In California’s ‘salad bowl,’ farmworkers crowd into homes, spreading the coronavirus [Los Angeles Times]
… Social distancing is challenging, if not impossible, in homes like Leon’s and for many other farmworkers in Salinas. … Officials in the Salinas Valley, known as the “salad bowl of the world,” and leaders in the agriculture industry are acutely aware of just how quickly the virus can spread among farmworkers, both at home and at job sites. In Monterey County, agriculture workers make up more than a third of confirmed COVID-19 cases, and Latinos make up nearly 80% of them.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-09/salinas-covoronavirus-monterey-county
Santa Maria farmworkers to deliver petition to employer asking for higher pay, safer conditions [KEYT TV, Santa Barbara]
Santa Maria farmworkers plan to submit a petition with over 57,000 signatures to Driscoll’s, the world’s largest berry distributor, asking that the company pressure its local supplier, Rancho Laguna Farms, to respond to worker demands. … Their stated goal was to get a raise based on the added dangers of their job during the COVID-19 pandemic and an overall increase in the cost of living. … Rancho Laguna Farms owner Larry Ferini says the farm is following all COVID-19 prevention protocols.
Opinion: The future of our food supply relies on immigrant farm workers [The Hill]
… Even before COVID-19, the agricultural sector was already experiencing extreme labor scarcity. But the pandemic has certainly raised the stakes. … The key to addressing our current labor shortages lies not only in maintaining a robust guest worker program, but also in repairing our broken immigration system so as to protect our existing farm workers and farms. … The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which passed the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support last fall, provides a pathway to legal status for the undocumented workers who are the backbone of our food supply chain and makes much-needed improvements to the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program.
CDFA says Colusa County’s planned in-person livestock auction will not be allowed [Marysville Appeal-Democrat]
The Board of Directors of the 44th District Agricultural Association (Colusa County) was notified by the California Department of Food and Agriculture that they will not be allowed to move forward with an in-person livestock auction as previously planned. … The board voted May 19 to move forward with the 2020 Junior Livestock Auction scheduled for June 13, weeks after the decision was made to downsize the annual fair due to COVID-19 concerns. “Based upon further review and evaluation in alignment with the State Health Officer’s public health order, the state cannot permit this event to take place because it is a mass gathering in violation of the stay-at-home order,” read a statement by Arturo Barajas, deputy secretary for the CDFA.
Fastest-rising food prices in decades drive consumers to hunt for value [Wall Street Journal]
Food makers are designing value packs, and supermarkets are restoring promotions, aiming to offset disruptions wrought by the coronavirus pandemic that have led to the fastest rise in food prices in more than four decades. While food companies and supermarkets say they have reopened plants and resolved supply constraints that contributed to higher prices, they also expect prices to remain elevated because of increased costs for labor and transportation. Companies are buying equipment and reconfiguring factories and stores to keep people safe from the new coronavirus. Some of those changes are adding costs that are trickling down to shoppers.
Opinion: Instead of tinkering with AB5, just repeal it [Riverside Press Enterprise]
… Even before the COVID-19 pandemic threw unprecedented millions of workers onto unemployment and wrecked myriad businesses, the measure known as Assembly Bill 5 was destroying careers willy-nilly. It’s become extremely obvious just how amateur and clumsy an effort this bill was from the moment of its conception. … This was a bad law when it passed. Now the coronavirus lockdown has exposed it as even worse than it first seemed. That means lawmakers should scrap the entire amateurish mistake, not merely tinker with it.
https://www.pe.com/2020/06/09/instead-of-tinkering-with-ab5-just-repeal-it/
