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Workers, growers share view of farm labor's plight

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/stable_farm_labor.html
Experts, growers and data show that most farmworkers in the United States are foreign-born Latinos. White, non-Hispanic, U.S.-born farmworkers are "not a dying breed, it's a dead breed," says William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. An Oregon grower and two workers talk about why that's the case:

Dick Joyce, owner, Sherwood-based Joyce Farms

Dick Joyce's father started the family farm in 1910 and over the years sold everything from grain to dairy products, cattle and hazelnuts. During harvest, Joyce says, neighboring farmers would go from farm to farm with a community threshing machine to cut the grain.

When the Joyce farm grew to include cherry orchards, during harvest time the family bused in pickers from Portland's West Burnside Street, Joyce says. Most were "Anglos," he says, and a few were black.

"Some people termed them as 'winos,' others as 'fruit tramps,'" Joyce says. "These guys would travel and follow the crops."

At other orchard, nursery and berry operations, women and children worked during summers to pick crops, Joyce says. When laws restricted children's work in agriculture, "the children didn't get training, they didn't get the incentive to work," he says.

And more Oregonians left the rural areas for city life, Joyce says. "Over time, as their economic situation improved, people were not interested in farmwork."

In the 1980s, the state saw a rapid influx of Mexicans, who filled the hole in the labor market, Joyce says. "Nobody was displaced as a result of their coming."

Joyce, who has sold most of his land, now runs a 40-acre fruit tree nursery and a maintenance business. He employs about 20 permanent workers -- all Latinos. Many have worked for him for more than two decades, he says, and he now employs their children.

"Culturally, white Americans have moved away from agriculture, and it isn't a matter of money at all," Joyce says. "There's no amount of money that you can lay on the table to make them work."

Joyce hopes to see a change in immigration law that would tighten borders and allow farmworkers to gain legal status.

Monty Smith, former farmworker, Scio

Monty Smith has been doing farmwork since he was 12. He has worked on horse ranches, dairy farms, berry farms, plus cattle, sheep and goat farms. His family, originally from Oklahoma, followed crops from state to state.

"I love farming; sometimes it's very rewarding," he says, "though it could be a real pain."

Smith, 38, says most of his family and neighbors have dropped out of agriculture. He lives in rural Linn County south of Salem, but none of his friends do farmwork.

"Farming is just something the American people don't do anymore," he says.

Most of the time, Smith has worked with Latinos and was "the only white guy working." White, non-Hispanic Americans shy away from agriculture, he says, because of low pay.

"It seems to me like a lot of Oregon workers are looking for higher-pay jobs -- $11 to $12 an hour -- not minimum wage," Smith says. "It takes a lot for a person to raise their family, and farms don't pay that."

Farmwork can mean eight- to 18-hour days, toiling in the scorching sun or cold rain, relocating and having little family time. And many farmers don't pay overtime.

Smith was a farmworker, he says, because he didn't have family obligations (he separated from his wife eight years ago, and his two children live in Missouri). But this spring, he got a job as a heavy equipment operator with Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, patching potholes and fixing water pipes. He doesn't plan to return to farmwork.

Anne Trujillo, farmworker, Carlton

Anne Trujillo, 45, entered farmwork last year because she was unemployed and many companies in Carlton, southwest of Portland, had shut down. Neither her parents nor her grandparents worked in the fields.

"It's nothing I ever thought I would do," she says. "If the economy wasn't this way, I would never do this kind of work. It's the hardest work I've ever done in my life."

Trujillo left Carlton and ended up packaging lettuce in Yuma, Ariz. Most of her friends were surprised she worked on a farm. None of them had ever worked in agriculture.

"They're in their comfort and don't want to leave home," she says.

Trujillo is used to life on the road. She was in the military and has held jobs in manufacturing and as a corrections officer. "It has never bothered me to move to new places," she says. "I'm pretty lucky, I have no kids or husband, so I'm able to pick up and go."

Work in the lettuce fields would start before sunrise and continue into the night, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, she says.

Trujillo says she was the only white, English-speaking farmworker. She was told no other white Americans had applied. All the other workers were Latino immigrants and spoke only Spanish, she says.

Trujillo is partly Latina -- her great-grandparents on her father's side came to the United States from Mexico -- but she doesn't speak the language or know the culture.

It took her awhile to learn how to do the job, she says. "I was nowhere near the speed of some of these women."

The company she worked for bought two apartment complexes to house employees, "outfitted with brand-new sheets and mattresses, fridges stuffed with food," she says.

The experience persuaded her to continue with farmwork. In April, Trujillo took a job in a California planting, staking and picking tomatoes. But she quit after two weeks, she says, because "I just couldn't keep up with the fast pace of the Latino men."

Now she's back in Carlton, looking for a job -- any job -- including in agriculture. "You have to do what you have to do."

--Gosia Wozniacka