Haphazard pesticide enforcement puts farmworkers in California at risk

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Set us as preferred Leer en español In California’s Sacramento Valley, a grower was cited for multiple pesticide safety violations in a stone fruit orchard.In the sweeping farmlands near the Central Coast, a seed supplier that cultivates peppers, vegetables and fruit was hit with more than two dozen pesticide safety violations, some of them serious offenses that caused health or environmental hazards.And in the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural retailer with a history of pesticide safety violations was cited for failing to provide protective equipment for workers and post emergency medical information in the fields.In all, nearly 18,000 regulatory actions were taken by county pesticide safety inspectors across California from the start of 2020 through June 2025.Fewer than 30% resulted in fines, though, according to state enforcement records.About This StoryThis story was produced in partnership with Capital & Main, a California-based nonprofit investigative news publication and the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

It was supported by the James B.McClatchy Foundation and Fund for Investigative Journalism.When regulators did levy penalties, they were often as low as $50 to $250, and they varied widely from county to county for the same violations, according to an analysis of more than 40,000 state enforcement records obtained through public records requests.The regulatory system designed to protect farmworkers from pesticides is enforced haphazardly across California.

Even in cases where regulators found that companies endangered workers or committed multiple violations, few were penalized for all their citations.Instead, they received warnings or notices to correct problems for cases in which they were not penalized, an invest...