Storm flooding compounds misery for California farms and workers
The sun was shining again recently when Fidencio Velasquez visited what used to be 90 acres of prime Ventura County strawberry fields.
He pointed to a 40-foot storage container that Santa Clara River floodwaters had swept off a neighboring farm and deposited before him. Overturned tractors and fertilizer bins were strewn about like toys, while the deep channels between crop rows were filled with mud. A harvesting machine was damaged beyond repair. Metal pipes, hoses and trash littered the farm’s outskirts.
“It’s a total loss,” he said.
Velasquez, a supervisor at Santa Clara Farms in Ventura, estimates that the expense of cleaning up and replacing damaged crops, machinery and equipment could run upwardof $900,000. In the meantime, 150 of his employees would be out of work for weeks. Throughout California, farms that have struggled to cope with years of severe drought have now been dealt additional misery by a series of deadly atmospheric rivers that have devastated operations, even while helping to fill dwindling reservoirs. In many cases, the losses are being felt most sharply by the thousands of farmworkers who have suddenly found themselves unemployed or working fewer hours in dangerous conditions while also dealing with damage to their own homes and vehicles.
The flooding is just the latest in a continuing series of environmental crises that have affected farmworkers in recent years, including laboring in extreme heat, inhaling harmful wildfire smoke or losing work due to drought.
Last year, approximately 12,000 agricultural jobs were lost when California’s irrigated farmland shrank by 752,000 acres, or nearly 10%.
“We have compounding and cascading disasters from extreme storms, flooding, wildfires, heat waves and drought that are all impacting farmworkers,” said Michael Méndez, assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at UC Irvine. “This is just a part of the larger history of disproportionate impacts that this population is experiencing.”
Méndez said farmworkers are especially vulnerable to extreme climate events because they are low-income; most are immigrants without legal status, which makes them ineligible for unemployment benefits and health insurance; and because state and local governments weren’t doing enough to protect a vital workforce.
They “have not provided enough resources, disaster planning, preparedness, translation services for these communities before a disaster happens,” he said. So when disasters do strike, “the experiences are amplified because resources are often not targeted, or they’re withheld from these communities.”
For Ventura farmworkers like Octavio Diaz, January is traditionally a time of year when work on strawberry fields begins to pick up. That is not the case this year
“It was raining almost every day and you couldn’t work, so we lost hours,” said the 37-yearold. “And there aren’t many places where we can work right now — most of the strawberries were ruined.”
Since December, Diaz and his wife have lost about $3,000 in income from reduced work. Rather than the usual five-day, 35-hour workweeks picking fruit, they’re lucky if they even get one.
Their monthly trips to food distributions have increased from once or twice to four or five, he said. When they do get called to work, fields can be hazardous. Diaz injured his right leg about a month ago trying to pull it out from deep, sticky mud. It still hurts, he said, but he takes what little work is available.
“I kept working after I hurt my leg because we sustain ourselves by working in the farms,” said Diaz, who has six children. “We don’t have other sources of income. You have to work to be able to support your family.”
In Ventura and across California, farmworkers have been contending with flooded homes, damaged cars and reduced or lost work hours since a series of atmospheric river storms pummeled the state. Many have been relying more on food giveaways to offset financial losses, and those who are working are sometimes doing so in flooded or muddy fields.
“Many of the farmworkers are in a Catch22,” said Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for the United Farm Workers union. “You either work in unsafe conditions or you’re losing work.”
In recent weeks, UFW has tweeted videos showing the effects of winter storms across the state. In Madera County, almond orchards were saturated with rain that made them impassable for farmworkers and tractors.
In Monterey County, flooded vegetable fields prevented a worker from using a tractor.