Family Farm Fantasy: How Hood River Agritourism Enterprises Leverage Agrarianism and Exclude Latinx Workers in Digital Landscapes

Although the archetype of the Jeffersonian family farm has been around as a cultural icon for centuries, it rarely led to policy decisions that helped family farmers. Instead, in practice it has accelerated agrarian capitalism and a concentration of agricultural wealth in a few corporations and individuals. Nonetheless, agrarianism and the image of Jefferson’s yeoman farmer have remained powerful marketing and political tools. In the Pacific Northwest, the tiny but infamous Hood River Valley has been blending labor intensive horticulture and rural tourism by attracting tourists to farms for over two decades to preserve its “family farms.” At the same time, the horticultural industry relies on often obscured Latinx labor to maintain and harvest fruit. How do farm owners navigate marketing and creating leisurely, carefree experiences for tourists amid these circumstances? Through Instagram posts, tourist brochures, websites, and semi structured interviews with farm tourism professionals, I found that agritourism enterprises do not show Latinx labor, but instead, they create comfortable accommodations for tourists not afforded to farmworkers and centralize contributions of mainly white owners and service workers