‘I’m Asking You to Feed Us’: Farmworkers, Growers, and Experts Meet to Address Farmworker Conditions in Santa Barbara County

Farmworkers Ask $26 Minimum Wage, Growers Warn of ‘Unintended Consequences’

Sasha Alvarez, a grad student at UCSB in Chicano Studies, is interning with the United Farmworkers Union. Her student community helped create the banner shared at the meeting. Alvarez expressed: "Farmworkers are more than laborers, they are organic intellectuals, with profound ancestral knowledge...this is extremely skilled labor that machines cannot do." | Credit: Courtesy

Kids ran and played in the boardroom during the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors’ Farmworker Conditions Community Meeting on Tuesday night. Their parents, among the more than 100 farmworkers in attendance, could not afford a babysitter.

The meeting, hosted by a temporary advisory committee chaired by Supervisors Das Williams and Joan Hartmann, painted a picture of the county’s $1.9 billion agricultural industry, focusing on harsh farm-working conditions and how to improve them.

But farmworkers already have a solution in mind: a historic $26 living wage ordinance.

“For the past 16 years, we have been allowed to survive, but never allowed to truly live,” said one teenage son of a farmworker. “We are not objects that are imported from Mexico. We are humans that are worth fighting for,” he continued. “Now, I’m asking you to feed us.”

This 16-year-old child of a farmworker spoke out in support of a $26 minimum wage for his mom, saying that his mom broke her back to feed others children, “Now, its your turn to feed us.” | Credit: Courtesy

Daniel Segura, an organizer with the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), called higher wages the “only solution” to address all farmworkers’ needs. He noted that the average wage for farmworkers in the county is $17.42 an hour, despite it being one of the deadliest jobs in the nation. Last September, two farmworkers died while working in the fields in North County.

The Tuesday meeting was, in part, spurred by the report Harvesting Dignity: The Case for a Living Wage for Farmworkers, published by Alianza Campesina de la Costa Central, a partnership between CAUSE and Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP).

Industry representatives, both farmers and agricultural associations, however, warned that even a $20 minimum wage hike would create a “huge competitive disadvantage for local growers,” and drive them out of business, costing farmworkers their jobs and damaging the local economy to the tune of millions.

Many farmworkers, such as Erasto Zurita, had their public comments translated from Spanish to English while addressing the supervisors. He said he does not have enough money to pay for his children’s clothes, or their backpacks when they go back to school. | Credit: Courtesy

And the growers who do survive would increasingly turn to mechanized operations, warned Claire Wineman, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties.

But Segura argued that a living wage is feasible. When the state recently enacted a $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers, it had a minimal impact on the economy. Consumers would only pay $25 more per household to support a $26 wage for farmworkers, Segura said, which could be implemented gradually to allow smaller growers more time to adjust.

Arcenio Lopez, the executive director of MICOP, highlighted the “stubbornly low” wages, forcing farmworkers to live with up to 20 people under one roof. When he started as a berry picker in 2003, he made $1.40 per flat; today, farmworkers earn just $2.20 per flat — barely 7 percent of the total profit.

However, according to Mark Martinez of the California Strawberry Commission, production costs due to “regulations, legislation, and inflation,” are already at an all-time high, costing up to $100,000 an acre to farm strawberries, the county’s most lucrative crop.

Russell Jody, who grows lemons and avocados in South County, said that a $26 minimum wage would put his ranch in jeopardy, saying they were in the red last year, while already paying bonuses and benefits to workers. | Credit: Courtesy

And, Martinez pointed out, the last two years of flooding and difficult weather conditions have only made matters worse, with farmers struggling to recover losses and pay back loans, even now in more favorable conditions.

But Supervisor Williams and CAUSE’s Segura both asked: how long can growers realistically expect to keep wages so low, when fast-food businesses offer better pay, but are still short on workers? “If we don’t have a workforce, we don’t even have a discussion,” Segura said.

The meeting also explored other solutions to improve farmworkers’ lives, such as free mobile healthcare units, funded in part by growers and affordable housing on and near agricultural fields. But these solutions face many barriers, especially regarding housing, due to regulations and funding.

The committee will now report back to the Board of Supervisors.