Grower-Shipper Association of Central California wins United Fresh advocacy award

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Grower-Shipper Association of Central California has been honored as the 2021 United Fresh Produce Association’s Produce Advocate of the Year.

Tom Stenzel, president and CEO of United Fresh, presented the award to Christopher Valadez, president of the Grower-Shipper Association, during the Sept. 21 luncheon general session of the United Fresh Washington Conference.

Stenzel said the Grower-Shipper Association demonstrated all the best qualities of a produce advocate.

“In our world, advocacy usually means crafting your arguments, communicating effectively with political leaders, and showing the commitment to keeping up those actions every day,” Stenzel said. 

“But this year, the Grower-Shipper Association advocated as effectively as any produce leader with their actions, and not their words,” he said. 

“Recognizing the need to protect the health of farmworkers during the COVID pandemic, the association teamed with a clinic in Salinas area in California and has now vaccinated more than 40,000 farm workers in the Salinas area.”

The Grower-Shipper Association conducted its first mass vaccination clinics in February 2020, using the rodeo grounds in Salinas and the King City fairgrounds.

In addition, members of the Salinas-based association have hosted clinics at their farm sites, vaccinating hundreds of workers at a time, Stenzel said. 

More recently, Stenzel said the association has expanded its efforts to provide vaccines to children in farm worker families.

In July, Stenzel noted U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., visited one of the association’s vaccination sites to recognize the extraordinary commitment shown by the group and its members.

“More than any words to be spoken here to political leaders this week, I believe the Grower-Shipper Association showed that advocacy can come in many forms,” Stenzel said. 

“Their compassion, and their commitment to help protect the most vulnerable among us, sends a message so critical about our industry. When we consider who the 2021 Produce Advocate of the Year award would be, how could we have selected anyone else?”

Valadez thanked United Fresh for the recognition and said the association is still working to protect farmworkers.

Valadez said the association has achieved an approximately 90% full vaccination rate, with about 54,000 agricultural employees out of 62,000 employees vaccinated in the Salinas area.

Before vaccinations were available last year, Valadez said the association invested in quarantine isolation housing for farmworkers exposed to the virus.

“It was a program that we were able to create that ultimately ended up housing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of agricultural employees in the Salinas Valley,” he said. 

The association also created a COVID-19 education program and a COVID-19 testing program.

The association leveraged its relationship with the Salinas Valley Memorial healthcare system to order millions of masks to protect farmworkers from the virus.

Despite the industry’s best efforts to isolate and protect worker in 2020, Valadez said some farmworkers lost their lives last year. That gave the association even more motivation going forward to create a big impact with its vaccination clinics.

“At the end of the day, and in its purest form, this effort, really, it was all about tapping into what’s truly good and remarkable about so many of our employers, so many of you, who work tirelessly to support those who pack, harvest and process our food to see that (their workers) would get their shot at returning home safely to loved ones,” Valadez said.
 
“I’m humbled by the recognition and appreciative of all the work you do on a daily basis to help growers feed the nation, but also to help protect lives.”