Araceli Aceves Cortés used to get by working in the fields and orchards of the Sacramento Valley. 

For 60 hours a week, when seasonal work was available, the mother of three pruned nut trees or tended fields of melons or tomatoes in Colusa County. 

She paid her rent. She stocked up on meat and vegetables a week at a time. In the evenings, she helped her children with their homework.

But her life changed when California phased in a 2016 law entitling farmworkers to more overtime benefits. The law was meant to raise wages. Instead, Aceves Cortés lost a third of her work hours and about a third of her income. After paying her bills, she didn’t have a few hundred dollars left to fill a shopping cart with groceries, so she cut back, buying necessities a few at a time. 

You can read more at AgAlert, the newspaper of FELS parent organization, California Farm Bureau, here.