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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2016)
3C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2016 The changing face of farming Number of Hispanic farm operators continues to grow By DAN WHEAT Capital Press W ENATCHEE, Wash. — From humble beginnings in Mex- ico, Jesus Limon has spent a lifetime working hard for his slice of the American dream. As a young man, he picked celery and oranges in Califor- nia and tree fruit in Washing- ton state. Twenty years ago he became one of the few His- panic orchard owners in the Wenatchee area. He and his wife of 40 years, Maria Luisa Limon, helped put their four sons through college and today see retirement in their not-too-distant future. They now own 150 acres of apple trees and lease 35 acres of cherry and apple trees. Growing number Limon — pronounced “Lee-moan” — is one of about 100,000 Hispanic farm opera- tors in the United States. Oper- ators are defi ned by the U.S. Census of Agriculture as those managing daily operations. They may or may not own a farm. The growth rate of Hispanic farm operators was still accel- erating nationally in the last Ag Census in 2012. Those numbers include up to three operators per farm, said Christopher Mertz, Northwest regional director of the USDA National Agricultural Statis- tics Service in Olympia, Wash. Nationwide there were approx- imately 67,000 Hispanic-owned farms in 2012 and 99,732 His- panic farm operators. Not easy being small Depending on the type of farm, breaking into the fi eld can be diffi cult, Limon said. “I’m not sure what the deal is in California, but here in Wenatchee packing houses that are not (grower-owned) co-ops don’t accept you if you don’t produce a certain amount of fruit,” Limon, 58, said. It costs packing houses more than it’s worth to run their lines for a few bins of fruit, and co-ops are declining in number, Limon said. That makes it tough for a new grower, starting small, to get going. Another hurdle is the cost of land. Orchard prices are “skyrock- eting” to $15,000 to $20,000 per acre for the cheapest established orchards and $18,000 for bare land where orchards are expand- ing in Quincy, 30 miles south- east of Wenatchee, he said. Yet another factor, he said, is few second- and third-gener- ation Hispanics are interested in farming. That’s true in his family. Limon’s sons graduated from the University of Washington, Gonzaga University and Central Washington University. The oldest, Jesus, 38, has a computer science degree and works for an airplane parts man- ufacturer in Snohomish County, Washington. Jose, 35, has a business degree and is man- ager of the USDA Farm Service Agency offi ce in Wenatchee. Eric, 28, also has a busi- ness degree and is a banker with Wells Fargo in East Wenatchee. Carlos, 25, just graduated in electrical engineering and works for Avista Utilities in Spokane. Though the growth in the number of Hispanic farm oper- ators in slowing in some states, Philip Martin, professor emeri- tus of agricultural and resource economics at the Univer- sity of California-Davis, cau- tioned against over-interpreting changes in just fi ve years from one ag census to the next. Lon- ger spans need to be studied to determine trends, he said. Age could be one factor in the deceleration, Martin said. The average age of Hispanic farm operators is 57.1 years old, barely below the average age of all operators at 58.3. More will retire as they age. Hispanic farms tend to be small and the number of His- panic farm operators may be affected by more spouses work- ing off the farm, Martin said. It’s safe to say, he said, that the number of Hispanic farm operators will increase but how fast and in what commodities and in what size of farm is hard to predict because that data is not tracked. At just 3 percent of total farm operators, Hispanics won’t become a majority any time soon because they often lack capital and marketing ability, Martin said. He views those factors as the two largest con- straints and points out that Cal- ifornia strawberry companies often provide capital and mar- keting for the Hispanic growers who operate most of that state’s strawberry farms. Humble beginnings Jesus Limon was born on Christmas D ay in 1957 in Zapotlanejo, Mexico, 22 miles east of Guadalajara. “Everyone celebrates Christ- mas but not my birthday,” he said. A Catholic, he doesn’t mind being named after Jesus Christ or being born on his birthday. “If anyone was going to mind it would be him. No one will be as good as he was. No way,” he said with a laugh. Limon had an older sister and was the oldest of fi ve brothers. Their parents worked their small farm and did farm work for oth- ers. The family lacked food once or twice a month. Limon knew people who died because they couldn’t afford medical care, had no insurance and lacked access to social programs. Their father, Jose Isabel Limon, sometimes worked in the U.S. under the Bracero guestworker program to make more money. He was working in a Glendale, California , factory when his wife, Teodora Casillas, died in 1969. Jesus Limon was 12. He and his sister were helping their mother haul water from a well to their house. Limon got to the house fi rst, put his buck- ets down and went back to help his mother. He found her col- lapsed on the ground from a heart attack. “She made it through the night. The next day people made a gurney and took her to Gua- dalajara. She had another heart attack. I don’t know if she made it to the hospital or not before she died,” Limon said. To the U.S. By this time, Limon’s father had a U.S. green card — a per- manent work permit — and decided to move his family to California. It took several years, bringing one or two of the chil- dren at a time through legal immigration. At the U.S. consulate on the border, Limon tested positive for tuberculosis and was denied U.S. entry. It was a false read- ing. He didn’t have TB but he had to wait a little over a year in a town there before fi nally gain- ing entry in 1974. He was 17. Dan Wheat/Capital Press Jesus Limon, 58, supervises his cherry harvest south of Wenatchee, Wash., in June . He’s among a growing num- ber of Hispanic farm and orchard operators in the U.S. Hispanic farm operators in the Northwest and California, 2012 * Idaho: 1,113 or 1.1% Oregon: 1,489 or 1.5% Washington: 2,981 or 3% California: 15,123 or 15.2% Hispanic principal operators sold $8.6 billion in agricultural products in 2012 which was 2.2 percent of the U.S. total. Of that, $5.4 billion was in crop sales and $3.2 billion in livestock sales. Rest of U.S.: 79,026 or 79.2% 99,732 Hispanic operators nationally * More than one-third of farms with a Hispanic principal operator specialized in beef cattle. The second largest category was farms with no majority crop. The third was fruits and tree nuts. *For counts of up to 3 operators per farm. Source: USDA, 2012 Census of Agriculture 82,462 72,349 2002 2007 Up 20.9% from 2007 2012 Dan Wheat and Alan Kenaga/Capital Press Top 10 Hispanic operator states, 2012 * Rank State 1. Texas Operators 34,264 15,123 2. California 3. N. Mexico 4. Florida 5. Colorado 3,255 6. Washington 2,981 13,195 6,668 7. Oklahoma 1,749 8. Oregon 1,489 9. Arizona 1,181 10. Idaho 1,113 Source: USDA, 2012 Census of Agriculture Likewise, Hispanic-operated farmland accounted for 2.3 percent of U.S. farmland. Eighty percent of farms with a Hispanic principal operator had fewer than 180 acres and 68 percent had annual sales of less than $10,000. *For counts of up to 3 operators per farm. Dan Wheat and Alan Kenaga/Capital Press ‘I don’t know what the big deal is about immigrants. The constitution was written by immigrants.’ Jesus Limon orchard owner who became a U.S. citizen in the 1990s He lived with his father for awhile in Glendale but didn’t like city life. He worked a few seasons picking celery in Sali- nas and Irvine and oranges in the Coachella Valley. He attended school only a few days in Glendale. “Kids were reading and writ- ing and I just couldn’t make it because of the language,” he recalled. He met his future wife at school and they decided to run away because she was under- age, just turning 18. They headed north, on their way to Canada, when they stopped in Wenatchee, decided they liked the town and stayed. Getting ahead Limon tended and picked fruit in several Wenatchee-area orchards and twice tried attend- ing Wenatchee Valley College to learn English. “I just couldn’t cut it. I started reading novels and books and picked it up faster that way. I can read it, but I can’t write it,” he said. Three years in grade school in Mexico is the extent of his formal education. In 1982, Limon hired on as an orchard laborer at Auvil Fruit Co. in Orondo, 17 miles north of Wenatchee. The com- pany was founded by the late Grady Auvil in 1928. He was an industry innovator who, among other things, brought Red Haven peaches and Granny Smith and Fuji apples to the fore and co-founded the Washing- ton State Tree Fruit Research Commission. Limon worked his way up to foreman and then moved into management. “Grady kind of took me under his wing. If he saw you wanted to do better, he gave you a little push. He was a good man,” Limon said. In 1988, Limon tried to buy stock in Auvil Fruit but couldn’t because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. So he bought 10 acres of bare land to the north at Bray’s Land- ing and planted Fuji and Granny Smith apple trees. In 1992, he obtained Farm Service Agency fi nancing to buy 30 acres of orchard in the same vicinity. In 1996, he quit Auvil and focused on his orchards, fi gur- ing it was the best way to get ahead. The late 1990s and early 2000s were bad years in the apple industry because of too many Red and Golden Delicious apples. Prices were low. Grow- ers were quitting the business. Limon believes he was saved by switching to organic produc- tion — by accident. The owner of an orchard next to his 30 acres was growing organically and asked if he could farm sev- eral rows of Limon’s orchard as organic to prevent Limon’s con- ventional pesticides from drift- ing onto his fruit. “I said why don’t I just farm the whole block organic and when I found out the benefi ts I converted my other 10 acres, too,” he said. He made more money and his workers could re-enter the orchard sooner after spraying. In 2006, Limon purchased another 30 acres of apple orchard that had been repos- sessed by a bank near Quincy. In 2013, he bought 80 more acres of bare land south of Quincy, planted rootstock and budded Honeycrisp apples. “That’s taken a toll on me. It was expensive,” he said, adding it was a $2 million to $2.5 mil- lion investment. The fi rst fruit will be harvested in 2017. Limon also manages 20 acres of cherries on a lease south of Wenatchee and leases several other 5-acre blocks of apples in East Wenatchee. He sells 90 percent of his fruit on contract directly to Whole Foods, which has it packed by Blue Bird Inc. and Phillippi Fruit Co. in Wenatchee. Challenges Limon said he’s never felt discrimination from any busi- nesses in Wenatchee but occa- sionally has seen it in individu- als. Sometimes it can be hard to know if it’s racial or that some- one just doesn’t like you, he said. Misunderstandings from miscommunication and a steep learning curve from lack of English, education and knowl- edge of how American sys- tems work can all be challenges. Limon said he’s never experi- enced those because of Grady Auvil’s teaching and coaching. Workers becoming foremen and then managers and even- tually buying into a farm when their bosses retire is a common way for Hispanics to get ahead, but it’s not always easy, Limon said. “Getting guys who sell chemicals, equipment and everything else you need to open accounts and trust you will pay” and “getting warehouses to trust you will produce qual- ity fruit” are diffi culties, he said. Long hours away from fam- ily present another challenge, but probably his greatest has been economic setbacks from bad weather or a poor economy, he said. It’s a challenge, he said, for small growers to stay competi- tive, to grow big enough to keep per-unit costs down. New man- datory work breaks for workers paid piece rate is a “bookkeeping nightmare,” so he’s switching to hourly pay with a harvest bonus. W hile other n ew spa pers give you less, The D a ily Astoria n GIVES YOU O u r n ew M ORE C APITAL B UREAU From left: M a teu sz Perk ow sk i, Pa ris Achen covers the sta te for you Being organic, keeping up with new varieties and selling directly to Whole Foods helps, he said. Labor and immigration Limon employs six to eight orchard workers year-round and hires 25 for seasonal thinning and harvesting. Domestic work- ers were plentiful 20 years ago but they’ve been getting harder to fi nd every year for the last eight, he said. In recent years, he’s hired H-2A visa guestworkers from Mexico through the farm labor organization WAFLA. He has 15 H-2A workers on a shared basis with other small growers and thinks he will need 20 next year. He built housing for 32 workers in Orondo. “I know of a couple of guys last year who left cher- ries on the trees because they didn’t have pickers,” Limon said. “Guys with light cherry and apple crops will have to leave them this year. Right now, I’m not fi xing trellis the way I should because I don’t have enough workers and pick- ing cherries and thinning apples takes priority. You see weeds let go because there’s not enough time to do that.” Beyond a tighter U.S.-Mex- ican border, Limon said part of the labor shortage is caused by “government not letting kids work when they are young and then when they are 18 they don’t want to work because they don’t know how.” Youngsters can work for limited hours in orchards at 14 with parental permission and in warehouses at 16, but Limon said they should be learning at 8 or 9. They don’t have to work all day and there should be protections, he said. But they would learn to appreciate work and the money they could make if they could start earlier, he said. Regarding immigration, Limon said the main thing that’s needed is a more effi cient and faster guestworker program. It takes 90 days to get H-2A work- ers now and growers should be able to get workers within a few days of determining their need, he said. A better system would be an incentive for illegal immigrants to go back to Mexico and apply to return, he said. He also favors having illegal immigrants pay a fi ne and get work permits. “It would be better if they could come in and out. Every- body wants to go back to see family but are afraid they might not get back in,” he said. Limon became a U.S. citi- zen in the 1990s partly because he began serving on county and state Farm Service Agency committees. He said he votes for the U.S. presidential candidate that he fi gures will do the least damage. He said he’s not vot- ing for Donald Trump because he doesn’t like Trump’s idea of deporting all illegals and that a fair amount of what Trump says he would do on other matters is unconstitutional. Immigration has become too controversial and mem- bers of Congress don’t seem to care about it because “they are too busy being at each others’ throats,” he said. “I don’t know what the big deal is about immigrants,” he said. “The constitution was writ- ten by immigrants.” Thinking back over his jour- ney and his humble beginnings when the next meal wasn’t always a sure thing, Limon says, “When you go through that and have a chance to do something, it’s a no-fail deal. It’s you’re going to make it, or you’re going to make it.”
