Farm Workers’ Main Worry Is Pesticides : Agriculture: Study finds chemical contamination outweighs low pay as a concern.

California farm workers are more worried about pesticide use than low wages, according to a new study that also found that women make up more than a fourth of the farm labor force.

Those preliminary findings stem from the first in-depth profile study of California farm workers, commissioned by the state Employment Development Department.

The initial results were disclosed Thursday at an agriculture conference in San Diego. They were culled from about 350 interviews, each lasting up to an hour, with farm workers in Fresno, Kern, Madera and Tulare counties.

When asked about their most serious problems, 23% mentioned low wages, contrasted with 33% who named pesticides.

“We found it everywhere,” said Andy Alvarado, a professor at California State University, Fresno, who co-authored the report. “Workers told us about their individual experiences: dizziness, rash, vomiting, nausea. . . . It was everywhere--in oranges, in nuts, everywhere. So it’s a valid, real concern of the farm worker.”

Alvarado said researchers also had not expected to find such a large percentage of female farm workers.

“We might have intuitively known that women were engaged in farm work. We didn’t realize to what extent,” Alvarado said after presenting his findings. “We found women tractor drivers, women operating heavy machinery.”

The percentage of women in farm work may be even higher than these research figures indicate, according to a staff attorney for the United Farm Workers, which is the principal bargaining unit for about 70,000 farm workers.

In a telephone interview, David Arizmendi said women may be about 40% of the labor force.

“In the harvest, you find mostly men,” Arizmendi said. “But any work associated with machinery--sorting, packing and canning, for example--you will find mostly women.” Women are also involved in thinning and weeding fields before the harvest, he said.

The final results of the study, conducted in 1989, are expected to be available in about three months.

This is the first time that detailed information has been gathered about farm workers, said Robert Hotchkiss, deputy director of the employment and training branch of the California Employment Development Department.

“With this kind of information, discussions among the various groups (government, farm workers and the agricultural industry) can be more productive,” Hotchkiss said.

Among Alvarado’s other findings was that 87% of the workers come from farming communities in central and western Mexico.

An anthropological study of 64 farm worker families in the four counties was also conducted.

The study was headed by Juan Palerm, director of the Center for Chicano Studies for UC Santa Barbara. The study indicates that traditional farm workers--those who came from farming regions and from farming families--who became residents through the Special Agricultural Worker program will tend to continue working on farms. Palerm called these “traditional, stabilized workers.” But these workers, he said, are not easy to characterize.

Farm workers have tended to remain working the farm or have returned to the farm after trying urban employment because “urban residence and urban employment are not easy, or well paid or secure for the farm worker,” Palerm said. “At least this is how they are perceived by the (workers) and their families.”

Palerm said these perceptions are close to reality--”urban centers are oversupplied with labor, and job competition is fierce.”

Agricultural work, at least, provides the opportunity to put the entire family to work.

“Even with fewer days of employment and equal or inferior wages, total family income is greater in agriculture,” Palerm said. “And this is what counts for the working family.”