California's Farm Workers

Michael Greenberg, reporter for the New York Review, examined California in two recent articles, the first in December on agriculture, and the second in January on housing’s high cost.

In the first, he paints a stunning picture of agriculture in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a stretch of land “234 miles long and 130 miles wide,” with Stockton to the north and Bakersfield to the south.

Greenberg writes, “Measured by yearly production, the San Joaquin Valley is one of the highest-value stretches of farmland in the country, and is dominated by large growers who preside over a labor force of mi...