Farmworkers Organize Strikes in Yakima Valley Hop Fields

In 1971, United Farm Workers Organizing Committee activists and Mexican American farmworkers organized strikes at major hop ranches in Washington’s Yakima Valley. The action spread across roughly fourteen or fifteen ranches amid disputes over union recognition, wages, working conditions, and alleged intimidation by growers. The strikes make visible the people who cultivated and harvested brewing ingredients after mechanization. Beer’s agricultural supply chain still depended on seasonal labor, and the campaign connected hop production to the wider Chicano and farmworker movements of the period.