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Sociology of Agriculture and Food (SAFRIG)

Who Counts as a Farmer? Organizational Discourses and the Limits of Inclusion for Latino Farmers Francisco Alfredo Reyes Rocha*, Francisco Alfredo Reyes Rocha,

Latino farmers are increasingly present in Northeastern U.S. agriculture, yet the terms of their inclusion remain uneven and contested. Although organizations publicly affirm diversity and outreach, their everyday discourse narrows what inclusion means, defining who counts as a farmer and under what conditions access to resources and legitimacy become possible. This paper examines how agricultural organizations frame Latino farmers and how those framings shape the boundaries of resource access, recognition, and institutional belonging.

Using a qualitative, interpretive design informed by LatCrit Theory, this study examines how Latino identity is racialized within agricultural institutions. It analyzes 40 semi-structured interviews with extension professionals, nonprofit leaders, and agency staff conducted between 2022 and 2024, alongside 51 organizational documents. Data were coded inductively and deductively in NVivo and examined through Critical Discourse Analysis to trace how routine language, program descriptions, and public narratives construct the roles and opportunities available to Latino farmers.

Across interviews and documents, Latino farmers are consistently assumed to be migrants, even when they are U.S.-born or multi-generational producers. Within that lens, four dominant discourses emerge. Latino agriculturalists are framed as essential laborers, valued for endurance and loyalty yet rarely imagined as owners. They are portrayed as culturally rooted and sustainable producers associated with ancestral knowledge and diversified practices. They are cast as “deserving farmers,” whose access to land is narrated as a moral reward earned through sacrifice and trust. And they appear as contingent beneficiaries, dependent on discretionary goodwill rather than institutional guarantees, particularly amid backlash against race-conscious policy.

These discourses convert structural inequality into moral narratives of deservingness, limiting Latino farmers’ claims to land, resources, and institutional power. While organizations signal openness, inclusion remains largely symbolic, tied to character and exceptionality rather than structural redistribution. This analysis shows how moral economies of deservingness stand in for structural reform, challenging celebratory accounts of diversity in agriculture and underscoring the need to move beyond symbolic recognition toward material equity.