Three Ways the Columbia Gorge Region Is Supporting Farmworkers During the Coronavirus Pandemic
The five-county region known as Columbia Gorge, straddling Oregon and Washington, produces more than 250,000 tons of apples, pears, and cherries each year. The community estimates that about 10,000 to 12,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers, most from Mexico, come to the area each year. They pack fruit, work in orchards, plant trees, and harvest. The seasonal agricultural industry in the Gorge also includes fishing, mainly by native communities.
“Concern for our migrant and seasonal workers was raised early on in the pandemic in different virtual meeting rooms,” says community health worker Claire Rawson of The Next Door, a health and social services nonprofit in Hood River and the Dalles, Oregon. “We knew this segment of our community had a potential to be hit especially hard by COVID-19.”
The region has a strong tradition of collaborating across sectors, languages and cultures and engaging community members to support better health for all, including migrant and seasonal workers and the region’s year-round Latino population, which today makes up about 25% of the population. Rawson was tasked with coordinating communitywide efforts to support migrants and seasonal workers, alongside a taskforce focused on this population.
Partners in the work include community-based nonprofits and advocacy groups, health organizations, governments, school districts, Oregon State University Extension Service, orchardists and other business owners, and community members.
Columbia Gorge Region, Oregon and Washington
To bridge disparities, the people of the Columbia Gorge Region turned an ordinary requirement from Oregon lawmakers into an extraordinary opportunity to improve the health and wellness of all residents.
Below are three ways the Gorge has promoted farmworker health and economic security during the pandemic:
To ensure migrant and seasonal farmworkers can stay informed amidst the pandemic, a grant from the Google Data Center in The Dalles enabled OSU Extension to deploy Wi-Fi hotspots in several orchards. A local company, Radcomp, donated tech setup and troubleshooting support.
But some people still prefer more traditional methods of staying informed. So, local Spanish-language station Radio Tierra has focused its recent programming on COVID-19, featuring spokespeople from a range of nonprofits, health care providers and local government organizations.
“Many organizations here wanted to create websites or Facebook pages so people could have information about COVID-19,” says Juan Reyes, the station’s board chair and a member of the migrant and seasonal farmworker taskforce. “We had to tell them not everybody has access to that, especially seasonal workers.” The station, he says, has been able to play a key role in connecting English-speaking service providers with Spanish-speaking populations in the Gorge.
The Next Door and other agencies in the Gorge have employed community health workers, who connect community members to services, for several decades. During the pandemic, those health workers have been essential for ensuring migrant and seasonal farmworkers have health education about the coronavirus, access to testing, and support finding and applying for resources such as income replacement, food, and housing, says Gladys Rivera, preventative health manager at One Community Health, a federally qualified health center in Hood River and the Dalles.
Rivera says One Community Health and Mid-Columbia Medical Center, which also serves parts of the Gorge, split up a list of growers that they would support. During this summer’s growing season, community health workers from each health center went to worksites to conduct onsite, socially distanced education about coronavirus signs and symptoms, safety, and testing. They supplemented in-person education with Spanish-language health materials developed by One Community Health and based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. One Community Health also runs a weekly drop-in clinic and has conducted thousands of COVID-19 tests.
“We know COVID-19 will be an issue again next year during growing season,” Rivera says. “We’ll continue our collaborations, including with growers, to start planning for next year.”
Statewide collaborations have sought to financially support Oregon farmworkers affected by COVID-19. In August, the state announced the Oregon Worker Quarantine Fund, which aids agricultural workers who must self-quarantine, regardless of immigration status, and is administered by the Oregon Worker Relief Coalition. Workers apply through local community-based organizations, like The Next Door. Other state funds enable producers to provide safe housing to farmworkers and provide hotel and motel vouchers directly to workers who need to quarantine.
Partners in the Gorge—including The Next Door, Community One Health, Radio Tierra, food banks, and faith leaders—have helped get the word out to those who need the funds. Alicia Ramirez, a community health worker for The Next Door, says the organization has since June enrolled 400 people in the Oregon Worker Relief Fund, which supports jobless Oregonians whose immigration status prevents them from applying for unemployment insurance or federal relief dollars.
“I’m really grateful to everyone for not abandoning our community,” one agricultural worker told Ramirez recently. “The help I got from the Oregon Worker Relief Fund was like rain in the desert. Because of it, I was able to put food on the table.”