Farmers, farmworkers and advocates prepare to battle another scorching Idaho summer

Farmworkers in Parma wear masks to help protect them from wildfire smoke in 2021. | Photo courtesy of Ricardo Godina, Idaho Immigrant Resource Alliance

Written by Lex Nelson

When Shay Myers was 12 years old, he pedaled his bicycle into his family’s onion fields to weed for 40 hours a week in the summer sun. He carried all of the water he needed on his sweaty back. 

Today, he’s the CEO of that same farm: Owyhee Produce, a 1,200-acre operation straddling the Idaho-Oregon border that produces onions, asparagus, watermelon and mint oil. He strives to make the farmworkers he employs more comfortable during harvest than he was as a child. That means making water readily available in the fields, locating bathrooms nearby, starting and ending shifts early, and providing air-conditioned vehicles where workers can escape the heat. 

“Back then I would say probably in general we were less accommodating for ourselves” than the farm’s managers are now for their workers, he said.

However, keeping farmworkers safe from heat-related illnesses is getting harder every year. 

Two recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed global average temperatures have risen roughly 34 degrees Fahrenheit since before the Industrial Revolution. Without serious action on climate change, the reports state, extreme heat and weather may make it impossible to grow food — or work outside safely to harvest it.

Idahoans saw signs of this future in the brutal summer of 2021. Now, as the 2022 harvest season approaches, farmers, farmworkers and the organizations that advocate for them are gearing up for another heat wave. 

Farmer Matt Williams gives a tour of Waterwheel Gardens in Emmett in 2019. The 2021 summer heat was so intense, Williams shaved his beard to make it through peach harvest. | Photo courtesy of Lex Nelson

Summer Leaves a Scorch Mark

July 2021 was the hottest month on record for Boise, with an average temperature of 83.8 F. At one point that summer, the mercury topped 100 F for nine days straight. The heat — combined with wildfire smoke from the Bootleg and Beckwourth fires — created a dangerous atmosphere for farmworkers. 

One of those workers was Emilio, who asked to go only by his first name. In the summer of 2021, he harvested hops at a farm in the Wilder area. 

Emilio traveled from his home state of Michoacán, Mexico, to Wilder for the first time in April 2021. He stayed through October on a H-2A visa — a program designed specifically to bring temporary agricultural workers into the U.S. from other countries. In the hop fields, Emilio experienced the worst of the summer’s record-breaking heat. 

“Fortunately, nobody really got sick due to the smoke or heat, but it was challenging being in that setting,” Emilio said through a translator. “They would let us (start and) get out of work earlier due to the smoke.” 

Emilio said he was able to wear a mask to protect his lungs from the wildfire smoke. 

Idaho brings in thousands of H-2A visa workers like Emilio every year. At Owyhee Produce, those workers were up before dawn, using headlamps to pick watermelon in the dark at the start of their eight- to 10-hour shifts. 

They weren’t the only ones in the fields. Local farmers faced the same struggles with heat and smoke. Matt Williams, a farmer with Waterwheel Gardens, remembers shaving his beard in a last-ditch attempt to beat the heat during last year’s peach harvest. 

“That was miserable. I did that for a few weeks,” he said. 

William’s fruit and vegetable farm in Emmett spans just 18 acres. His workers are family and sometimes friends — local high school boys who play basketball with his youngest brother. Williams kept a close eye on them during their short morning shifts last summer. If they weren’t wearing their hats or drinking enough water, they heard about it. 

The peach harvest from Waterwheel Gardens in July 2021. Summer 2021 heat became so intense, some Northwest farmworkers became sick. | Photo courtesy of Matt Williams

Farmworkers in Crisis

Not all farmworkers in Idaho and surrounding states had access to essentials like water, masks and protective clothing last summer. Their plight made national news after June 26, when a worker in Oregon named Sebastian Perez died in the field on a 106° F day. In the Gem State, Idaho Immigrant Resource Alliance co-founder and co-organizer Irene Ruiz’s cell phone pinged with the news. It was a fellow farmworker activist.

“She texted saying, ‘We need to do something,’ and right when she said that we got on the ball,” Ruiz said. 

Ruiz called a meeting of IIRA’s nonprofit partners, who work to provide resources and support to Idaho’s Latinx, immigrant and indigenous communities. Together, they launched a campaign calling for donations of money, bottled water, coolers, reusable ice packs, cooling scarves, sunscreen and canopies for farmworkers.

“We created those campaigns for the heat relief because we had been hearing about farmworkers who were working in the extreme heat or had to wake up super early to try and beat the heat,” said Samantha Guerrero, an IIRA co-founder, co-organizer, and bilingual community organizer for agriculture and food campaigns. “We were really concerned, especially hearing there were stores that weren’t allowing them to buy certain amounts of water bottles, or ice for them to pick up to keep their waters cool throughout the day (because of COVID-19 shortages).”  

One farmworker, who asked the IIRA to go by her first name, Maria, told the organization that “at times they did not have the proper equipment to work in these elements and some may work longer because that is the only way they make money.” 

The IIRA effort raised more than $22,000 for farmworker aid in a single month. It partnered with Immigrant Justice Idaho, the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs, and Community Council of Idaho to distribute supplies directly to farmworkers, including those on reservations. 

Facing Down Harvest 2022

“I’m attempting to prepare myself for those conditions again.”
-Emilio, Idaho Farmworker

Ruiz and Guerrero have already launched a campaign for heat and smoke relief for Idaho farmworkers on GiveButter.com for 2022, hoping to head off another crisis. 

As for Emilio, despite his grueling experience last summer, he’s back in Idaho to pick hops. He laughed when asked whether he was taking steps to prepare for another summer of potentially record heat. 

“I’m attempting to prepare myself for those conditions again, for example by making sure that I stay hydrated by drinking a lot of water,” he said through a translator.