Community leaders in the Half Moon Bay area are hoping to create more cooperatively-owned farms and housing, improving living and working conditions for struggling farmworkers.
The push, by Mayor Joaquin Jimenez and San Mateo County officials, comes a year after seven workers were gunned down on two mushroom farms in the quiet, coastal community 30 miles south of San Francisco. The tragedy exposed deplorable conditions at the two sites, where workers lived in sheds and other makeshift housing that had no running water or insulation.
“We need to understand that our farmworkers still need a lot of help, housing, health care, better wages, safe working conditions, safe living conditions, and that’s part of the healing,” Jimenez told KQED at a recent memorial ceremony. “Farmworkers are struggling.”
The son and grandson of farmworkers, Jimenez, spent decades in various roles advocating for better wages and living conditions for the region’s often-overlooked agricultural workers. He said that after the shooting, he realized much more needed to be done for them, and faster.
Before becoming the first Mexican immigrant to serve as mayor of Half Moon Bay, Jimenez was instrumental in helping to launch Rancho San Benito, a farmworker co-op in Half Moon Bay that broke ground roughly five years ago and is still being developed. Funded largely through the county, the operation now has around 10 members who grow their own crops on more than 70 acres of leased land. The project also aims to offer classes to participants about business, land management and sustainability.
“Owning their own crop, owning their own business is the opportunity for farmworkers to be successful and become farmers,” Jimenez said. “We’re going to be offering education and training for community members to be an entrepreneur to run their business.”
The collective — or “co-op” — farming model is hardly a new idea in California. More than 200 agricultural co-ops, big and small, operate throughout the state — including a number of major brands like Sunkist and Blue Diamond, according to the California Center for Cooperative Development. Nationwide, there are more than 4,000 such enterprises.
Cooperatives can offer farmers more market power by allowing members to collectively sell their crops and earn direct profits.
But in California, where available farmland is scarce and expensive, it can be extremely difficult for lower-income farmworkers to get cooperatives off the ground, said Keith Taylor, a UC Davis professor who studies community economic development.
Farmworkers seeking to start their own cooperatives often have very limited access to capital, Taylor said. “The United States notoriously has really substandard cooperative laws and support structures, especially for worker cooperatives,” he added. “When you go to lenders, they’re used to the standard kind of farmer-owned model, a standalone family corporation kind of thing.”
Aldo de la Mora, an agriculture cooperatives specialist with the California Center for Cooperative Development, is helping to spread the word about Rancho San Benito and recruit more farmworkers to participate.