from entering.” A February piece about the California shortage in The New York Times reported that “the once-steady stream of people coming from rural towns in southern Mexico has nearly stopped entirely.” Additionally, the fieldworkers who are here are aging, and it seems many of their children are not taking jobs in the fields. “I think most farmers will say in private, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a problem here,’” Larkey says. “But they aren’t necessarily willing to say it in public. They’re unwilling to speak out for fear of becoming a target or losing part of their workforce.” Immigration issues may threaten larger farms and those with unauthorized workers most, but this puts a squeeze on the already shrinking workforce—meaning farms must compete for fewer workers, and often come up short. The result includes unharvested fields, financial losses and shrinking production. Last year, when it came time for Route 1 Farms to augment its year-round workforce with seasonal help, the labor was nonexistent. The farm wound up losing money. “There were all these crops that just got swallowed up by the weeds,” Larkey says. “We couldn’t take care of and harvest them.” This year, to cope with the new labor landscape, Larkey planned to cut back on production, concentrating on crops that he knows he’ll be able to handle. “Our farm is in jeopardy because of it, no doubt,” he says.
Denver,Colorado J U LY 14 -16 , 2 017 TASTE MARKETPLACE WORKSHOPS • TOURS • TALKS GARDEN EDUCATION • MEETUPS PARTIES • COLLABORATIONS SLOW FOOD NATIONS is a festival to taste and explore a world of good, clean and fair food for all. slowfoodnations.org
LEARNING TO ADAPT
To gauge the need for farmworkers in California, one needs only to look to the number of guestworker visas being requested
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