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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.
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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.”