Grower influence during a participatory project with farmworkers

Scholars argue that growers occupy a special place in the US imagination, which grants them and their priorities power in policy spaces and disrupts efforts at addressing injustices that farmworkers experience. While farmworkers have successfully organized and made structural changes on their own behalf, there is a critical need to find new spaces where farmworkers can address claims for justice. Organizations that serve and advocate for farmworkers implement participatory projects to increase opportunities for farmworkers to discuss and address injustices. However, little research interrogates how growers could influence organizational capacity to support meaningful participation, processes that foster agency and provide avenues for tying grievances to action, for farmworkers. This paper begins to address this gap. Results draw on five months of ethnographic fieldwork (semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document review) with the Valle Vista Farmworker Ministry, an organization that serves farmworkers in the rural southeastern US. Valle Vista was implementing a participatory project with the farmworkers. In addition to creating leadership opportunities for farmworkers, stakeholders aspired to create a direct relationship with growers and enhance organizational capacity to advocate on behalf of farmworkers. Results show that fears and risks of upsetting growers hindered Valle Vista’s efforts towards fully creating meaningful participation with farmworkers. Given these findings, this study posits that in addition to having power in policy spaces and the US imagination, growers also hold this influence in participatory spaces created by organizations. The study concludes with recommendations for scholars and organizations that would like to implement participatory projects with migrant farmworker populations.