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Workers have taken to nocturnal harvesting schedules to avoid soaring daytime temperatures. Experts say more data, and more protections, are necessary.
This story was originally published by Nexus Media News and Civil Eats. In the summer months, Flor Sanchez and the members of her harvest crew rise before
The state’s 800,000 farmworkers are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because they often live, work and carpool in close quarters.
The decision by state and county officials to prioritize Californians 65 and older delayed vaccinations for thousands of farmworkers for several weeks as infections began spreading, prompting growers and doctors to step in to fill the void. When Monterey County finally reached out to say they had a batch of up to 1,500 vaccine doses for farmworkers, Valadez said no thanks. “It’s all good,” Valadez wrote to Elsa Jimenez, Monterey’s director of health, in an emailon March 22. “No need to update any further.” In a follow-up interview, Valadez called the state-provided doses “almost...
CAITLIN ANTONIOS CalMatters In late January, Monterey Countyâs Board of Supervisors sent a letter to state leaders, urging them to prioritize its 64,000 farmworkers in one of the nationâs largest agricultural regions. A month later, Gov. Gavin Newsom visited a mobile vaccine clinic in Fresno, pledging tens of thousands of extra doses for farmworkers. In turn, Chris Valadez, president of a nonprofit organization of growers, was confident he could run a mass vaccine clinic to vaccinate thousands of farmworkers. His group, the Grower-Shipper Association, partnered with Clin...