Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/742839
November 2016 WINES&VINES 21 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS S an Rafael, Calif.—It's a common refrain from vine- yard owners and managers in California's wine-growing re- gions: Vineyard labor is hard to find, and it seems to be getting more scarce every year. But according to a recent study, that doesn't appear to be the case at all. The state, with its $47 bil- lion agricultural sector, is home to twice as many workers as there are farm jobs. For those growers and vintners committed to manual labor in the vineyard, the findings suggest they'll have to pay better wages, hire full-time workers and keep them busy all year or find a reliable contractor. Philip Martin, professor emeri- tus in the Department of Agricul- tural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis, and other researchers recently determined that in 2014 the state was home to 829,000 workers, and the number of full-time equiv- alent jobs in agriculture was 410,900. Martin said the goal of the project, which was published in the journal California Agriculture, was to provide a clearer picture of the state's agricultural workforce by determining just how many workers there are. "Our data show that California has a remarkably stable work- force," Martin said. "We found that most farmworkers are at- tached to one farm employer, often a labor contractor who moves them from farm to farm." Martin and his team pulled wage data for employees of Cali- fornia agricultural employers and tabulated their earnings using data from the state's Employment Development Department. The wage data was then used to determine the amount of aver- age employment in a particular sector, or an "estimate of full-time equivalent jobs." In 2014, the average employ- ment in agriculture in California was 410,900, but employers reported 829,000 individual workers, meaning a 2:1 ratio b e t w e e n w o r k e r s a n d j o b s . These workers earned a com- bined $11.4 billion in pay from agricultural employers. The study also found that about 83% (or 692,000 agricul- tural workers) garnered most of their earnings from a farm em- ployer in 2014, and 499,000 of these workers also only had one agricultural employer. "In 2014 the crop support and fruit and nut sectors had the low- e s t a v e r a g e e a r n i n g s , w i t h $12,719 for crop support and $17,600 for fruits and nuts," Mar- tin writes. Cattle ranching and farming, for comparison, had an average of $29,223. When Martin sorted the farm- workers by where they had their primary or highest earning job, he found that three counties had 35% of the state's farmworkers: Kern (116,000), Fresno (96,000) and Monterey (82,000). —Andrew Adams Study Finds California Has Stable Farm Work Force A harvest crew picks grapes for Ridge Vineyards at the East Bench Vineyard north of Healdsburg, Calif.