Valley ag, advocacy groups tell Newsom that vaccines for farm labor a ‘moral imperative’
A wide-ranging coalition of community, farm and advocacy organizations in Fresno and across the central San Joaquin Valley is urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom to prioritize COVID-19 vaccines for agricultural workers.
In a letter sent to Newsom on Thursday, organizations as diverse as the California Farmworker Foundation, the Fresno County Farm Bureau, Cultiva La Salud, the Central Valley Community Foundation and the California Fresh Fruit Association and others described vaccines for farm workers as a matter of “moral imperative and economic urgency.”
Both Thursday’s letter, and an earlier Feb. 19 letter to the governor, noted inequities in the rollout of coronavirus vaccines to agricultural workers who are spread out in rural areas of the state and are often isolated by economic, cultural and language differences from much of the state’s population.
“One of the problems we’re seeing in California is when you compare the Valley to the Bay Area and Los Angeles, we know the Valley is being left behind,” said Hernan Hernandez, executive director of the Delano-based California Farmworker Foundation. “We want to have a steady supply to continue vaccinating farm workers on a weekly basis.”
Of particular interest, Hernandez added, is providing shots to workers at the farms and other sites where they work, “especially dealing with a population that’s very vulnerable and has been hurt by this pandemic.”
Farm workers, and farmers themselves, need to have equal access to vaccines, said Will Scott, a farmer in the Caruthers/Raisin City area south of Fresno and president of the African-American Farmers of California. “”We probably don’t reach the status of being ‘essential’” relative to doctors and nurses who are directly exposed to sick coronavirus patients, Scott said, “but a big part of what we do is getting food to people.”
For farm workers, taking time off from work to go from the farm into Fresno, Clovis or other cities where vaccine clinics are being offered is simply not practical, Scott and Hernandez said, because those laborers often lack benefits such as sick time to interrupt their work day without losing pay.
Taking vaccines to the workers
“From our perspective in the San Joaquin Valley, broad vaccination messaging and centralized mega-sites have proved effective at serving those with the best internet connectivity, schedule flexibility, and mobility,” the coalition members wrote in their Feb. 19 letter to Newsom. “But as you well know, this approach has left out many of California’s most vulnerable and historically marginalized populations.”
“Food and farm employees have received very few vaccines relative to their population,” the letter added.
The earlier letter included a pledge from 90 farm employers across Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties to host vaccinations at their sites – not only for their own workers, but for workers from other area farms. Those sites, the letter said, could reach more than 81,000 employees who have expressed interest in getting the shots.
But those sites can’t accomplish that unless the state provides ample allocations of vaccine – and the reliability of the supply of doses to the Valley has been inconsistent at best.
The Feb. 19 letter called upon Newsom to “immediately commit a minimum of 100,000 doses of vaccinations for food and ag employees in the Central Valley for distribution over the next 30 days” – enough to give the two-dose regimen to 50,000 agriculture workers.
To date, however, the coalition has received no official response to the Feb. 19 letter from Newsom’s office, Hernandez said, “but we have heard that a response is coming.”
Newsom’s staff, in an email to The Bee late Thursday afternoon, acknowledged that both letters were received and being reviewed.
Newsom “has made food and agricultural workers a top priority group and one of three sectors eligible for vaccines early in the (next tier of vaccine) distribution,” the governor’s press office said.
Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, said he believes Newsom’s announcement via Twitter this week directing 34,000 unused doses to Valley agriculture “is at least partly attributable to our letter.”
“There is significant interest by our farm employees to get vaccinations; that excites me and it excites the ag community in general,” Jacobsen added. “That’s why we’re fighting so hard for this.”
In addition to those additional doses, Newsom’s office said he has “has also announced 11 new OptumServe (vaccination sites) in the region and a new allocation formula that increased vaccine to Central Valley counties by 58%.”
Thursday’s letter restated the organizations’ collective commitment. “We reiterate that to make this program possible, a robust vaccine supply from the state is indispensable,” the letter said. “We urge you to carve out 10% of available vaccine supply for agricultural workers and communities, while doing everything possible to expand the supply at the top of the funnel.”
The new letter from the coalition also reinforced the position that to maximize the protection of food and agriculture workers, rural outreach to farm workplaces is key. “The vaccine needs to find the arms, not the other way around,” the letter stated.
The email to The Bee from Newsom’s office did not specifically address the request by the Valley coalition to assist with providing vaccine doses to give shots to agricultural workers at their farm workplaces.
Expanding vaccine access
Scott said the coalition recognizes that some aspects of the vaccine supply chain are driven by the federal government, rather than the state. “Part of the problem is getting this stuff from the manufacturers to the community,” he said. “It’s sad that there’s competition over who they’re going to serve first” with the limited number of doses that are coming into California.
But, he added, “I think there’s a renewed feeling that agricultural workers and farmers are important too. I’m glad people are thinking about farmers and workers so they can be included in the vaccines, too.”
Hernandez said that among Valley counties, Fresno County has been at the forefront of trying to get vaccine doses to farm workers and rural residents in largely Latino communities, from a pilot program of 3,000 doses that were earmarked for workers at farms and food processing plants in late January and early February to mobile vaccine operations going to outlying areas to reach workers and their families. Tulare and Kern counties are also ramping up efforts to bring vaccine events to farm employers, he added.
“We need to create spaces in worksites and in rural communities where (infection) rates are high and where we know people are comfortable,” he said.
“Everyone makes a big push for these mega-sites,” Hernandez said of major vaccine programs in the Bay Area and Southern California that can deliver thousands of doses a day in the urban centers. “We know who’s getting shots there, and we know for a fact it’s not farm workers.”
Jacobsen agreed. “We need to be out on the farm, working with rural clinics, continuing our partnership with Fresno County with events in rural communities,” he said. “It’s not a secret that Fresno County was one of the first in the state to start with a pilot project” to vaccinate ag workers, “and we were able to learn the logistics of making this happen.”
“We’re ready to move,” he added. “It’s just a matter of having the vaccine in our hands. We just need more of it, and agricultural workers should be right up at the front of the line.”
To date, each California county has been left to follow its own pace of opening eligibility for COVID-19 shots based on broad tiers set by the state: hospital health care workers, including doctors, nurses and technicians first; then workers in skilled-nursing and long-term care facilities, emergency medical providers, and other health care workers; then people ages 65 and older, workers in education and child care, and workers in food and agriculture.
Some counties are farther ahead than others in those schedules. In Madera and Tulare counties, for example, workers in the education, food and agriculture sectors are already eligible to try to find appointments for shots. In Fresno County, however, those sectors won’t be able to sign up for vaccination appointments until next week.
Advocates said that counties need consistent direction from the state so that there is equitable access to vaccines across the Valley. Additionally, Thursday’s letter ask that for agriculture worker vaccinations, the state instruct counties to not impose age restrictions, allow flexibility for proof of employment, and to allow for families of workers to also get vaccinated.
This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 3:08 PM with the headline "Valley ag, advocacy groups tell Newsom that vaccines for farm labor a ‘moral imperative’."
