Conservation Minnesota celebrates and honors Latino Agriculture Workers
“A huge portion of the state’s ag workers are Latino, whether on dairy farms, meat processing facilities, harvesting sugar beets, whatever it might be. We wouldn’t have an ag industry without the Latino workforce…there is a farm crisis in Minnesota and the nation in general. And I think this ready workforce wants not just to know how to do the work but wants to be owners and entrepreneurs.”
LEDC’s Director of Agriculture, Aaron Blyth is interviewed by Conservation Minnesota’s Olivia Rivera and Keely Cervantes. The writing team creates an article that synthesizes qualitative and quantitative data on Latino Farmers. The data concludes the Latino communities’ vitality on the future of Minnesota and the U.S’s agriculture workforce.
The average age of a farmer in the US is nearing 60 years old, and is predominantly male and white and Rivera and Cervantes notes, “It’s estimated that in the coming years, as many as 400 million acres of farmland will need new farmers to care for the land.” To remedy this, there is a large agricultural workforce that is youthful and apt found in BIPOC and Latino, and non-male communities. However, LEDC’s Rodrigo Cala of Cala Farms, cites the main barriers for these groups becoming entrepreneurs being: “access to land, access to capital, access to markets, language barriers, and climate change.”
The article ends on a hopeful note introducing Minnesota Department of Agriculture Emerging Farmers Program which is designed to confront these barriers and encourage new and underrepresented farmers to enter the field.
Authors’ Note:
Conservation Minnesota recognizes this time as Latino Heritage Month:
The term “Hispanic” comes from the Spanish word “Hispano,” which refers to people whose cultural traditions originate from Spain and centers on European whiteness. Because the term doesn’t offer space for recognizing Indigenous and Black communities, especially those in Central and South America, many recognize and identify with the word Latino instead of Hispanic.
