Farm Workers’ Jobs Are Stable, Survey Finds : Labor: They tended to stay with the same employer and specialized in a particular kind of crop from season to season, the study in San Joaquin Valley found.

Farm workers generally are more mature, more stable in employment and more specialized by the crops they pick than is commonly believed, according to a new survey.

Three hundred and fifty farm workers in four San Joaquin Valley counties were interviewed at length by a team headed by Andrew Alvarado, a professor in Cal State Fresno’s department of social work. They work on 38 farms of all sizes and with various mixes of crops in Fresno, Tulare, Kern and Madera counties.

“It took a great effort to carefully come up with a scientific sample,” Alvarado said at a seminar. “We didn’t just go to the nearest labor camp or labor bus stop and interview people there.”

The average age was 34.9, which Alvarado thought was “a relatively young work force.”

However, Bert Mason, agricultural economics chairman at Fresno State, pointed out that older people normally do not work in the fields because it is so physically demanding.

“These people have only got maybe five years left as far as field work and then will have to move on,” Mason said.

But not all farm workers move on to something easier when they reach their 40s and 50s. Alvarado said his age statistics were “a little skewed because there were a couple of people in their 70s.”

And 88% of those interviewed in their native language of Spanish indicated they want to keep working on farms.

Work stability was another surprise for those who think of field hands as primarily migrants, moving from farmer to farmer and crop to crop year after year.

Actually, three of every five workers that Alvarado’s team questioned had worked for the same employer last year. There was a huge disparity between crops, though, with 77.8% of the citrus workers returning to the same employer but only 10% of the raisin pickers, whose harvest season is much shorter and intense.

Those surveyed had worked an average of 155 days for their current employer.

However, Alvarado added that many people will not work any crop that is available.

“We found these workers were fairly specialized,” he said. “The citrus picker doesn’t harvest raisins; the raisin picker doesn’t pick bell peppers. They stay within three or four crop types.”

To Alvarado, the reason for such specialization may be simply that “a good orange picker may be a lousy grape picker. Now they tend to concentrate.”

The results also were surprising when the workers were asked how they supported themselves and their families during periods when they were laid off, which happened to 84% of them at some time each year because of the seasonal nature of farm work.

Half said they received unemployment insurance. Families financially helped 8.2% of the farm laborers, and 3.9% lived off savings.

According to Alvarado’s statistics, only six-tenths of 1% of the laid-off workers went on welfare, and only 1.8% received food stamps.

Nearly one-quarter of the workers considered low wages the most serious problem they face, but one-third cited pesticides.

The researchers also found that 72% of the workers were male, but that figure jumped to 99% for workers hired by farm labor contractors. Some were upset that contractors provided mandatory transportation and charged mileage to get them to work, but Mason explained that often is the only way the contractor makes a profit in the present farm economy.