In California’s Sacramento Valley, a grower was cited for multiple pesticide safety violations in a stone fruit orchard.

In the sweeping farmlands near the Central Coast, a seed supplier that cultivates peppers, vegetables and fruit was hit with more than two dozen pesticide safety violations, some of them serious offenses that caused health or environmental hazards.

And in the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural retailer with a history of pesticide safety violations was cited for failing to provide protective equipment for workers and post emergency medical information in the fields.

In all, nearly 18,000 regulatory actions were taken by county pesticide safety inspectors across California from the start of 2020 through June 2025. Fewer than 30% resulted in fines, though, according to state enforcement records.

When regulators did levy penalties, they were often as low as $50 to $250, and they varied widely from county to county for the same violations, according to an analysis of more than 40,000 state enforcement records obtained through public records requests.

The regulatory system designed to protect farmworkers from pesticides is enforced haphazardly across California. Even in cases where regulators found that companies endangered workers or committed multiple violations, few were penalized for all their citations. Instead, they received warnings or notices to correct problems for cases in which they were not penalized, an investigation by Capital & Main has found.

In interviews, dozens of farmworkers reported suffering from nausea, burning eyes or irritated throats due to chemical-laced fields. Most said they didn’t report the problems because they feared retaliation or lacked confidence in the regulatory system.

“Yes, there are laws,” said Jesus, his face wrinkled from years of harvesting garlic, pruning grape vines and picking blackberries in the sun-baked San Joaquin Valley.

“But unfortunately, at times the law favors the powerful — it sides with the wealthy,” he added, asking that his last name not be used for fear of reprisal from his bosses.

Autonomous tractors, which are used to apply pesticides, line a field in Fresno County. The machines are operated remotely and spray crops including pistachio and almond trees. A scarecrow overlooks a field of corn at La Huerta de Cantua Creek.

Labor and community activists who track pesticide safety issues contend that lenient penalties, as well as warning letters and written notices, fail to deter violators, especially repeat offenders and larger businesses that can absorb the costs of fines.

State records show that warning letters and written notices were issued more than twice as often as penalties, “[raising] serious questions about accountability and deterrence,” said Bianca Lopez, co-founder and project director at Valley Improvement Projects, which monitors pesticide safety in the northern San Joaquin Valley.

The findings come as state officials are proposing to overhaul decades-old pesticide regulations to toughen enforcement and standardize penalties. Those proposals are strongly opposed by groups representing growers, retailers and providers of agricultural services.

Current regulations are enforced by county agricultural commissioners, who police pesticides in their jurisdictions and also promote California’s $61-billion agricultural industry.

In a statement, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation acknowledged the need to improve regulation and ensure it is applied consistently in every county.

Department spokesperson Amy MacPherson said officials are also proposing new regulations that would increase fines for violations that affect people’s health. This can include cases in which toxic chemicals drift into neighboring fields or communities and sicken people.

MacPherson said county agricultural commissioners have discretion in deciding which enforcement tools — warning letters, written notices, fines — to use in a given situation, depending on the “nature and severity of the violation.”

Paola Lopez, who has harvested raisins in the central San Joaquin Valley, supports stronger regulations.

On a Saturday in late September 2025, the 40-year-old mother of four was loading crates of grapes onto a forklift in a Fresno County field. A tractor pulling a pesticide sprayer passed by on a street just a few yards away. She remembers a loud blast — then a toxic spray covered her face and arms.

“It was a little hard for me to breathe, and my eyes started burning a lot,” she said in Spanish, recounting the incident to a reporter. “I could hardly see.”

Disoriented, she called local activist Nayamin Martinez, executive director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. Lopez had received pesticide safety training from the organization.

Martinez told Lopez to go to a hospital and said she would file a complaint with the Fresno County agricultural commissioner’s office.

“She started vomiting and became dizzy,” the local activist wrote of Lopez in the complaint.

Paola Lopez, 40, harvests raisins in the San Joaquin Valley and cares for her four children when she is not working in the fields. In September 2025, she was exposed to toxic pesticides and required emergency medical treatment. The county agricultural commissioner investigated the incident and found multiple state pesticide safety violations. Above, Lopez at home with two of her children on April 4.

Advertisement

A reporter reviewed copies of safety notices required by federal law that detail the hazardous chemicals that were mixed into the pesticide load that sprayed Lopez.

“Harmful if inhaled,” one notice says. “Causes skin irritation.”

“Danger … Causes serious eye irritation,” a second document adds.

“May cause cancer,” it warns.

California, unlike other states, has a split system of pesticide oversight. The Department of Pesticide Regulation is charged with statewide enforcement and provides guidance and training for 55 county agricultural commissioners, who police their jurisdictions.

State officials do not supervise the agricultural commissioners, who are appointed by and report to their elected boards of supervisors.

In interviews, commissioners lauded California’s enforcement system, saying they think it’s important to have discretion when applying regulations because crops, growing seasons and pesticide use vary from county to county. They said their work has improved safety in the fields.

The flexibility “gives us the ability to closely work with growers and … keep our communities safe,” said Juan Hidalgo, agricultural commissioner for Monterey County, one of the top farming counties in the nation with a gross agricultural production value of $4.8 billion in 2025.

Last year, a Capital & Main investigation found that companies with violations in multiple counties across California were not fined for hundreds of those offenses — many involving worker safety.

In 2023, a federal audit flagged serious pesticide incidents in half a dozen counties and uncovered patchwork oversight by agricultural commissioners. The county regulators interpret pesticide safety laws differently, are not required to justify fines and are not mandated to check a company’s statewide compliance history, the audit found.

The Department of Pesticide Regulation in late 2025 unveiled searchable county and statewide data breakdowns for regulatory actions taken by agricultural commissioners from the start of 2020 through the end of June 2025.

During that period, commissioners took 17,742 regulatory actions for pesticide violations of all types, but only 4,885 resulted in fines or referrals to district attorneys for possible prosecution, according to the data.

The treatment of violators, including repeat offenders and companies cited for serious infractions, varied depending on the county, according to the analysis by Capital & Main, which examined 40,150 state enforcement records detailing investigations, violations and civil penalties from 2018 through early 2024.

In one county, for instance, an agricultural commissioner fined a farmer $2,000 for failing to provide safety training for workers who applied pesticides in fields. In another county, a grower was fined $200 for the same violation.

1

Advertisement

2

1. A farmworker, 43, who is not identified for her safety, picks grapes that will be sold as raisins in southwest Fresno County on Sept. 3. She works from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is paid 36 cents for each paper sheet she fills. 2. A grape farm in Fresno County.

Failure to provide pesticide safety training for workers who handle pesticides is one of the most common violations in California, according to state regulators. Such training is crucial for all field workers because pesticides have different safety requirements and can pose serious health risks.

Many farmworkers who were interviewed, including Lopez, who was sprayed in the raisin field, said employers did not provide pesticide safety training.

According to the analysis, more than 240 businesses were cited for at least 1,268 violations in multiple counties across California, but they paid no fines for nearly half of these citations — many involving worker safety.

Labor advocates who have studied pesticide regulation say the oversight gaps and failures to impose stiffer fines underscore the need for more vigilant enforcement. They note that rural and predominantly Latino communities are disproportionately affected.

“We need much stronger and more consistent enforcement to protect workers and communities,” said Anne Katten, director of the Pesticide & Work Health & Safety Project for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.

In June, the Department of Pesticide Regulation unveiled proposed changes to state pesticide regulations. The approval process will take months and has involved public comment; revised rules are expected to be adopted next year, officials said.

To address uneven enforcement, the new rules would require agricultural commissioners to check whether companies were cited for violations in other counties, officials said. Commissioners would also have increased reporting requirements when they don’t impose fines. Minimum levels for penalties would be raised and stiffer fines would be imposed for repeat offenders.

But individual farmers as well as more than a dozen associations that represent growers, agricultural retailers and firms that spray pesticides have voiced opposition to the changes. They argue that current regulations are effective, that agricultural commissioners need flexibility to investigate violations and that more training is needed to help growers understand the rules, according to written comments obtained through California Public Records Act requests.

“A one-size-fits-all enforcement approach fails to account for California’s agricultural diversity,” said a letter sent to state officials in December that was signed by groups such as the California Strawberry Commission and California Agricultural Aircraft Assn.

“Maintaining county-level discretion,” the letter says, “ensures that enforcement decisions reflect on-the-ground realities and local expertise.”

Some supporting the overhaul say it doesn’t go far enough to protect workers and communities.

Violations of reporting requirements, including those involving pesticide spraying near schools, would trigger only minor, optional fines, said Yanely Martinez, an organizer with Safe Ag Safe Schools, which monitors pesticide safety in the Salinas and Pajaro valleys.

In early June, the investigation into the pesticide exposure case involving Paola Lopez was closed.

Officials found five violations, including failure to have an emergency medical plan for workers, failure to protect people and wildlife from pesticide drift and failure to have pesticide safety records on file, according to a copy of the investigative report obtained through a public records request.

The agricultural commissioner’s office referred the case in June to the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office for possible criminal prosecution. As of mid-September, the case was still under review and there was no timeline for a decision regarding potential criminal charges, said Taylor P. Long, spokesperson for the district attorney.

If prosecutors reject the case, it would go back to the agricultural commissioner’s office, which would determine the severity of the violations and how much the fines would be, said Mario Reeves, Fresno County’s assistant agricultural commissioner.

Lopez was at her apartment in the prosperous farmland known as the “Raisin Capital of the World” when a reporter told her about the investigation’s findings and the timeframe for penalties.

She expressed frustration that months would pass before anyone is held accountable.

“How many more people will be exposed? … How many more people will get injured?” she said.

Lopez’s medical bills are covered by workers’ compensation insurance, but her health has worsened and her doctor has referred her to specialists who deal with respiratory and nervous system disorders, she said.

She had gone back to the raisin fields days after she was exposed, even though her throat was sore and she was coughing, because she needed the money. “We cannot afford the luxury of just walking away from a job,” she said.

She lasted less than two days before becoming too sick to work. She has not returned.

Lopez is an independent journalist and fellow at the McGraw Center for Business Journalism. Data journalist Cherry Salazar analyzed state pesticide records for this report.

Meta is doubling down on smart glasses and artificial intelligence even as concerns mount that wearable technology is being used to violate people’s privacy.

On Wednesday, the company said it’s releasing $1,299 virtual reality glasses that buyers can use to watch movies, play games and browse the internet. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram also announced a new lineup of smart glasses including a $349 pair without cameras.

The company plans to add an AI agent called Muse to its smart glasses which users can use to book appointments, find flights and do other tasks. And it’s been working on a gadget with its AI agent that fits on a keychain that’s still in development but the company plans to ship in December.

The release of new wearables underscores how one of the world’s largest tech companies is barreling forward in the AI race even as tech workers and politicians call for the industry to slow down.

“It’s no secret that people in the industry have a wide range of views about how the future is going to go. But at Meta, we are optimists because we believe in people,” said Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg during a keynote speech at the company’s conference.

The path to a safe future, he said, is to “distribute this technology widely and create the right checks and balances, rather than concentrating it in the hands of just a few.”

The company, which has been criticized for its collection of people’s social media data, has faced backlash from people who have called its high-tech eyewear “pervert glasses” because some buyers modified them to secretly record people.

More than 70 people who bought, owned or were recorded with smart glasses have sued the company, alleging in one lawsuit filed this year that intimate images were exposed to contract workers tasked with training artificial intelligence. Meta has denied the allegations in the lawsuit and says it has taken “steps to filter this data to help remove identifying information and to protect people’s privacy.”

Zuckerberg said the company is releasing more privacy protections that would prevent anyone including Meta from accessing people’s data when they use certain AI features on their glasses. Wearing a black shirt that said “building is my love language,” Zuckerberg stood on stage in front of shelves filled with the company’s smart glasses.

Meta’s new wearables also come at a sensitive moment for the tech industry. Concerns that humans will lose control of AI surged this month after former Anthropic safety researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and posted on social media site X “that people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Politicians have been trying to place more guardrails around the technology. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to expand oversight of AI companies and speed up the development of a “kill switch” for AI models.

Some politicians and tech executives say concerns about AI’s existential risk are overblown.

Zuckerberg said in a post on X that companies such as Meta have incentives “to move at the pace required to train its models safely.” He said Meta delayed the release of its Muse AI agent “for several months to focus on safety and security.”

The app that people use to access the Muse AI agent topped Apple’s charts for free productivity apps, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.

The app also prompted pushback from Amazon, which blocked Muse from shopping on the e-commerce site.

At Meta’s campus, crowds lined up outside for the keynote speech as people snapped photos with a furry mascot called Jolly for the company’s AI agent Muse. Meta has said Muse includes privacy protections and the AI agent can’t see people’s passwords or payment methods.

Meta has been working on advancing artificial intelligence efforts for more than a decade. The company has also been improving its virtual reality headsets and smart glasses, partnering with celebrities such as Kylie Jenner and brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley to market them.

Taking on tech giants such as Apple, it’s also been expanding its retail footprint by opening stores including a flagship one in West Hollywood in 2025.

Meta makes most of its money from advertising but it’s been investing heavily in building new AI hardware and data centers.

Meta’s reality labs division, which includes its wearable devices, lost $4.6 billion in the second quarter. But the company still has deep pockets to experiment with new wearables. It reported a net income of $15.8 billion during that quarter.

Meta’s foray into virtual reality products dates to 2014, when the company purchased Oculus VR. California entrepreneur Palmer Luckey co-founded the VR startup before starting defense tech company Anduril Industries.

Meta, which was formerly known as Facebook, has pushed this idea of the metaverse — digital spaces where people will work, socialize and play through virtual avatars.

At Meta’s headquarters, employees showcased its VR glasses, which includes its AI agent. The gadget, scheduled to go on sale in spring 2027, weighs 100 grams — the weight of a deck of cards — and easier to use compared to its Quest VR headsets and is less pricey than Apple’s $3,699 Vision Pro headset.

People can type on a digital keyboard, play games and immerse themselves in a concert or basketball game as they watch a massive screen through the glasses. But Meta doesn’t view the eyewear as a replacement for people’s television or going to in-person events.

“This is for those moments in which we’re looking for that kind of differentiated experience on the go,” said Brett Vogel, vice president of Meta’s Metaverse Business Group.

A massive family-owned winery spanning San Joaquin and Sacramento counties is for sale after struggling to survive the Canadian boycott of U.S. alcohol.

McManis Family Vineyards, founded in 1990, is selling 3,500 acres of property, including a winery facility in Ripon and 10 vineyards ranging from Clarksburg to outside Modesto.

It’s the latest loss amid a rocky period for California’s wine industry, which has seen wineries of all sizes lay off employees and shut down facilities to cut costs.

The industry has been hit by weakening demand, a grape oversupply crisis, and a Canadian boycott of American wines triggered by President Trump’s tariffs. Canada is the biggest international consumer of California wines.

“After 25 years of incredible growth for the California wine industry, the last five have been pretty challenging,” said wine industry consultant Dale Stratton, who spent more than 30 years in leadership roles across Gallo Wines and Constellation Brands.

McManis Family Vineyards declined to comment on its decision to sell. Its winery facility and surrounding land is on sale for $22.5 million, according to the real estate listing. The sale prices of the vineyards range from $800,000 to $14 million.

“It was a very hard decision for myself and my family,” said Ron McManis, president and co-owner of the company, in a written statement provided to the Sacramento Bee.

The winery facility has the capacity to crush 50,000 tons of grapes each year and bottle up to 3 million cases of wine. The company’s wine sales have fallen drastically since last summer as exports to Canada fell by about 74,000 cases between July 2025 and July 2026, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Canadian exports used to make up 40% of the company’s export sales, but have fallen to 5%. The vineyard has also seen a drop in its bulk sales to larger U.S. wine brands, which usually make up about 90% of its business.

The Wine Institute, which represents California wineries, said in a report that U.S. wine exports totaled $805 million in 2025, down 35% from 2024.

Boycotts imposed by several Canadian provinces since last March have “erased” roughly $360 million in revenue that the U.S. wine industry would have otherwise earned, according to the report.

“It’s really serious because some companies had a third of their volume, some had over 50% of their volume that was going to Canada,” Stratton said.

The Wine Institute has called on Canada to end the boycotts, contending that they have forced U.S. wine companies to lay off Canadian sales reps and other employees while depriving the Canadian government of millions in tax revenue.

Last month, Trump announced tariffs of up to 50% on Canadian goods and Canada responded with retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of American products.

Though wine was not explicitly mentioned, American alcohol has been the target of boycotts imposed by several Canadian provinces since last March in response to earlier tariffs on Canadian goods by Trump.

Vineyards that haven’t shut down entirely have announced layoffs in recent months.

Signorello Estate — a Napa Valley winery that rebuilt after becoming the poster child of the Atlas fire when its tasting room burned to the ground — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.

Wine behemoth Gallo earlier this year shared plans to lay off more than 90 employees by the end of January 2027 and close a major Napa Valley wine-making facility.

In February, Constellation Brands announced plans to lay off 212 workers at its Mission Bell Winery in Madera. The publicly traded company, which owns Robert Mondavi wines and Modelo and Corona beers, has set a goal of $200 million in cost savings by 2028 and is shifting away from wine to focus more on its growing beer business, its financial filings show.

That month, Santa Rosa-based Foley Family Wines & Spirits wound down operations at its Chalone Vineyard in Monterey and laid off the entire wine-making staff at Chalone.

The wine industry faces challenges beyond Canadian boycotts. Consumer demand is shrinking because boomers — the industry’s biggest fans — are aging out of the wine market. Younger generations drink less alcohol in general and are less likely to choose wine.

“It’s going to be a long haul for us to get back to where we were,” Stratton said.