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2024 General Election Information for Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito County voters

Is the family farmer a dying breed? From California to South Korea, agriculture faces a crisis

A soybean field in South Korea following harvest.
Oscar Jimenez
/
for KAZU News
A field on the Yun family farm in Paju, South Korea, following the harvest.

This is the first of a two-part series reported for KAZU by Oscar Jimenez, a Cal State Monterey Bay student who recently spent a semester studying political science and international relations at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea.

California’s Salinas Valley and the South Korean agricultural community of Paju—which hugs the North Korean border—are some 6,000 miles apart. But together, they tell the story of a global agriculture industry that is under stress from inflation, worker shortages and overall uncertainty.

The Salinas Valley is known for fruits and vegetables—“The Salad Bowl of the World”—while Paju is most famous for its soybeans. Every year, the city holds the Paju Jangdan Soybean Festival, where farmers gather to sell their crops to locals and tourists, and to talk about business.

Farmer Yun Chung-seong has been selling his beans since the festival's inception 27 years ago. He said his farming background goes back even further.

“I am 70 right now and have been farming ever since I was born,” Yun said.

Yun’s parents returned to Paju in 1961, eight years after the end of the Korean War.

The war left South Korea in a state of disarray. But as the years went by, Yun witnessed his country building itself back up from its war-torn and poverty-stricken state, into one of the world's leading economies.

That overall prosperity has led to serious complications in South Korea’s agriculture industry, however.

For one thing, it has meant that more lucrative sectors are crowding out agriculture. Farming and farm-related industries make up just 1.6% of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to the World Bank. That share has been declining for decades.

That means that the next generation of would-be farmers is finding opportunities elsewhere.

The result is a worsening farm labor shortage in places like Paju. According to South Korean government statistics, more than half the nation’s farm population is 65 or older.

Lifelong farmer Yun Chung-seong (right), says the family farm is no longer a lucrative business to pass down to his son Seong-jun (left).
Oscar Jimenez
/
for KAZU News
Lifelong farmer Yun Chung-seong (right), says the family farm is no longer a lucrative business to pass down to his son Seong-jun (left).

The new generation includes Yun's son, Seong-jun, who is now in his 30s.

Yun Chung-seong came to the bitter realization long ago that his dream of passing the family farm down to his son had vanished.

“If farming were an industry that has a good future, and has sustainable economic gains, then I would think about teaching it to and handing it down to my son, but that isn’t the case. And, realistically, I don't think that will be possible,” he said.

Seung-jun has reached the same conclusion.

“If my father wasn’t working in this industry I may have thought to myself, ‘This is something I can work with,’ but since I've seen the realities up close, I still think I could do it and may be able to manage, but I don't think if I put everything into this line of work it would work out well,” he said. “As my father mentioned, it’s not easy.”

The U.S. faces an even deeper farm labor crisis, and the roots go far beyond an aging demographic.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of family farm workers fell by more than 70% between 1950 and 2000. And, while farming has become much more automated since then, outside hires now make up more than half of the farm labor force. Many of those workers are migrants, in a time of immigration crackdowns.

It is one of the many factors making farming tough in the Salinas Valley, said Ryan Kelly, Vice President and General Manager of Boutonnet Farms, a diversified vegetable grower in business since 1935.

Ryan Kelly, Vice President of Boutonnet Farms near Salinas.
Oscar Jimenez
/
for KAZU News
Ryan Kelly, Vice President of Boutonnet Farms near Salinas, says farming is becoming more difficult due to inflation, regulation, and labor shortages.

“It’s an extremely risky business. And, you know, it tends to be feast or famine, there are years when, you know, we do okay, break even, that's probably the majority of the years,” he said. “Occasionally, you make a little bit of money, and pretty frequently you lose a lot of money.”

These days, Kelly said, the operation is struggling.

He said that inflation alone has raised his total costs by around ten percent.


Close-up view of a head of lettuce about to be harvested.
Oscar Jimenez
/
For KAZU News
Head of lettuce grown at Boutonnet Farms.

And, he said, the labor issues are complicated by government regulation. He points to California’s Assembly Bill 1066, known as the Phase-In Overtime for Agricultural Workers Act of 2016. As the name implies, the law gradually increased requirements for overtime pay and improved working conditions, beginning in 2019. Kelly said that the law has forced him to cut his employees hours to save money.

“The regulatory climate in California makes things even much more expensive, much more difficult to work with, at times,” said Kelly.

Kelly is still holding out some hope that his children—who are still young—might follow him into the business, at least in a sense. He said that they have expressed interest in ag-related science and technology. But that would mean that just like his South Korean counterpart, Yun Chun-seong, Ryan Kelly could be the last generation of his family to work the fields.

Yun said that may be the way of the future.

“As far as I know, since agriculture has been tough lately, and why there is no one to carry it on is because it is hard to make a strong economic foundation and live off of it,” he said.

A lettuce field in California's Salinas Valley.
Oscar Jimemez
/
For KAZU News
This field of lettuce at Boutonnet Farms near Salinas stretches toward the Santa Lucia Range.

While farming has never been easy, they both continue to do it because it’s something they were born to do.

“Farmers are stewards of the land more than anything,” says Kelly.

“You farm with your mind,” shared Yun. “I have been doing this for decades but I still farm inside my own head.”

Oscar Jimenez is pursuing a degree in Humanities and Communications at Cal State Monterey Bay. In addition to contributing to KAZU, he has reported for CSUMB's student-run newspaper, the Lutrinae. His passion lies in exploring and reporting on significant global issues.