(melancholy music) (worker speaking Spanish) - So she's saying the new overtime rule has prevented them from working more hours, since no grower really wants to pay overtime whenever they can.

We suspect they'll only be able to do it in certain situations, but she said the checks, the take-home pay has been pretty much been the same, because every time there's been an increase in minimum wage, there's been a reduction in hours.

And she's saying, "Our paycheck has basically been stagnant the past four or five years, but our costs have gone up so much over those past four or five years."

She's saying, "$600, what we used to make five years ago, it was nowhere near the same $600 we make now.

And the cost associated with food, gas, childcare, none of those have gone down or stayed the same.

They've all gone the other way."

(Almarosa speaking Spanish) - I think that the number-one thing that differentiates the California Farmworker Foundation from other farmworker organizations in the state or at a national level is that we truly believe in hearing from farmworkers themselves and us giving them the tools on how we can better their lives.

But it all comes down to listening.

And everything that we do is data-oriented.

We collect data for everything to know exactly what the farmworker needs are, but then how can we help that farmworker by giving them the tools so that they can better their quality of life based on the needs that we see on a day-to-day basis.

Last year alone, we served over 330,000 farmworkers in the state of California.

- [Announcer] Production funding for "American Grown: My Job Depends on Ag" provided by James G Parker Insurance Associates, insuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By Gar Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts, more yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt Professional Agriculture, proudly discovering, manufacturing, and supplying the ag inputs that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By unWired Broadband, today's Internet for rural Central California, keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, proudly serving the Central Valley since 1979.

By Pickett Solar, helping farmers and ranchers save money by becoming energy-independent.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M&A and financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning & Repair, family-owned for over 50 years, proudly featuring Coleman products, dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.

(soft music) (driver speaking Spanish) (worker speaking Spanish) (driver speaking Spanish) (worker speaking Spanish) (driver speaking Spanish) (worker speaking Spanish) (driver speaking Spanish) (worker speaking Spanish) (driver speaking Spanish) - I am born and raised in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico.

I just have like five years living here like full-time in the United States.

I used to to be like in and out the first three years, was working on ag, just doing grape harvest.

But I study over there in Mexico, the university.

As soon as I finished the university over there, I study international business.

I came here to the United States, and I start working as a field worker just checking toilets, checking the water jugs if there is ice on it, cones, checking if there is no like garbage or things like that.

Now I'm the director of AG Force.

We are a Fresno-based farm labor contractor.

We're providing labor services for table grapes, citrus, pistachio, and almonds.

That's my position.

I'm in charge of the whole team.

Since I start working in ag, I was trying, I try to dignify the farmworker role.

Every single time, I have a chance, I tell them to be proud about what they are doing because that's crucial for nation's economy.

(suspenseful music) - I am Ahmed Mike Alamari and I'm the president of Pacific Farm Management here at Madera, California.

So I'm from Yemen.

My family's from Yemen.

My dad migrated here in the '70s.

He worked in the fields alongside his, alongside my uncle, his brother.

And then they lived in the Bay Area for a little bit, owned some convenience stores, and then came here to the valley, and we own a local supermarket here in town.

I worked there as a kid.

That's where I picked up the language, and that's how I kind of got into the industry, basically was out of the store, dealing with the farmworkers that would come there.

We're one of the larger FLCs in the state.

We have about 2,000 employees that we keep on pretty much year-round or pretty close to that number.

We are approaching about $100 million in revenue now.

So we are one of the larger companies, employers here in the county and in the valley.

We work with small growers, large growers, medium-sized growers, institutional investors, insurance companies, kind of anyone that does any type of farming here in the valley.

We service clients as far south as Arizona into the desert, Bakersfield.

And then we go as far north as Yuba City.

And then we're also licensed in Oregon as well.

- [Interviewer] One of the things I always hear from doing this show from folks is that farmworkers are slave labor that the farmer treats like crap and takes advantage of them.

True or not true?

- No, that's the probably the biggest misconception that I believe anyone ag can tell you or any farmworker will tell you.

The conditions out here have dramatically changed over the past 25 years, I would say, especially in the past 10 years, that change has been probably greater than what it was the prior 15 years.

I mean, workers out here, you know, there's, the farmer here has confidence in the employees are gonna do a good job.

There's not even a supervisor on site, just a crew leader from our end.

And, you know, they're working at their own pace.

They're, you know, completing their job in a good amount of time.

And the grower's happy with the cost that it's coming out to.

They have their bathrooms, they have their shade facilities.

They take all their rest breaks, they take their meal breaks.

They come in at seven o'clock in the morning, they leave 3:30 in the afternoon.

So even their hours is, you know, their scheduling is, you know, pretty standardized now.

So a farm labor contractor, what we do is we provide the employees to the farmer.

So you can imagine like this farmer specifically, he only grows almonds and raisin grapes.

He only needs labor for two small windows throughout the year, during harvest, which is in August into September, and then right now, whenever we're pruning and tying the vines on the trees.

So he only needs about 20 laborers per season for those two periods throughout the year.

It's very difficult for him to go find 20 employees that'll only come to his farm for those two small seasons and leave.

You know, to recruit that many employees for a such a small time is very difficult for him.

So we're the liaison that coordinates with the employees, and then we move them from farm to farm.

As soon as they're done here, they're going to the pistachios or they're going to the almonds.

And we'll try to keep the employees as busy as long as possible throughout the year.

So we have a stable workforce.

And that's what's really made us strong is we've been able to work with growers, different types of growers, from stone fruit growers to citrus growers to raisin grapes to almonds, pistachios, irrigation companies, packing houses, kind of to keep our same labor force working most of the year.

- [Interviewer] How long have you been, did you I immigrate here or were you born here?

(Ahmed speaking Spanish) (worker speaking Spanish) - [Ahmed] Oh, she's born here.

(worker speaking Spanish) Yeah, so she said that, you know, she works, you know, gets off work, goes home, takes care of the kids, takes care of the house.

You know, rest on the weekends, come back to work, and, you know, so day in, day out.

- [Interviewer] What's your personal feeling and the feeling maybe of your coworkers that you can share about the change to the 40-hour work week by the state of California?

(worker speaking Spanish) - Yeah, she said, yeah, we got Saturdays off.

We don't work as much hours during the week.

Yeah, we got a dollar or more an hour, but everything else just went up way more extravagant than what our wages went up by.

(worker speaking Spanish) She made a very good point that I like.

She says, "When they made this law, they thought farmworkers were gonna be the beneficiaries.

They ended up being the victims of it."

So that's a very, very strong point she made.

And I agree with her 100%.

(chuckles) - Well, the farmworkers are the lifeblood of the entire agricultural industry.

I mean, there wouldn't be food on the shelves of grocery stores or food in the pantries of people all across the United States if it wasn't for farmworkers.

My name is Michael Thurlow.

I work for Mountain View Fruit Sales.

We're a grower, packer, shipper of stone fruit and citrus.

And I grew up in the family business.

So people asked, "When did you start working at Mountain View Fruits Sales?"

I said, "Probably since birth."

I would say since birth.

Not only are farmworkers in California feeding California and most of the United States, but also internationally, a lot of our allies, a lot of countries who can't produce their own food, like Singapore, like Taiwan, like Hong Kong.

All these countries, they're dependent on imports from their allies, which is the United States.

The California Farmworker Foundation is more than a foundation to me.

It's a community.

It's a team.

It is a foundation, it's a nonprofit, it's so many things.

But really it's a support group for farmworkers, people that we need to be taking care of.

How we got involved with CFF, Hernan gave a presentation to the California Fresh Fruit Association, more or less describing what the Farmworker Foundation was about and what they're hoping to accomplish in the long term.

And all of the growers and packers and shippers were blown away.

And so, we met with him.

He drove all the way from Bakersfield, which was about an hour, hour and a half away.

And that's when there was no local representatives or ambassadors in the area yet.

And we still supported the Farmworker Foundation when they were in the Delano, Bakersfield area.

'Cause we believe in their goal and we trusted that they had the right team to achieve their goals.

And they proved that during the pandemic, and they proved that in so many of the other ways they've helped farmworkers all up and down California now as they've grown, I don't know how many thousands of members now.

You needed to keep check, because every single time you check, it's a thousand more members.

- My name's Hernan Hernandez.

I am a a product of Delano, California.

I grew up in a small town of 3,000 individuals called Richgrove, California, about seven miles east of Delano.

Grew up to farm-working parents.

I, myself, was a farmworker.

Started working in the field at the age of nine, and I was your typical Central Valley story, in which all of our siblings were working the fields in the evenings, in the summers, in the winters, you name it, we did it all.

But the fields really taught us to value education.

It taught us a hard work ethic, and it really taught us to be proud of where we came from and what our parents did on a day-to-day basis.

So I went to Bakersfield College and then transferred over to Cal State University, Bakersfield, where I got my bachelor's and master's.

Upon graduation, I got my dream job, which was to become a campaign manager in Salinas.

I had been heavily involved in local political races, and I was really passionate about changing policy through politics.

After I finished my assignment, I decided that I wanted to come back to the Central Valley.

I thought about my family, I thought about my friends, and I thought about the people that I worked with for so many years, and I wanted to make sure that I came back with a purpose, and not only to give back to them, but also to help impact their life.

I started working with the public health department.

And then upon working with the public health department, I received the opportunity to go start the Central Valley Farmworker Foundation.

Back then, it was a startup.

We only had three staff.

The Central Valley Farmworker Foundation turned into the California Farmworker Foundation.

And today, we are a nonprofit organization that has operations in Santa Maria, in Coachella, and throughout the Central Valley with over 30 staff on board.

I think that the number-one thing that differentiates the California Farmworker Foundation from other farmworker organizations in the state or at a national level, is that we truly believe in hearing from farmworkers themselves, and us giving them the tools on how we can better their lives.

But it all comes down to listening.

And everything that we do is data-oriented.

We collect data for everything to know exactly what the farmworker needs are, but then how can we help that farmworker by giving them the tools so that they can better their quality of life based on the needs that we see on a day-to-day basis.

(Almarosa speaking Spanish) (device chimes) (device chimes) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) (Almarosa speaking Spanish) - [Interviewer] Why is it that people from the city don't come out, you know, typically non-Hispanics?

Why aren't there white people out here doing farm work?

It's one of those things like back in the old days, - Yeah.

- everybody did farm work.

- Yeah.

- [Interviewer] And now you just see it as mostly - Hispanics.

- Hispanics.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, my father, we're from Yemen, you know, there was a lot of Yemen immigrants working in the fields back in the '50s, '60s, especially in Delano, there's very few now.

Now we have the Hispanics, and the majority of the farmworkers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and some from Central and South America.

They're the ones willing to do the work.

I mean, they're very, very hard workers.

They love the work as well too.

I think that's another misconception is these guys really love their jobs as well.

They like working outdoors.

They're with their friends.

They're alongside their friends in the row, or, you know, in the field.

So I mean, for them, this is, you know, they're socializing out here as well and getting the job done at the same time too.

So it's not like they're bunkered down in an office, you know, not talking to anybody.

Usually, they're with a friend.

Sometimes it's the husband and the wife working.

So, and, you know, sometimes it's the father and his children, nephews, and whatever the case, as long as they're over the age of 18.

- [Interviewer] There's a great deal of respect by you and our growers in this valley for the farmworker, isn't there?

- Yeah, no, that's very true.

I mean, the workers are always gonna be needed, whether, even though there's more machinery coming into play and more machines doing mechanized work, you know, number one, there's still gonna be a need for this type of work with farm laborers on a mass scale.

And then number two, you need someone to obviously operate those machines and those, to do that labor as well.

I mean, we've seen a huge uptick in the demand for almond harvest drivers and pistachio harvest drivers than ever before.

And every year, there's more ground coming in, and there's a need for more and more skilled labor for those positions.

They're a little bit higher paid, you know, usually three bucks above minimum wage.

They do get to work some overtime, but it's just for a small window.

And oftentimes, it's the same employees that'll work out on the crew during different seasons of the year that go work in those highly skilled positions for that short period of time.

- The future for the United States is we have to have a conversation on where we want our food grown.

Do we want to grow into the same standards of California or do we want to grow it in third world countries that have a completely different form of working conditions, of environmental protections?

You name it.

That's a discussion that we're gonna have to have.

And we really think that legislation and policy is needed in order to protect the lives of the farmworkers that live and reside in these communities.

Because if we don't protect them now, we've seen mass migrations, we've seen the despo.

We're probably gonna see something similar in the next five to 10 years in areas that are completely getting decimated by the international trade.

So I do think that this is a population that society needs to place more value in, that we need to recognize more for their efforts.

Because without farmworkers, if they were to stop one day, if they were to just say like, "We're not gonna work," it'll cause complete chaos in this country.

But imagine what would happen if all of a sudden the nation faced a food shortage, the chaos that would encompass in this country.

I mean, oil, we could work around it, right?

Water, it's also a need, a necessity.

But food and water go hand in hand.

And if we lose both of them, then it'll encompass complete chaos in this country.

- [Announcer] Production funding for "American Grown: My Job Depends on Ag" provided by James G Parker Insurance Associates, insuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By Gar Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts, more yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt Professional Agriculture, proudly discovering manufacturing and supplying the ag inputs that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By unWired Broadband, today's Internet for rural Central California, keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, proudly serving the Central Valley since 1979.

By Pickett Solar, helping farmers and ranchers save money by becoming energy-independent.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M&A and financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning & Repair, family-owned for over 50 years, proudly featuring Coleman products, dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.