Ag Alert September 16, 2026

Workers Continued from Page 1

a harder time finding new jobs. Bitter said growers typically cut back first on contract labor while trying to retain farm employees. But as the crisis “went on and on,” financial distress left some with little choice but to lay people off. Andrew Forchini, a Sonoma County winegrape grower and vineyard manager, said he went from selling nearly all his fruit two years ago to this year possibly leaving 90% of it unharvested. With few grapes to pick, Forchini said, his three employees were losing crucial income. In March, Forchini started a land man- agement company, Healdsburg-based AF VINES, partly to create opportunities for his employees to earn money gardening, landscaping and repairing properties. “My employees have been with me for decades,” Forchini said. “They do every- thing for us.” Experts say it remains unclear when the winegrape market will stabilize, but most expect a long-term downward adjustment to match lower demand for wine. In the meantime, Gonzalez said she was weighing her options. Despite having a passion for vineyard work, she said, the industry’s decline had forced her to con- sider leaving the field. “It’s really taking a toll,” she said. Some quotes in this story were translated from Spanish. Caleb Hampton is an editor at Ag Alert. He can be reached at champton@cfbf.com.

than half what she made a couple years ago. There was “desperation” among her crew members, she said, and her own pay- check barely covered the cost of childcare for her two young children, while rent and other living expenses bore down on her. “It’s worrying,” she said. In 2022, California winegrape vineyards supported the equivalent of 49,372 full- time jobs, about 12% of all the farm jobs in the state, according to a report commis- sioned by the California Association of Winegrape Growers. Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Grow- ers, which markets winegrapes for about 500 growers in California, said that as a baseline he expected employment loss in vineyards mirrored the 25% reduction in acreage. “On top of that, with the acres that are in the ground, growers are making efforts to cut costs by any methods possible, and a lot of that is labor,” said Bitter, who grows wine- grapes in Madera County. “There’s a huge impact on the farm labor community.” Vineyard managers said they were mechanizing the labor-intensive work of pruning, when possible, and limiting or mechanizing canopy work. Aaron Lange, president of Acampo- based vineyard management company LangeTwins Inc., said until a few years ago he saw thousands of workers pulling leaves each year in the Lodi area to allow air and sunlight to penetrate vineyard canopies. “That occurred every spring like clock- work,” Lange said. “I saw very few crews doing that this year. If leaf pulling is done at all, it’s done with a machine.” While layoffs at wineries made headlines in recent years, experts said job losses in vineyards were difficult to track because laws requiring that mass layoffs be reported to the state do not apply to seasonal labor. Philip Martin, professor emeritus of ag- ricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, said it can also be “hard to find employment changes” across an entire crop sector when much of the work is done by contract laborers, as is

Old-vine zinfandel grapes are emptied into a gondola this month in Lodi. In addition to fewer winegrapes being harvested, growers have minimized hand labor for pruning and canopy work.

the case with winegrapes, because the quar- terly employment census conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not cate- gorize those workers by commodity. Farm labor contractors specializing in vineyard work said they had down- sized significantly. Steve McIntyre, CEO of Soledad-based Monterey Pacific Inc., which manages thousands of acres of vineyards across several coastal counties, said he was em- ploying about 20% fewer people than a few years ago. Noe Cisneros, owner of Bakersfield- based Empire Ag Inc., which primarily serves winegrape vineyards in Kern and Tulare counties, said his company went from employing about 900 people to just 150 during the past three years after its largest client, a major winery based in Northern California, pulled out its vineyards in the region, while other clients also removed acreage. “We’ve been knocking on doors, trying to find new contracts for our crews to con- tinue working, but it’s become very hard,” Cisneros said. “It’s tough all around.” Several labor contractors specializing in vineyards shut down altogether, said Kim- berly Clark, executive director of the Cali- fornia Farm Labor Contractor Association. Farmworkers and labor contractors said some vineyard workers may easily pivot to

other crops—or already work in them— but that isn’t the case for everyone. Gonzalez said she sought out other farm work to supplement her declining vineyard income but “couldn’t find any- thing anywhere.” Mario Galvan, owner of Lockeford- based Galvan Farming Services Inc., said he was forced to lay off longtime crew leaders as his Lodi-area business shrunk by nearly half within the past few years, while harvest income was down about 40% this year for his remaining workers. “A lot of families have been doing this for many years,” Galvan said of vineyard work in San Joaquin County. He said older workers, particularly those whose experi- ence was mostly in winegrapes, may have

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September 16, 2026 Ag Alert 19