Farmworker Vlogs Can Inform Rural Development
Grant Holub-Moorman
Phone propped against the windshield, facing into the cab, Sandy Guzman ties three bandanas tightly around her head and adjusts her cap. She introduces her day’s work on a California vineyard before launching into a detailed analysis of farm labor. Discussing pay, commute times, and some of the ways families can invest money sent by loved ones working in the U.S., “Campesina Vlogs -El Diario De Sandy Guzman” invites viewers into her daily decision-making. From economical grocery explanations to a cost-benefit analysis of field worker wages, her videos are an exemplary first-person view of the U.S. agricultural economy.
Guzman’s YouTube channel belongs to a global genre of workers publicly communicating with home communities and sharing crucial information with prospective immigrants. You can find a whole treasure trove of these videos by searching any farm job preceded by “Cuanto gana” (e.g., in lettuce, onion, and dairy). This genre is often filmed in the field, a host interviewing workers as they harvest.
Both autobiographical vlogs like Guzman's and interview-style videos provide a thoughtful glimpse into a foundational sector of our national economy that is intentionally made invisible to non-immigrants in the U.S. These videos are a starting point for researchers, journalists, labor organizers, and policymakers interested in rebuilding our agricultural sector in the United States from the ground-up.
Farmworkers are a core labor force for the U.S. domestic economy yet are often excluded from general labor statistics and socioeconomic surveys. If socioeconomic research better represents the needs and offerings of farmworkers, policymakers can better act on issues like chronic rural depopulation and disease outbreaks. Economists need to watch these videos, revise and translate surveys, and get out into the field and interview immigrant farmworkers.
According to 2020 statistics from the National Agricultural Workers Survey, Spanish is the most comfortable language for 62% of all farmworkers with over a quarter reporting they do not speak any English. Meanwhile, 93% of non-Hispanic white and Black Americans report English as their only language. We need researchers out in the field speaking with farmworkers in their language. And not just Spanish. Mam, K’iche, and other indigenous speakers deserve representation in the data.
Beyond policy recommendations and economic data, the US media landscape remains largely English-only, skewing coverage of business and labor. Meanwhile, 13% of all U.S. residents speak Spanish at home, and far more non-resident laborers could be added. Multilingual reporters must be valued and offered the opportunity to bridge the divide between farmworkers and the non-Spanish-speaking public.
Within the Iowa Writers Collective, rural journalists are working to bridge the language divide. The Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa, hosts an internship program in collaboration with La Prensa Iowa, a nearby Spanish-language newspaper. Editor Douglas Burns described the impact these multilingual partnerships can have on the image and potential for agricultural communities:
“By embracing diversity as a community with these student journalists, we help to form world views in which we are considered beyond easy-reach rural stereotypes — for the diversity we bring to the American experiment. That’s not zero sum. It’s new math that adds up to good things for us — all of us.”
Museums, archives, and universities can join the media effort to more accurately portray rural livelihoods. They can not only catalog immigrants’ online self-representation but also conduct independent interviews. Dedicated institutions like the Bracero History Archive — that collected oral histories of the guest worker program (1942-1964) — cannot stand alone in this field. I encourage scholars and the public to explore the New Roots special research project by the Southern Oral History Program. The audio and transcripts are mostly in Spanish and all easily accessed online.
Student Action with Farmworkers seeks to disseminate tools for engagement in the fields. (Credit: Student Action with Farmworkers)
In Durham, NC, Student Action with Farmworkers engages immigrant laborers directly with students. During SAF’s summer program, students collaborate with farm workers in rural North Carolina to document their experiences through theater and media. Students elicit and compile farmworkers’ stories using techniques from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed and Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino.
The organization will often collaborate with local health workers and legal experts. Students talk with farmworkers, contextualize with local experts, and transform the farmworkers’ stories into public theater performances. The performances are interactive and offer tools for workplace safety and self-advocacy. This is not charitable work. SAF is building a horizontal coalition of farmworkers, local advocates, and young people with institutional access.
Most of Sandy Guzman's videos are not shot on the farm. Outside of her home, she pauses to listen to coyotes yipping at the full moon. Once inside, she is moving methodically, unloading her shopping trip, explaining her reasoning for purchasing each. Other videos display the vibrant life of her family — swimming in the river, vacationing in DC, and rushing to the hospital. It is important that oral histories, surveys, theater pieces, and multilingual journalism attempt to measure and explain farmworkers' lives in the third person. But no one can tell her story quite like Guzman.
Grant Holub-Moorman is an economist, oral historian and audio artist. He will be traveling from North Carolina to Iowa in the spring of 2023 to do an AgArts residency on New Hope farm near Dubuque, documenting a Guatemalan community farm.
I am honored to be part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Follow Julie Gammack’s Weekly Round-ups of our commentaries.
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Or maybe a 6,000 acre farm. They are becoming more common even in Iowa. What a good idea for Grant to compare farmworker stories on several farms. Thank you, Ralph. You're right. The average urban American has no idea what farmworkers actually do in this day and age. So excited to have Grant do this documentary work. Please share this piece to your networks.
Thanks for sharing--farmworker stories can inform rural and urban. Urban America still has this rustic, nostalgic view of America farmers on a 160 acre farm, not a several thousand acre farm, using high tech equipment. Grant could compare the farming experience of working a Guatemalan community farm, with farmers like Beth Hoffman, and with several thousand acre farms. A different kind of Thousand Acre story can be told.