Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, May 27, 2025…
- May marks the beginning of harvest season when some 800,000 farmworkers in California get to work picking food that lands on tables around the world. Though agriculture is a nearly $60 billion industry in the state, many farmworkers on the Central Coast don’t have enough to eat.
- A school board in Temecula, that’s been embroiled in controversy for the last two years, wants to revive a contentious policy to require schools to notify parents if their child is transgender. They’re meeting Tuesday to brainstorm ideas to get around a state law that prohibits such policies.
May marks the beginning of harvest season—when some 800,000 farmworkers in California get to work picking food that lands on tables around the world. In 2023, California farms made nearly $60 billion but many farmworkers on the Central Coast still don’t have enough to eat.
Ann López has been advocating for farmworker rights for nearly two decades. Her organization, Center for Farmworker Families, started monthly food distribution events to support hungry farmworkers six years ago. “I found a family hungry in this community. The kids were crying because they were so hungry. And I thought, we’re not gonna do this,” says López. “This is immoral.”
López called Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County to figure out a solution to feeding the farmworker community. Second Harvest partners with 173 programs across the county to deliver roughly 10 million pounds of food annually. They were among the handful of organizations that provided food for the first event. Now, over 20 organizations pitch in items including clothes, toiletries, toys, and household goods for farmworkers to take home free of charge.
A National Agricultural Workers Survey estimated nearly 25 percent of California farmworkers were living below the poverty line before the pandemic. While these events help farmworkers get closer to meeting their basic needs, how many families show up varies. Past events have provided goods for up to 400 families, López says, but this month roughly 90 families turned out. Ernestina is a retired farmworker who has worked with López for 14 years and says the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped people from coming. “Fear doesn’t let us move forward. Today, many families missed out because there were rumors of ICE,” Ernestina, who asked us not to use her last name, says in Spanish. “While people are scared, they also need to have food at home.”
The Temecula school board— that’s been embroiled in controversy for the last two years— wants to revive a contentious policy to require schools to notify parents if their child is transgender. They’re meeting Tuesday to brainstorm ideas to get around a state law that prohibits such policies.
