Latino Occupational Representation · Agriculture

The Agriculture Gap

Latino workers are 73% of U.S. crop production workers, the backbone of American food supply. Latino farm owners: 7.1%. The workers who do the most essential labor in American agriculture own the fewest acres, carry the fewest loans, and sit on the fewest state agriculture boards. This is the sharpest within-industry inversion in the dataset.

7.1%
Lowest-represented role
Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
Source: BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
31.1%
Average Latino share
across 9 occupations
vs. 18.7% U.S. Latino workforce share
44%
Occupations below the
18.7% workforce benchmark
4 of 9 occupations tracked
66.0%
Highest-represented role
Graders and sorters, agricultural products
Source: BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Graders and sorters of agricultural products: 66% Latino, the highest rate in any occupation in the dataset. Farm owners: 7.1%. No other industry has a 59-point gap between who does the work and who owns the land.
All Occupations, Sorted by Latino Representation (lowest first)
Occupation Latino % · green line = 18.7% workforce benchmark Gap vs. benchmark Total employed Source
Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
7.1% 		-11.6pp 810K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Architects, except landscape and naval
10.5% 		-8.2pp 254K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Purchasing agents, except wholesale, retail, and farm products
13.7% 		-5.0pp 296K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Wholesale and retail buyers, except farm products
14.5% 		-4.2pp 179K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Agricultural and food science technicians
29.2% 		+10.5pp 55K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
First-line supervisors of farming, fishing, and forestry workers
38.3% 		+19.6pp 50K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations
48.1% 		+29.4pp 1,000K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Miscellaneous agricultural workers
52.3% 		+33.6pp 765K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Graders and sorters, agricultural products
66.0% 		+47.3pp 58K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg

Benchmark: 18.7% = U.S. Latino share of civilian labor force (BLS CPS 2025 annual average). California benchmark: 40.3% (CA Latino population share, 2020 Census). The green vertical line in each bar marks the 18.7% national workforce benchmark.

Your part in Agriculture
Latinos grow the country's food and own almost none of the land. Your part: be counted, move from labor toward ownership and the boards that set policy, and bring others with you.
See your field's number and be counted →
See how this connects to the full story, across all industries, over time.
See the full data story →

Data & Methodology

Occupation data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey (CPS) Table 11, 2025 annual average. "Latino" = "Hispanic or Latino" per BLS CPS coding. All figures are annual averages of monthly survey estimates; small occupations (<50,000 workers) have higher margin of error.

Silicon Valley Technology figures sourced from cirlabs / Reveal News EEO-1 analysis of large tech employers, 2016 (most recent public EEO-1 release with race × job category × company detail). Internal job classifications differ from BLS CPS categories.

Gap = Latino % − 18.7% U.S. Latino workforce benchmark (BLS CPS 2025). Negative gap = underrepresented relative to workforce share. All data public domain. Script and source: github.com/turnerll/ligazon.