FARM LABOR

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Local Vegetable Farms Work to Find Reliable Employees in a Post-Covid Era

The start of the Covid-19 pandemic was a reality check for our globalized food system. In most cities the food is shipped in only as fast as it moves out supermarket doors. But when the lockdown orders came, a shudder ran through the food system. Despite businesses all along the food supply chain quickly being designated as “essential,” that shudder was enough to throw a wrench in the gears. Before shelves could be restocked, they were empty. Before the new shipment could come in, retail coolers—and whole warehouses—were empty. The disruptions of Covid-19 have been the best argument in my lifetime for a localized food system; one of the excellent reasons to support local food is its relative reliability in the midst of crisis. If we want local farms to survive future disruptions, we need to continue supporting them as they work to take care of their employees. To keep that support, it’s important that we understand the pressures local farms face. As our farm—Circadian Organics—has grown, we’ve learned that one of the difficulties in developing a sustainable vegetable business is finding employees. Dr. Alexia Kulwiec, Director of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers, put the problem facing local producers into stark contrast: “When you’re talking about local vegetable farms—more specifically organic farms—their big issue is a difficulty in finding and keeping qualified labor…as opposed to when I study farm labor issues on more industrialized farms, where the working conditions are really more the problem.”

Growing Our Farm, Building Our Team

Our first few years of farming were spent reinvesting nearly everything back into the dream of farming full-time, while relying on off-farm jobs for our income. Still, even with off-farm jobs we were providing almost all the labor ourselves. But as we look to expand our CSA and serve even more of our community, we are wrestling with the same question that much of our food system has struggled with over the past two years: how do we find reliable and experienced labor, and pay a competitive wage, while remaining affordable in a crowded market? Last year, we recognized we were outgrowing our ability to do most of the labor ourselves, so we contracted for our first full-time seasonal worker. The search process was easy, and the interview was even easier—the employee was reliable, hardworking and could solve any problem as well as we could. Sounds too good to be true in this labor market, right? That’s because the new team member was my sister, who knows this farm like the back of her hand. But alas, next year she’s on to bigger and better (or at least more reliable and institutionalized) opportunities. You know the kind—with retirement accounts, insurance and paid vacation. These employee benefits are basic and critical, yet they currently seem daunting and unobtainable to our 5th year farm. This year we likely won’t be so lucky with such an easy hiring process. We’ll be joining many other regional farms searching for

employees. We’re lucky that we’ll only be filling two part-time positions. Many other farms also have management positions to fill. And from what I learned at a recent vegetable grower meeting on labor management hosted by Fairshare CSA Coalition and other regional organizations, many farms are finding themselves filling those positions on a seasonal basis.

Local Farm Labor Crisis

The local farm that supplies so many delicious, nutritious, sustainable vegetables to you fills not only their field labor positions, but also key management roles on a seasonal basis. That’s worth stopping to think about for a moment. What other services would we be comfortable saying that about? As Barbara Kingsolver said in Letters to a Young Farmer, “If we’re lucky, we’ll see a doctor only a few times a year, and a lawyer even less. But we need farmers every single day of our lives, beginning to end, no exceptions.” We wouldn’t be as comfortable at the offices of doctors or lawyers if we knew that all the supporting staff was hired fresh every year. The crisis of local food systems is not just a problem of needing more farms. Sustainability of a farm is more than its bottom line or its ecological impact. How do we as farmers, retailers, chefs and eaters collaboratively create a sustainable local food economy that supports a robust farm labor market in addition to a satisfying array of local producers? That question merits a serious and transparent discourse about the tough realities of farm labor. Finding reliable labor was already tough, but the pandemic has exacerbated the problem.

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Wild Halibut & Salmon season is here!

Left page: Skye and Dylan were responsible for the majority of the labor for the first few years after starting Circadian Organics, a common pattern for new vegetable farms. 608.286.1000 1925 MONROE ST. MADISON berkeandbenham.com

Above: Skye Harnsberger pots up peppers during the early season. Extending the seasonality of employment is one way farms improve employee retention.

Right: Transplanting peppers in a no-till production system at Circadian Organics. Sometimes methods that are beneficial for soil health or product quality can increase labor requirements.

Local Farms Seek Solutions

In response to an increasingly difficult labor market, some growers at the meeting shared plans to downsize their operations so the owners could handle all the work themselves because they simply couldn’t find affordable labor. Others were scaling up to be able to afford more employees, or more mechanization, and better balance the workload. Still others were raising prices specifically to be able to afford to hire more management positions. Still other growers were considering specializing in wholesale categories and focusing on contract or H2A visa migrant labor (the program that allows growers to hire migrant labor on special visas when they find the local labor market lacking). The few farmers in our area I’ve seen using the programs managed it very well. And if one thing is well established in the Wisconsin farm labor conversation—thanks to the dairy industry—it’s that reliable and skilled labor can save farms. But relying on migrant labor doesn’t always go well due to weak protections for agricultural labor. Even local farms with the best working conditions for their H2A crews are then more susceptible to the same Covid-scale interruptions that have plagued the corporate food system in the last two years. While finding and affording labor is already a difficult task, the other side of the coin is that it can be difficult to retain quality employees in a seasonal industry where many of the positions are temporary. To address this issue, some farmers have added yearround production or more storage crops to support core staff through the winter. Beth Kazmar, one of the proprietors of Tipi Produce—a long-time Madison-area farm—shared some tips from her decades of farming (see the sidebar on page 39).

Local Growers Strive to Become Better Employers

The desire to create a balanced work environment for themselves and their employees is an ongoing conversation among small farms. Although it’s unfortunately common for many growers to work absurd hours in the early years of a business, it’s become increasingly important to many growers to set reasonable work hour limits, especially for their employees. In fact, regional non-profit Fairshare CSA Coalition has worked with UW-Madison and experienced farmers to develop programming for area growers focused on best practices for employment. The series is literally called “Becoming the Employer of Choice,” and includes topics ranging from training and safety programs, to motivating employees. Like every other aspect of the farm, growers have to be a jack-of-all-trades. Human resource management, many of us are learning, is just as important as mechanics and production. Growers are generally transparent about the perks they’re able to offer employees (primarily the free-all-you-can-carry-vegetables kind of perks, not the insurance and retirement type of perks). In particular, the ability to offer housing to employees seems to make a big difference, as applicants often come from far away. Most growers I spoke to offered wages close to their county’s living wage, but despite paying well above minimum wage, they were having significant difficulty finding interested employees.

AVERAGE WAGE FOR AGRICULTURAL WORKERS

IN THE U.S.

NATIONALLY

$28,900

WISCONSIN

$27,000

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for agricultural workers nationally is $13.89 per hour, which works out to $28,900 annually. Wisconsin lags right behind the national average, at just over $27,000. That makes sense, given that Wisconsin’s cost of living is about 95% of the national average. All the farms who shared their wages were right in that range, and some farms even shared how they always use their county’s living wage as a starting point for new employees. Yet despite being in the right range in theory, almost all of the farmers were having a hard time finding labor.

Unfortunately, most farmers are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to competitively compensating employees while keeping their prices affordable. As one grower put it, when the local Culver’s is paying $15 an hour, it’s tough to find reliable employees for less than that. Many farmers—like other businesses along the food supply chain—are raising wages to find employees. But with tight margins, there’s only one way that works, and that requires raising prices.

Local Eaters Supporting Farms

Fortunately, another benefit of community-based businesses, besides resilience to crisis, is a direct line of communication to their customers. Early reports suggest that customers from many farms are accepting the higher prices needed to sustain farms. Robyn Calvey of Park Ridge Organics, reported that she raised prices slightly—with full support of her customers—and as a result was able to pay herself and her employees better, and “even start saving some money.” For many of us worried about the effect even a slight price change might have on our markets, it’s encouraging news. Like everything in local food, creating a market that supports sustainable farm labor will be a communal effort. As Dr. Kulwiec said, “A lot of the tension specifically on small organic farms is around what kind of price they can charge versus the cost of inputs—whether it’s labor or seeds or something else. The problem often stems from the fact that the market or consumer demand is often paying less than the food is worth.” Solving the labor issues in the larger food system might require a resuscitation of our antitrust laws. Dr. Kulwiec explains that the price discrepancy between what food is worth and what people pay is largely the result of a century of “targeted policy,” much of it exempting agricultural labor from basic federal protections such as overtime pay and workers compensation, creating an environment that corporate industrialized farms can exploit. “If you are competing with the larger farms who have not had to apply the same labor protections as other industries, small local guys can only raise their prices so much and still compete. Even if they farm with greater values, those policies still impact them as well…More enforcement of antitrust and having less of these huge corporate farms would go a long way in bringing more rational prices in our food system.” Solving the labor issues in our local food systems is no less of a gargantuan task, but it is of a different nature. Sure, there are distinct policy needs for farmers around issues such as access to insurance or H2A visa processing. But the most essential change is one that is already underway: the revaluation of local food and farmers, powered by the support of eaters like you. Not only in terms of what we pay for our food, and how that supports farms and their employees, but also how we view the farmer and farmworker as professionals. It’s good work and highly skilled too. If we can value it in esteem—if not in economics—just as highly as the lawyer and doctor, maybe we can open the door for new farmers and farm workers to thrive and grow.

LOCAL FARM ADDRESSES PROBLEM OF SEASONAL EMPLOYMENT

When Tipi Produce of Evansville grew their business to the point they knew they needed to sustain long-term employees, they began to put away storage crops that a few core employees can wash and deliver throughout the winter. This allows them to keep some of their best employees, who get to know the farm better and take on more responsibility over time, which in turn leads to better work-life balance. “Once you have returning employees, that’s when you can have shared management,” farmer Beth Kazmar said. Kazmar said that another way Tipi deals with seasonality has been to share employees with nearby businesses that have different seasonal peaks. Other farmers have echoed this, citing businesses such as orchards and even libraries. Tipi has found that it works well to allow returning employees to work four days a week on the farm and one at a different business, so that during the off-season the employees could increase their hours at the other job. However your local farmer is solving the problem, it’s important to remember to support them in the off-season just as much as when the farmers market is bustling and farmers’ booths are piled high.