Concerns rise for farmworkers as floods expected to continue in Kings County

KINGS COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- The ongoing flooding around the Valley is raising concerns for ag workers.

It's not known how severe or how long the flooding will impact agriculture and those who work in the industry.

The recent rains and eventual snow melt have ag workers evaluating and planning for the months ahead.

"We were supposed to be working full blast at this time right now, but now because of this raining and flooding and all this stuff, it puts everybody behind," said Aramando Tirado, a local farmworker. "Planning and harvesting and all that stuff."

Tirado works on farms in Kings County, he says while he's working regular hours right now, it's much slower than it would normally be this time of year. He said talk between workers has him concerned about harvest in the coming months and is starting to plan in case he needs to find other work to support his family.

With continuing rains, ag experts can't give a definitive timeline on when conditions could change.

"Normally things aren't nearly this wet right now and growers that I'm talking to don't know if or when they'll be able to harvest a wheat crop for example," said Dusty Ference, Executive Director of Kings County Farm Bureau. "There's just no end in sight to it drying out."

United Farm Workers said many farm workers lost one to two months of wages already.

"When crops get lost because of these floods, farmers get a lot of that made up, there's disaster relief through USDA, there's no such program for farm workers who lose wages," said Antonio De Loera-Brust, United Farm Workers spokesperson.

De Loerea-Brust says farm workers are having to choose between working knee-deep in water or not working at all. To help relieve some burden, De Loerea-Brust said UFW is distributing food, but said that is only a temporary fix and that the flooding is happening at an already precarious time.

"Unfortunately some of this is overlapping with the expiration of a lot of the pandemic era programs, like the extra food benefits, like some of the eviction protection programs some local governments had in place," said De Loera-Brust.

He would like to see more long-term solutions, something the Nisei Farmers League is also calling for to be done.

"The farm workers have to be able to get assistance without going through a huge bureaucratic disaster," said Manuel Cunha, Nisei Farmers League.

Cunha said he would like to see food and gas cards made available to farm workers immediately and says he will be addressing the issues with local and state leaders in the next week.