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In the Fields: Skilled hands, trained eyes
BY JOYCE LOBECK, SUN STAFF WRITER
Yuma County's title as the winter capital of fresh vegetable production
rests squarely in the hands of the thousands of workers who toil in the
fields and packing houses to bring the crop from seed to salad bar.
"We as a vegetable industry cannot function without hand labor," said
Mark Ellsworth, president of Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association.
In that role, the workers not only are essential to Yuma's $3 billion
agriculture industry and its ability to feed people around the nation,
they also play a big part in the area's economy.
At the peak of the winter vegetable season, there are an estimated
50,000 workers busy in the fields and packing houses, said Kurt Nolte,
Yuma County Cooperative Extension director.
About 50 percent of them reside in the United States. The other 50
percent live in Mexico and commute across the border each dark, chilly
morning to board buses and head for the fields. The crews are
supplemented by workers brought to the U.S. temporarily through the H2A
program.
Ellsworth stressed that "we as an industry don't employ illegal workers.
We rely on documentation to hire a legal workforce."
That workforce is needed to plant, thin, weed, cultivate and harvest, to
move sprinkler pipe and work in the coolers and salad plants, Nolte
said.
Other workers are harvesting citrus through the winter and in the spring
and fall they pick melons.
"We are constantly developing new technology, but the human eye cannot
be replaced," Ellsworth said.
Furthermore, he said, "it's a misnomer that our field labor falls into
the unskilled category. Nothing could be further from the truth."
It takes a worker's precision and constant judgment from the tractor
driver cultivating a field to thinning crews to workers on salad
production lines to provide the best products - vegetables that will
appeal to consumers who have come to expect the best.
"People ask all the time about the heads left in a field," Ellsworth
said. "Some are defective. They may be undersized or oversized. They may
have an irregular shape or be damaged. The human eye sees that and
leaves it behind. Consumers are very particular. If that odd-shaped head
is next to a perfect one, the shopper picks the perfect one. There lies
the importance of hand labor to us."
And it takes skill to wield a sharp knife all day in a field while
constantly on the move.
For their labors, the workers earn from minimum wage to as much as $13
an hour if they're harvesters working for piece rate.
According to one report, 75 percent of those dollars earned by farm
workers are spent in Yuma County for groceries to feed their families
and shoes for their children. If they live on this side of the border,
they're paying rent or mortgage payments.
The economic impact of the farm workers is illustrated in a story told
by Sonny Rodriguez of the Grower Company, a farm labor contractor.
"When we first had a labor shortage with the immigration crackdown," he
said, "my first call was from the Budweiser supplier."
Nolte and fellow researcher Jorge Fonseca conducted a survey of field
workers two years ago. They found that the average age of a field worker
is between 46 and 54. Many of them have worked in the fields for years
to support their families. The vast majority of them make less than
$10,000 a year, they have few other skills and only an elementary
education. They said the work is hard, the pay low and most of them want
to retire in the near future.
"These people are retiring or leaving the system and there aren't enough
new ones entering the system," Nolte said.
"It's hard work," Rodriguez said. "These people get up early, they wait
two hours to cross the border. They work in the elements outside. It's
not as easy as people think. I haven't had one farm worker tell their
kids they want them to work in the fields. They want them to get an
education and have better lives. When the economy is good, they leave
the fields and go to work in the hotels and restaurants and
construction."
With the economic downturn, he said he's seeing some of them come back
to field work.
"We welcome them with open arms," he said. "We practice the Golden Rule
... treat the workers the way we want to be treated with dignity and
respect. We're nothing without the workers and the growers. We take care
of the growers who give us work and the workers who do the work."
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