Analyzing the future ag workforce 

Agricultural business senior Miguel Perez Esparza is working with faculty mentor Dr. Annette Levi to study the state's agricultural workforce in an effort to learn the best ways growers can recruit and retain this shrinking workforce.

Perez Esparza has designed a field worker survey that will be available this fall to determine what incentives and work site conditions will influence fieldworkers to apply and stay with an employer. The survey and its results, which are part of his senior Jordan College honors cohort research project, will be available in the spring 2024.

The project aims to better understand a state agricultural workforce has been declining over the past five years. Concurrent with this trend is the aging workforce; the average age of field workers is 42.9 years of age.

California is the most productive agricultural state in the United States and relies on a large workforce to complete production operations from planting to harvesting.

The Santa Maria native is also active on campus as a ASI senator at-large, Agricultural Ambassador, Dog Days Orientation Leader, Student Involvement Center marketing intern, and Office of Admissions and Recruitment student assisant. He has also worked develop and deliver a conference curriculum on agriculture education to high school students.