farmworkers

Eleazar Sosa, a vineyard manager in Greenfield, oversees a crew of about 20 who monitor the vines for disease, control irrigation and harvest the wine grapes in late summer. This year, he and his coworkers are also confronting a new challenge: the growing threat of coronavirus.

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Over the next three months, tens of thousands of migrant farmworkers will converge on the Central Coast to do something deemed essential in the time of COVID-19, harvest our food. The speciality crops farmed locally, like strawberries and leafy greens, require a lot of hand labor. But the dramatic increase in population could trigger a surge in COVID-19 cases.

Over one hundred thousand people are now evacuated from the Thomas Fire, burning in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. But workers in the area’s agricultural fields stayed on the job, breathing in smoke and ash as they pick strawberry and celery crops.

A hotly contested law to phase in new overtime pay for farmworkers got lots of buzz when Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law earlier this year. That "phase in" won't begin until 2019 but one provision goes into effect on Sunday.  

California’s Central Coast is suffering from an ongoing farm worker shortage.

An effort to help ease a shortage of farm workers on the Central Coast is underway in Santa Barbara County, as plans for a large housing project for temporary field workers are in the final stages. 

  An ongoing push for improved working conditions in berry fields along the West Coast is set for ramp-up in the coming weeks.