Abstract

The demographics of the nursery industry in the United States have changed dramatically in the past 10–15 years. Today, the majority of the worker level of nursery staff is Spanish-speaking. Approximately 90% of the Oregon and 60% of the Ohio nursery industry work forces are composed of Hispanic employees. Many of these employees understand little English, and Spanish is their primary language. In Oregon and Ohio 375 and 250 surveys, respectively, were distributed to Spanish-speaking nursery employees. One-hundred-ninety-three surveys were completed in Oregon, as compared to 127 in Ohio. The purpose of these surveys was to determine the backgrounds, experience level and work activities of Hispanic nursery employees, their technical information interests, and what resources were available to these employees. The survey responses came from 3 sources: Interviews at training programs, on-farm visits and mailed surveys in a newsletter format. The three sources were pooled and analyzed. The survey targeted nursery workers filling primarily manual labor positions; however, we found this staff level was predominantly Hispanic. Also, the majority of those surveyed were Hispanic employees who had risen to supervisor or crew leader level, such as propagation area supervisors. Plant identification (95%) and weed control (90%) were the foremost technical topics of interest of Ohio surveyed employees. This was significantly different from the survey results in Oregon where 81% chose insect control, 77% weed control, and 66% disease control as leading topics of interest. In Oregon, plant identification rated only 45%. Ninety-three percent of Ohio and 97% of Oregon newsletter readers wanted to receive future issues of the Spanish language newsletter. This finding was consistent with responses from nursery visits and training programs in the two states where respondents indicated their positive reception to receiving technical information in Spanish.