California growers to remain vigilant against spread of COVID-19

Central California growers have come a long way in one year to push back against the COVID-19 pandemic, but the journey isn’t over yet.

The signs of success in the fight against the virus are unmistakable, the most notable being the fact that tens of thousands of area farmworkers have already been vaccinated.

Christopher Valadez, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California, said shippers will continue to be vigilant.
“We’d like to be over with COVID,” he said. “I don’t yet know if COVID, in all cases, is quite yet over with us.”

Valadez said agricultural employers will continue with protective practices to help prevent the spread of the virus, in addition to communicating with employees on vaccination opportunities.

Record of success

The grower-shipper association has worked with Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas to offer vaccines to farmworkers over the past few months, sourcing vaccines directly from the federal government.

Vaccination efforts started in late February, with 2,000 to 4,500 farmworkers vaccinated every week through March, April and into June, Valadez said. Vaccination efforts continue.

On July 10, another mass vaccination event was held that served several hundred farmworkers, he said.

“Because we were able to develop this mass vaccination program specific for the farmworker community, here in the Salinas Valley, we were able to hit our goals of ensuring we were vaccinating as many as possible, as fast as possible,” he said.

So far, Valadez said the clinics sponsored by the grower-shipper association and Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas have vaccinated 40,000 farmworkers in the region.

“I would estimate that out of all farmworkers in this region that have been vaccinated, over two-thirds were vaccinated because of (our) program,” he said.

Valadez said that much of the credit goes to the 100 or so ag employers who have worked to help farmworkers get to clinics and receive the vaccine.

“They coordinated their vaccination program and helped their farmworkers all the way through the process,” he said. 

“We had had farmworkers coming by the busloads; companies were putting forward a massive amount of resources to ensure that on a weekly basis, they were organizing as many employees as possible to get vaccinated as fast as possible.”

Beyond COVID-19, Valadez said growers also are focused on food safety efforts, which also can be expensive.

The Food and Drug Administration’s testing program for leafy greens in area coolers has been ongoing since May, and that has created some extra expenses.

With more than 100 samples analyzed, FDA has not found any pathogens yet, Valadez said, but its process of collection samples can slow operations for some shippers.

Besides higher expenses, Valadez said there are concerns about low prices for vegetable commodities.

“For the grower-shipper, hopefully the public and the buyers can recognize and see what costs have been borne, the type of intensity behind the farming and growing and shipping operations and the intensity of workplace protection that has been employed for the sheer purposes of ensuring the continuity of the food supply,” he said, calling the efforts of grower-shippers a point of pride for the fresh produce industry.