Silver City, NM - From our incredibly rural corner of New Mexico- the Southwest Regional Food Policy Council, comprised of ranchers, farmers, health-care professionals, food systems experts, non-profit leaders and concerned citizens are often surprised by mainstream opinions on food and farm related issues. As with many issues in the state, the conversation seems heavily weighted towards the urban areas without considering the smaller, more rural communities that make up the rest of the population.
The proposed workman's compensation mandate that would require all operating farms to carry insurance on their workers has been an issue of great concern for us. Firstly, we recognize the importance of providing safe working conditions for our food producers and ensuring their protection from unjust or unfair work places. Certain food policy regulations have improved our national food system, but only do so when they are well informed and fairly designed.
Mandating all food producers to carry this insurance greatly harms small growers and ranchers because the costs are abysmally high. Several small producers in our region have stated they would likely have to go out of business if the mandate passes because they are barely turning a profit as-is.
One small rancher, a member of our FPC keeps a few dozen cattle at her fourth-generation ranch in Hidalgo county. She mostly operates it herself and has no full-time employees. However, because her sons (who were raised on the ranch) help her with chores when they come home to visit she would have to carry a prohibitively expensive policy.
According to the most recent state agricultural census we have just 2,799 farmers who gross over $50k per year and over 21,600 who gross under 50k per year. When you take into account the relatively low profit margins of farms and the labor involved in bringing a product to market it is likely that less than 10% of our farmers can support themselves through farming alone.
A workman's compensation mandate would be yet another policy in place that is aimed at regulating large, vertically integrated farms and unduly harms the small ones.
We are glad this mandate will not be passed, because we don't want to see another small farm go under and we certainly don't want to see another hand in the pockets of our small food producers.
The Southwest New Mexico Food Policy Council is the regional food and farm advocacy voice for Southwest New Mexico. We work to assure that the voices that represent the rural and frontier region is not only heard, but are a key part of the solution.
For more information on Southwest New Mexico Food Policy Council contact Rasmussen at (575) 534-0101 ext. 2102 or email: brasmussen@swchi.org