Marijuana farmworkers in California
California's new 'El Dorado'
Many summer farmworkers come to California to work in the marijuana harvest, where they earn a salary of $10,000 a month and the opportunity to smoke marijuana while working.
In the United States, these day laborers are called "trimmers," and if they are foreigners, "trimmigrants." They spend their summers working from sunrise to sunset on various farms, and for many, this is their primary profession. Their work consists of picking the buds from the branches, sorting them, and placing them in a bag with their name on it. Then, they trim the leaves and prepare the buds for sale.
Conditions and wages depend on the variety and quality of each farm's crops in California.
At the end of the day, the bag they've collected is weighed, and they're paid approximately $200 per half kilo. However, it's forbidden to pick only the branches with large, central buds; if you do, you're fired. Payment can be made daily, monthly, or weekly, and depending on the harvest and the farm, you can earn anywhere from $4,000 to $18,000 in a month.
The “trimmigrants” are usually Spanish and Mexican, while the foremen and middle managers of the plantation are trusted Americans and always patrol with a gun in hand.
According to Eduardo, a farm laborer from Granada who decided to go to California to harvest marijuana, having a contact is essential. He went to a farm where a friend of his had already worked and recommended Eduardo. He says that there was a great atmosphere on the farm, that the boss threw parties every two weeks, and the foreman was a typical sixty-something hippie.
There are both industrial plantations and smaller farms, and the latter tend to have a better working environment and eco-friendly practices are better paid. There are even farms exclusively for women.
As with everything in life, we can find experiences of all kinds of day laborers, from those who haven't been paid after a month of work to those who have taken advantage of the situation to steal half the harvest from the farmers.
Fountain: Diario Vasco
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