Trapped in the Fire: How the Sonoma County Ag Pass Risks Farmworkers’ Lives

by yaleglobalhealthreview, posted in Uncategorized

BY ANDREA CHOW

Joan Didion, a writer and essayist of California notoriety, once wrote that the Santa Ana winds make mechanistic creatures out of all of us. In late fall and early winter, Californians know what it is like to lick our cracked lips, scratch at our wrinkled knuckles, and grip the edges of our sleeves with nervousness as the seasonal winds rouse our nerves and bring back memories of fire seasons past, the burning taste of embers and the packing of evacuation bags late into the night. But there is a demographic in California who know the fires in a much more intimate way: the agricultural workers—many of whom are undocumented migrants— who fill the nation’s fridges with grapes and cabinets with wine but are not protected from labor exploitation during the worst of what American weather has to offer. This is not just a matter of policy but a pressing issue that demands immediate attention and action. 

In recent years, Sonoma County declared the “ag pass” in effect, which grants owners and operators of commercial agricultural operations access to fields, vineyards, and livestock during natural disasters. Seems great at first glance: farm owners can access their land and livelihood, even during disasters. But what does this look like in reality? During the Sonoma Count Point Fire, emergency responders barricaded a nearby road, a measure which exists to protect all people – workers and growers alike – from the dangers posed by the wildfire. But the Ag Pass functions to circumvent this. On Monday, the area had been deemed “too dangerous to let people in,” determined by a red flag warning with containment at 20%. At 10:40 am one day later, the County Sheriff, Eddie Engam, activated the Ag Pass verification program, allowing those with cards into the emergency evacuation zone. Weather conditions in such a dry and volatile region make it so that the fire has the potential to travel faster than it takes to evacuate humans. It is a serious and dangerous oversight that this loophole exists, allowing workers to enter an evacuation zone even though it isn’t safe. Although, technically, the Ag Pass cannot force workers to enter evacuation zones, it permits economically vulnerable people to be exposed by growers to dangerous working conditions. When rent is due and their job is on the line, many workers feel they do not have a choice.

Before the point fire, 197 passes were issued throughout the county. This allows workers to access fields for pruning and harvesting during wildfires. Of the 197 passes, 59% were issued to employees. Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner Andrew Smith publicly stated that his organization “reviewed the records and identified that there were probably about a dozen entities that would need to access the area that was subject to the evacuation order as part of the Point Fire.” But why would an individual “need” to access the region? 

The fire continued to grow, spanning 1,000 acres in seven hours.  Smoke filled the air. The sky grew brown—casting the rolling hills and vineyards in a glowing, terrifying orange haze. For workers who received passes, this sight is more horrifying than beautiful. Cecilia Rodriguez, a farmworker at a nearby vineyard, contemplated, “It’s very smoky. But I need to work. The rent is coming up. If I feel conditions will get smokier or more dangerous, I probably won’t work. You never know what could happen.” Before this, a health advisory was issued regarding poor air quality caused by current wildfires, recommending that locals avoid going outside and spreading awareness of adverse health effects from smoke inhalation.

That’s the dilemma: workers know that coming to the fields during wildfires is dangerous, unhealthy, and emotionally distressing, but they have to do it anyway. It puts workers at risk for a myriad of health concerns—wildfires put fine particulate matter into the air, which, when inhaled, enters the lungs and the bloodstream. Even after the fire stops burning, particulate matter concentrations in the atmosphere remain high because it takes time to settle out of the air. Workers may carry out much of their work at night when the air is cooler, but this doesn’t prevent smoke inhalation . Michael Méndez, an assistant professor of Environmental Planning and Policy at the University of California, Irvine, describes wildfire smoke as a “toxic soup” containing vegetation, chemicals, metals, building materials, and one that is “several times more harmful to humans than car exhaust”. One does not need to be a doctor or scientist to know this—anyone who has stood too close to a bonfire or barbecue for too long knows that feeling of burning in their eyes, throat, and chest. Farmers know this, too. But grocery bills won’t pay themselves, and rent is high in California. This is neither an isolated event nor an isolated story. The June 2024 Point fire near Healdsburg in Sonoma County was not the only fire that endangered migrant farmworkers; four years prior, in 2020, a particularly devastating wildfire year coupled with the public health threats of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sonoma wildfire season included two major regional fires, the LNU Complex Fire and the Glass Fire, which filled the North Bay skies with smoke for two months. Even though the air quality was deemed unsafe and unhealthy, for 17 days, workers were allowed onto farms by the Ag Pass program. This exposes a pattern of policymakers and the judiciary prioritizing the agricultural industry over workers’ health, a grave injustice that should stir moral outrage.    

Many farmworkers face multiple disadvantages due to an immigration system that denies them full civil rights, an economic system that exploits their labor with minimal protection or reward, and an American racial hierarchy that devalues their lives. They are primarily Mexican or of Mexican descent and immigrate to the United States to find work opportunities due to increasing industrialization in their home regions in Mexico or Central America. Moreover, many farmworkers are Indigenous. Their alienation from labor is not just an American issue but a widespread problem in Latin America. Indigenous agriculturalists are separated from traditional practices and outcompeted by American and Mexican industrial farming. They also face political disenfranchisement and economic distress worsened by NAFTA and migration patterns. Additional challenges include cartel violence, limited financial and educational opportunities, and climate disasters. All this is to say, migrant farm workers do not come to pick grapes in California because they come from a socially and economically stable context. These populations are already at risk – if they weren’t, they would not be partaking in grueling labor for much less pay than is worth their effort.  

Research bolsters the intuition that working outdoors during wildfire conditions is unsafe. A study from the American Geophysical Union reviewing air quality in the region from July 31st to November 6th, 2020, shows that the particulate matter in Sonoma County during the peak wildfire season was too high to be safe. This is a leading health and environmental concern, as global warming and dry conditions are predicted to increase. This is especially true in California, which has experienced a series of annual record-breaking fire disasters, and globalization and political neglect of the well-being of migrants in the United States create room for new health effects,,,,,,,,,. The air quality data from the Glass Fire and the LNU Lightning Complex Fires were unsafe for workers and permitted by poor record-keeping and haphazard decision-making by Sonoma County governance. Wildfires create dangerous air quality conditions everywhere, but it becomes a public health crisis in Sonoma County, where natural disasters are coupled with governmental neglect, resulting in exacerbated rates of COPD in vulnerable populations and lung cancer being the predominant form of cancer-related deaths. Of all the leading causes of death in the county, lung cancer is fifth, and COPD is sixth.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations require employers to inform workers of risks and provide N95 masks or respirators. However, these rules do not address psychological distress or exposure to extreme heat and smoke. Many agricultural workers prefer bandanas over masks because the work is sweaty, uncomfortable, and makes breathing difficult. Margarita García, a mother from Oaxaca, reports that ash falls on her face during fires. Even with a bandana, smoke irritates her throat and eyes. Maria Salinas, a worker who picks grapes, said in an interview that the smoke was so dense that her crew needed headlamps to see, and even with the bandanas covering her mouth and nose, her saliva was black from the particulates in the air. She said she felt scared going to work because of the dark sky. 

Many farm workers are also low-income or at other economic or social risks that make their health vulnerable. These include limited health education, access to healthcare (especially if they are not citizens), and limited access to healthy food and lifestyle practices at home. Linguistic isolation, such as Indigenous workers who cannot access English or Spanish language resources, racial discrimination, and labor exploitation, also puts workers at risk.,,, These underlying health risks amplify the danger of exposure to fires and poor air quality.,

Because migrant farmworkers struggle with intersecting challenges, the problem of worker exploitation cannot simply be addressed by the overturn of the Sonoma County Ag Pass. It demands a more complex and multifaceted approach, such as that which includes worker protections, health monitoring, and air quality monitoring for the immediate harms, but also broader protections that support migrant communities and farmworker communities to improve access to healthcare and social and economic resources, to preemptively protect them from being in a condition where one must choose between paying rent or sacrificing health and safety to work through a wildfire. The North Bay Jobs for Justice labor advocacy organization supports specific policies that further these goals, such as “hazard pay” for workers in high-risk conditions and “disaster pay,” which allows workers to refuse to work in unsafe conditions without forfeiting wages. The executive director for NBJJ, Max Bell Alper, stated publicly, “This is a luxury crop, and their estimation is it a 7.7 billion dollar industry, just in Sonoma County.” In other words, this is an industry that can stand to respect the lives and health of the workers, which makes it possible, and pay them fairly.   

Moving forward, county governance must consider that even if the law does not discriminate against farm workers in writing, it must also understand how illegal practices factor into the de facto consequences of agriculture and farm labor in California. It must also take a proactive stance in protecting vulnerable communities – such as providing resources in Indigenous languages as well as Spanish, protecting those who speak out about labor rights violations from the risk of deportation, and providing free, accessible, and culturally competent healthcare for all constituents, and ensuring that there are legal and accessible avenues for recourse when growers engage in unethical practices of labor exploitation. Farmworkers also deserve dignity and respect, as all workers due—and ought to receive the working protections they have already been organizing for, such as hazard pay, disaster insurance, and safety training (which should also be accessible in Indigenous languages), have provided community safety observers to be allowed to monitor working conditions in evacuation zones, and for clean water and bathrooms. Sonoma County is a valuable place to study the intersections of global climate change and how contemporary patterns of disaster (both ecological and environmental) may be interwoven with systemic and structural vulnerabilities of marginalized communities, as Sonoma experiences drought, wildfire risk, and is a locust for agriculture and therefore migrant labor that makes agriculture run.

As Californians brace for a future of increasingly intense and enduring fire seasons, farmworkers are handed Ag Passes and sent into the danger zone, their livelihoods hanging in the balance. The fires that haunt our collective memory are an immediate and intimate reality for those who harvest our food, yet they remain largely invisible to policymakers and the public. The Sonoma County Ag Pass is more than a bureaucratic oversight; it is a symptom of a system that values profit over people, turning a blind eye to the well-being of the very workers who sustain one of California’s most lucrative industries. If the state truly wishes to protect its residents, it must start by ensuring that those who toil in its fields are not sacrificed to the flames.

Andrea Chow is a senior in Saybrook College.

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