For months, the presidential caucuses have had the American electorate focused on Iowa—the middle of the Midwestern farm belt, home to hog producers and commodity crops like soybeans and corn, the place where candidates take root or fail to thrive. But 90 percent of the produce we eat comes from the California farm belt, which stretches in a loop from south to north, along the coast and back down through inland fields.

There are over 70,000 farms in California, and almost three-quarters of them are defined as “family farms”—as many as 95 percent, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which includes family partnerships in its number. The farms, smaller than 100 acres, belong to farmers whose average age is 59.2. That’s one thing California has in common with Iowa: it’s heavily populated by small farms run by families that are looking, often in vain, for a next generation to step up.

It’s a year-round operation, but, because of the climate crisis, it’s in jeopardy as never before. Farmers scramble to combat the usual threats—drought and its step-sibling, fire—as well as an increasingly unpredictable forecast, one that requires them to change their planting and harvest schedules on the fly, and, sometimes, the very crops they plant. If they do get a crop to harvest successfully, they often can’t find enough people to help them get it to market. Would-be retirees are instead working their fields.

The traditional business model isn’t any more reliable than the forecast. Many small farmers have abandoned retail sales in favor of farmers’ markets and restaurants, because they simply can’t afford to let a distributor siphon off any of their profits. Much of California’s small-farmer bounty never crosses state lines; that’s the province of big commercial growers who often contract with consortiums of small farmers to fill their nationwide—and international—orders.

One Fresno farmer was part of a small lobbying group that recently traveled to Washington. D.C., where a congressman marveled that he’d never seen a group like this. Usually farm lobbyists represented big growers with global customers. They want to talk about tariff policy; independent California farmers want to talk about small loans to improve growing practices.

Their perspective on farming—whether it’s the impact of the climate crisis, or restrictive immigration policies, or any other debate-stage issue—is not always in sync with the national conversation, because they’re looking at farming from a different angle.

They want support for an increasingly endangered species: the people who put fruits and vegetables on our plates.

The Counter thought they ought to have more of a voice during a week when we’ll be hearing an awful lot about the politics of Midwestern producers, so we visited the Santa Monica and Hollywood farmers’ markets in Southern California, two of the oldest and largest markets in the state, to find out what’s on farmers’ minds.

                                                                     —Karen Stabiner, West Coast editor

(These comments are condensed from longer conversations.)

“The main issue for citrus is a disease called psyllid. It damages the tree, and in seven years or so, the fruit will turn sour. All citrus growers are very concerned and everybody’s monitoring for the disease. It would be devastating for us. Right now, all we can do is monitor. If we weren’t organic, we could probably spray.

If you go on a farm and see what happens on a daily basis—like on a rainy day, how hard it is to still pick and provide workers’ families with food. People think farming is a piece of cake, and it’s not. We can never control Mother Nature.”

Kong Thao

Thao Family Farm, Fresno, California

“If you’re a small farm and you’re growing for a big wholesaler, the pricing on it fluctuates and a lot of times you can’t make up your labor costs, if something went wrong with the crop. But we’re at the farmers’ markets (and selling to restaurants). It’s not easier, but if we have to pay more for labor we can charge a little more. A lot of the customers, since we’ve been here as long as we have, we sell personally to customers: when we have to raise prices on something, they understand it.

I went to Washington, D.C., with a group of small farmers and introduced myself to one of the congressmen, who said, ‘Man, we’ve never had anybody like you out here.’ The guys who lobby are just all the big, big places, and we’re a tiny little farm on 25 acres. The guys who go there are the almond growers—not 25- acres-of-farmland people. We’re feeding a little community. We’re asking for things in the farm bill that would be loans and stuff like that, more toward the small family farm versus giving all that money to Big Ag. Tariffs are a completely different scale from what we do.”

“Labor shortage is an issue, with tougher immigration laws, less people wanting to do the work, mechanization, and laws that benefit bigger farms—like you can’t bend over to pick something. I can’t buy a million-dollar machine to pick. We need immigration policies loosened so that more people can come in and work.

“In Tehachapi, there’s weather swings and warmer summers. I’m planting earlier and earlier, challenging the edges more and more. I’m growing heat-tolerant varietals—things that don’t burn come in faster, and have better leaf coverage, like peppers.

“With the Tehachapi Grain Project, we are trying to grow grain again in Southern California. Instead of monoculture systems, small farms used to grow grain in the winter. But after World War II, everything became monoculture, and grain became something you grow in the Midwest and became GMO. Small farms usually don’t grow grain because they don’t have the infrastructure for harvesting, cleaning, or getting grain to market.”

“I don’t necessarily think certification is as important as the methods. The method should be restorative or regenerative to the land. The label is just an indication to your consumer that you believe in certain ideals. I’m not saying they are irrelevant—I would support any farm, regardless of certification, if they looked at working their land as farming finite natural resources that must be renewed in order to continue farming: healthy topsoil, water, and biodiversity that helps buffer the entire farm system against epidemics.

In Ventura County, we’ve been required to reduce our water allocations by 25 percent after the last big drought. At Apricot Lane, we sequestered 140 million gallons of water after a 24-inch rain event last year. I don’t know many other farms that can say they sequestered water back into the aquifer. And we use 10-35 percent under our allocation. We’re able to do that through growing cover crops and increasing soil organic matter levels on our property.”

“We’ve been trying to get the farm leased into new, young hands without selling it. My wife and I are in our 70s, and we need time together and want to retire. The tragedy for young farmers is they can’t afford the land and have to rent. And when you rent land, you can only do annual crops and can’t plant trees. Our goal is to create a non-profit entity to continue sustainable farming and training of farmers, so more land can be leased long-term to young farmers to grow food locally.

Windrose is a complex farm, and it will be time-consuming to get the farm into new hands so that it is profitable. We are a standalone, paid-for farm that is not able to make money due to degrading of our farm’s age and cash flow. The average person in this country doesn’t have resources to buy the food that we produce. The irony is while we are trying get better food available to more people, only a few can afford it at a price where we can break even, because it’s expensive to have labor and grow things correctly.

“We’ve never made money, we’ve lost money. We invested our savings and my inheritance into owning a farm.”

“Pig farmers in the Midwest who supplied pork to China have different exposure than us. Right now, price has gone to hell because they increased production to meet demand—and then demand trails off and there’s too much supply, and they go out of business. This happens over and over again in our industry. We have none of that exposure because we supply directly to restaurants, high-end retail stores, and farmers’ markets.

“We tripled in size in the last five years, because people are paying more attention to what they eat. They’re not buying meat in the grocery store as much because they have no idea what that animal’s fed or how it’s raised. We can tell you exactly what we do. At the same time, people are eating less meat—and they should eat less meat. I’m a meat producer and I say that. I firmly believe that people should eat less meat, but better quality and consciously sourced. It’s better for the environment, our own health, everything. Maybe not for the huge companies, but that’s fine. The big industry players are at risk because they are slow to change. It’s a huge opportunity for small producers.

“We’ve been in a drought in San Diego County for seven out of the last 10 years. We have our own wells that we irrigate from, but the wells can run dry and then we have to start using city or county water, which is expensive and drives our prices up. Citrus is almost impossible to make a profit on because of the cost of water.

“We got smart with the way we irrigate. We make sure the water goes directly on the root system of the trees and the flower plants. We use sensors all over our farm to measure the moisture content of the ground.”

“We can’t get new workers. We advertise and nobody applies for the job. A few weeks ago, my husband and I were out in the fields picking because we didn’t have enough people to pick. We pay well—we start at $12 an hour. And we just can’t get the people. It’s backbreaking, it might be 115 degrees in the summer. It might be icy in the winter, and the produce still needs to be taken care of. People from other countries are willing to do this. And we need to let them come and do it.

“Farmers are the biggest gamblers on the planet. I always say our business partner is Mother Nature and she doesn’t always communicate her plans.”

“We have a regenerative farm. When we are trimming our trees, for example, instead of making a pile, and sending it to the recycling or whatever—we leave it right where we trim it—then we come in with a shredder and we shred it right there into the ground. And the leftover fruit that comes off of the tree will fall into the ground and feed the tree itself.

“It’s localized—plus, your soil will be better, richer. It’s the next level, and you’re going to see more and more farms approaching the regenerative farming methods because it’s cleaner. I mean, you can be organic and your practice can be junk, almost like saying, ‘I’m vegan.’ Yeah? French fries are vegan.

The farmer that’s biodynamic, he’s not thinking about getting rich. He is thinking about doing a good job. We took drone footage of our orchard to see which areas were soaking water faster than other areas. When you have to pay attention: all this Big Ag became organic so quick, and there are lots of loopholes. You go into a piece of land that has used pesticides for 50 years? How about environmental toxicity? Doesn’t matter.

“None of the small farmers get any money. It’s all for the big-boys club.”

“There’s a disease called HLB or huanglongbing, which is a small sucking insect like an aphid that carries a bacterial disease. We’re mandated by the state to spray for that. When I came down here in 1970, we stopped spraying until two years ago when we had to spray for HLB. Technically, everybody including organic growers are supposed to spray for that. They can use organic sprays, which are ineffective and you have to use three times as often. We do two sprays a year on our citrus to keep the pests under control. HLB decimated Florida.

“When the organic certification first came out, there were so many people cheating. I had one customer who would buy cartons of oranges, dump them on the warehouse floor, roll them around to get them dirty again, and then say they were organic. I think it’s good for the public to know who their growers are, what practices they use, what they use for fertilizer, and why they use fertilizer.”

“There are other USDA facilities in Southern California, but we’re too small for them. A lot of the facilities, unless you’re bringing a truckload of cattle, they don’t want to deal with you. There should be something in place to help the small businesses to grow, a way to provide an environment that’s clean and safe but not have to have certain amount of equipment or whatever it is that these large packing plants have. California actually has something like that in effect for poultry.”

“And most of the family helps us during the harvest and the pollination, we all get together and hopefully harvest the dates when they’re at their prime. We do most of the work, maybe hire one or two, so that’s not an issue for us. I think we’re doing good. My nephews are already helping us, my sister’s sons, and it looks like they’re liking it. Hopefully they’ll stay with it because it’s been good for my dad and for me.

“When we first got the farm, it was a farm. Now it’s like a ranch. We have animals. We have people visiting. We have tours. My brothers and sisters live there, too. The farm’s changed for the best—what’s been good for the farm has been good for my whole family.”

“Another big risk for us is new diseases and pests. About 20 years ago, we planted globe grapes. And a new insect was introduced to the state called the sharpshooter—a piercing insect that spreads pierce’s disease. Within one year 80 percent of all the vines died and made it so we couldn’t grow that variety. We are having outbreaks of the disease now and have to pull the vines out.  

“For citrus, there is a disease called huanglongbing. We discovered this disease in the L.A. basin and everyone is terrified about it coming in and wiping us out. New pests—from a globalized economy where things are being moved around the world faster than before—are a very big risk to agriculture.

“One of our biggest challenges is water. We do ground water recharge, but most of the state does not. During drought four years ago, our water allotment was cut to about 40 percent. Because most of our crops are permanent and not annuals, we had to decide which trees we had to cut down so that we could distribute water to keep everything else alive.”

“Our current obstacle is that our soil is rich clay loam and you can’t get in the ground right now and work it. It’s literally too hard on the equipment, we can’t work it, can’t make rows, plant seed. So we basically find ourselves sitting around twiddling our thumbs a lot in the winter.

“Are we organic is the wrong question to ask. You should ask what your growing practices are. Brussels sprouts, at three inches tall they are treated with an insecticide that helps them to prevent root rot, they’re young, so it just gives them a chance. And then three months later, you pick them with just a few bugs here and there. There’s no sprays involved.

“We haven’t looked into a certification because it’s not financially worth it to us. We’ve tried to do, like, our own little mini practices of sustainability or just trying to let nature do its thing, but we definitely fertilize most of the time. The farmer says they’re not fertilizing they’re probably lying, that’s just kind of impossible.”

“We grow our crops in greenhouses. With greenhouses, you make money in the winter. There were times when we get a really cold winter, and then our whole cucumber crop got frost damage and we had to start all over. Three months of work go down the drain and there’s nothing to pick, but you still have to pay your workers. It’s high risk, high reward. With more employees, it’s more stress to produce.

“We are not organic because there is no organic way to process nitrogen for hydroponic systems. Until that happens, we cannot be certified organic.”

“Water has been an issue for years. During the drought, water prices were terrible. That’s partly why the price of nuts increased so drastically. It got more expensive for us farmers to grow and have a yield with walnuts, and when water prices get raised we have to charge more.

“Grants for small farmers would probably help. I know there are some, but maybe expanding the type or amount of grants that the government offers agriculture and farming. Like, depending on how many acres you own or what kind of trees you plant, maybe you get your water cheaper. I don’t know how they’d do it.”

Robin: “The big guys are the ones growing all the vegetables in Mexico that they can label whatever they want, and they bring them across the border. It’s really frustrating to have the big guys take the name. It hurts everybody because, what did they pay their workers? We pay our guys that work for us a living wage. And what do they pay in Mexico? It’s maybe living wage for down there, but not here.

“We lost over a third of our orchard in the Thomas fire in 2017. We’re in subsistence mode now, until the trees recover. Before the fire, we were transitioning anyway to plant more drought-tolerant crops: pomegranates, figs, and more tropical things that are more resistant.”

Marguerita: “Some government jobs are unnecessary: you could have one person come out to assess the farm, but instead, there is someone to check the trees for bugs and then someone else comes out to check the soil for bugs. Put a moratorium on new government entities and regulations that check up on us.”

“The weather has been unpredictable. It’s been a little worse in the last couple of years because the weather doesn’t only have one pattern like it used to. It’s been hot, then it’s been cold, and then the plants don’t know what to do—whether they should go to sleep or stay awake. Plants are just like humans.

I’m going to change the way I plant because I can’t predict the weather like I could before. Now, sometimes it gets cold earlier or stays hot for longer, so it’s hard for me to predict when to throw seeds in the ground.”

“It’d be nice to have more regulations on water, people and aquifers. Or not necessarily regulations, but if people had some sort of knowledge or better understanding of what’s going on with the aquifer. That scares me. You can’t really grow avocados using city water, it’s not feasible. The only way is to have an aquifer, but to keep people from over-sucking water and have a balance. Say, ‘You could use this amount of water if you have a certain amount of acres, but you shouldn’t be able to use more.’

“We’ve never had heat waves like this before. In the last five years, we’ve had two times where it’s gotten above 120 degrees. And it’s also snowed—our frost line used to be about where our house is and it’s raised almost 15 feet, which is bad for our avocado trees. We’ve installed different sprinkler systems and tried to regulate our water, so we have an understanding of how much water is going on the tree, and how much we’re going to need in preparation for when we see the heat coming. And for the cold, we were putting in lights above the trees and trying to keep it warm. We’re planting more frost-resistant crops, like fig trees and Eureka lemons.”

“Weather? Not enough of a change to affect the animals. The Nubians are a bit more heat tolerant; the Saanens are a Swiss breed, and if heat waves were really bad it would be harder on them. We do our best to make sure we have fans going, and mist, to keep the goats comfortable.

“And we’re on a well, but we still try to be sparing with anything we pull out, water-wise. But the aquifers are all connected underground, so if our neighbors weren’t being sparing there’s always the chance they’re pulling water from our aquifer, and if the level goes down it affects us. But in a weird way we’re lucky—there aren’t a lot of farms around us, so there’s less being pulled out.

“With any kind of agriculture there’s always the anxiety of, it’s working now but something could come around the corner and have it not work. Obviously any regulation just adds, takes away from the bottom line of the farm. That’s not unique to us, and not even just dairy, it’s the same with vegetable sellers and fruit sellers. The idea that we could be impacted by any kind of regulation. We just try to be aboveboard on everything, and go the extra step.”

“We are getting more erratic weather patterns. We’ve had several extreme heat waves that cook your vegetables, like tomatoes will be sun-scalded or peppers will burn. We are starting to grow more plants, like corn or sunflowers, so plants beneath them will have more shade. Last year, we had a rainy year. Prior to that, it was a seven-year drought. I looked at every year as maybe this was my last year, and I really had only one more year if it didn’t rain.

“I don’t believe in the farm bill system. I don’t think any farmer should be granted anything other than if there was a severe tragedy. We’ve never taken government agency money. I strongly feel if all farmers were playing on same playground and not taking money, you’d probably say goodbye to half the farmers in America, who I don’t consider real farmers if they are taking money from the government not to grow things, or for growing too much. Subsidies should stop.  

“There are less immigrants coming up to work. But last year, we tried the H-2 visa program, in which people from Mexico are allowed to come up and work on different farms if you supply them with housing and transportation. It was actually a great program. People are allowed to work for let’s say six months, and then go back to their families. We brought up 15 people and I want to bring the same guys back this year.”