Working During Wildfires: The Sonoma County Ag Pass Program and the Health, Safety, Economic Security, and Data Privacy of Agricultural Workers

Summary

In 2021, California passed legislation (AB1103) detailing how livestock owners/operators may re-enter evacuation zones for essential activities during an active wildfire. Some counties have interpreted this legislation and broader emergency powers to authorize “Ag Pass” programs as well, which expand access into evacuation zones for agricultural owners/operators. The Sonoma County Agricultural Access Verification Card Program (“Ag Pass”) is one of the first in the state to implement this legislation with a clear expansion of who qualifies for an Ag Pass to include full-time agricultural workers, and includes “harvesting” for the first time as an authorized activity. This represents a pivotal shift in access to evacuated areas that may expand work opportunities for agricultural workers, but also raises several concerns that could worsen existing economic inequality and risks to workers’ health, safety, and privacy.

Based on extensive legal analysis and a survey of over 1,000 farmworkers in Sonoma County, California conducted in 2024, this paper evaluates the Sonoma Ag Pass and state laws regulating agricultural work inside wildfire evacuation zones. We recognize the history of the Ag Pass program as a response to the acute and urgent safety and economic needs raised by livestock and agriculture owners during an evacuation. However, our research also identifies how the county developed a program that expanded access to agricultural workers but in practice primarily meets the needs of owners/operators. This results in significantly more people potentially qualifying for an Ag Pass and may result in gaps in protection for workers re-entering evacuation zones. Our research highlights how under enforcement and gaps in state health and safety laws, as well as a lack of engagement with trusted community groups to interface with agricultural workers, may exacerbate these harms in future wildfires.

Our analysis breaks down how the Ag Pass program currently operates and culminates in recommendations to improve the program administration, requirements and implementation at the county level. These recommendations include specific actions for the Board of Supervisors, such as requiring health conditions be considered in the decision to activate the Ag Pass, and creating a data privacy policy which outlines how personal information collected for the program is shared, stored and protected. Recommendations for state action point to the critical role the state legislature and agencies tasked with occupational health and labor oversight must play in enforcing labor, health and safety protection inside an evacuation zone, and implementing new economic programs to address workers’ concerns regarding financial coercion, health and safety during a wildfire.

This research highlights that increased representation of agricultural workers’ experiences and self-identified needs in state and local policy planning is critical to ensure workers’ human rights are protected during wildfires. A program through which government and community-based organizations engage with each other can also help increase workers’ trust in the system when faced with the challenging decision to work in wildfire evacuation zones.