Giving ground in the local produce markets to growers from outside the county is taking a fall in enterprise to the members that run the San Diego County Farm Bureau. The bureau makes sure the mix of produce at the local markets is largely fresh produce grown on local small family farms.
Straight from the San Diego dirt, naval oranges and peas, and favorite cultivated flowers cut for sales, join the bunches sold at farmers markets in Poway and Borrego Springs, and in the Gaslamp district downtown, and at farm stands along the roadside out in Julian.
Farmers do not lose their customers when the buyers subscribe to get a box of fruit or vegetables shipped to their home, or nearby, every week or two. The long term commitment paid for at a fixed price is a method used to succeed against the competition that is part of an approach to lasting local farming the bureau calls Community Supported Agriculture.
To the members, backing local farmers is more than good judgment on the freshenss and taste customers will find in their specialty produce and market berries grown on small farms. It is good for lowering the travel miles experienced by the produce that is often in the thousands of miles, and, to avoid a double commitment on the county that gets the rewards of agriculture, saves the profts earned by growers for the local economy.
In one to two days, the produce is at the market.
More than 5,000 members pay their dues to keep up the count of places in the county a buyer can shake the hand of the grower. Consumer members that join the bureau to add their voice to the voice of San Diego farmers can choose to pay in $50 into the Farm Bureau's Fund to Protect the Family Farm.
Putting the local produce on the table also means working with local politicans on keeping the markets open to the local farmer and the costs down. The farmers also keep their options open for marketing the goods in town.
Filling the work positions in agirculture is the bureau's business. They are even willing to give outstanding high school students and college students with a commitment to a career in agriculture a better opportunity to work in the field by setting them up with a scholarship offered by an organiaiton such as the California Farm Bureau or 4 H. The year's application deadline for the annual scholarship give away is in April.
Farm heads educated by the bureau get the opportunity to do a better job counting work hours and complying with the state and federal overtime laws. Bosses do not always pay the same amount for the hours past 8 in a day or 40 in a week like thier peers in the business and trade enterprises do. Time spent by a worker that spends five hours in the morning doing field work and five hours in the afternoon in a packing house packing produce grown by another farmer can earn overtime hours for the two hours worked past 8 in day, as the California Industrial Welfare Commssion Order No. 13 says is right, but since the overtime pay is paid to comply with the order in effect at the time the worker passes the overtime hour limit, the worker will not earn overtime if they do the packinghouse work first and the field work second. IWC Order No. 14 that sets rules for the field work sets the limit at 10 hours in a day.
If that explanation on how much a worker gets in overtime earnings is not complicated enough, the farmers also have to pay overtime to their worker that spends most their day working agricultural work but that spends any part of the 40 hour workweek doing nonagricultural work. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act says packing another farmer's produce is not agricultural work and that worker, no matter which part of the day they work their packing hours, earns overtime pay for the total hours past 8 in a day or 40 in a week, after both the agrucltural work and nonagricultural work are counted.
Hiring workers to grow and pack lemons is not just anybody's business.
The bureau's support helps San Diego farmers make thier plans for sweet and ripe fruits and vegetables sold on the local market bear out.
The line continues next week.
To read earlier articles in Citizen Agenda Action Line on Tuesdays, read
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