The California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS) is a left-of-center agricultural policy research and advocacy organization that criticizes Californian agricultural systems as racist and colonialist “systems of oppression and extraction.” ¹

CIRS was widely respected for decades in California policy circles as a research institution that undertook agricultural policy and labor force research from a left-of-center perspective, but in recent years under executive directors Gail Wadsworth and Ildi Carlisle-Cummins the organization shifted its strategic focus from empirical research to more radical “storytelling” and advocacy using more radical left-wing messaging. ^{2 3}

History and Leadership

California Institute for Rural Studies was founded by former physics professor, left-wing activist and former United Farm Workers union volunteer Don Villarejo in 1977. ^{4 5}

Under Villarejo and his successors as executive director, CIRS focused on performing substantive empirical research into California’s agricultural industry and workforce and providing objective research findings from a left-of-center perspective to policymakers and elected officials. ^{6 7 8}

Its best-known project was the California Agricultural Worker Health Survey (CAWHS), a statewide, population-based survey of farmworker health that included a comprehensive physical examination. ⁹ The survey’s findings were valuable to government and nonprofit organizations involved in designing and implementing programs to deliver health care services to California’s agricultural workforce. ¹⁰

That focus began to shift in the 2010s with executive director Gail Wadsworth and her successor Ildi Carlisle-Cummins. In 2014, Wadsworth hired Carlisle-Cummins as the director of a new “Cal Ag Roots Storytelling Project” that was a departure from CIRS’ traditional empirical research focus. ^{11 12}

After Carlisle-Cummins became executive director in 2019, she led a restructuring of CIRS’ strategic plan that subsumed its decades-long focus on empirical research studies aimed at policymakers to one in which it “creates research-based tools in partnership with rural communities of color who are working to eradicate white supremacy, take down colonial power structures and replace dysfunctional institutions.” ¹³

CIRS increased its use of left-wing, identity-based messaging under Carslisle-Cummins’ leadership. While its revised 2019 mission was to work “in partnership with rural communities of color,” by 2023 it had updated that to, “in partnership with Black, Queer, Trans, Indigenous and People of Color in rural communities.” ¹⁴ During this time the staff page on CIRS’ website was also updated to include a “land acknowledgement” that lists the most recent Native American tribe to claim the area in which each of their staff members currently lives. ¹⁵

While Carlisle-Cummins had stated in 2020 that she expected to serve as CIRS’ executive director for a decade, she left the role for undisclosed reasons in March 2023. ¹⁶ She later took a position as director of development for a public charter school in Santa Cruz, California. ¹⁷ As of October 2023, CIRS had not filled its vacant executive director position. ¹⁸

Relationship with United Farm Workers union

California Institute for Rural Studies describes itself as having “a focus on research-for-action in deep partnership with farmworker communities and the United Farm Workers” union. ¹⁹

In 2015, CIRS published a paper from CIRS founder Don Villarejo titled “A New Paradigm is Needed for Labor Relations in Agriculture: California Agriculture and Farm Labor, 1975-2014” that was critical of the UFW’s lack of impact on farm workers’ economic status. ²⁰ The paper argued that “farm labor organizations are the weakest link among the major players in the food system at the present time.” ²¹

“The UFW has made major contributions to the benefit of California farmworkers,” Villarejo told a reporter in 2021. ²² However, Villarejo also said that the UFW’s relevance was as an educational resource to “help workers learn what their rights are,” and not as a labor union representing the interests of workers. ²³

Policy Advocacy

Census citizenship question

In 2019, the California Institute for Rural Studies undertook research designed to combat plans by the Trump administration’s Commerce Department to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. ²⁴

CIRS was commissioned by the left-of-center Sierra Health Foundation to undertake research into the migrant farmworker population in California’s San Joaquin Valley that was designed to identify how many migrant farmworkers were likely not to be counted by the 2020 Census, as well as how many would be less likely to participate in the Census if it included a question about U.S. citizenship. ²⁵ The research was funded by left-of-center foundations including the Sierra Health Foundation, Blue Shield of California Foundation, Hellman Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Grove Foundation, Werner-Kohnstamm Family Giving Fund, New Venture Fund, Sunlight Giving, and Heising-Simons Foundation.  ²⁶

The report that resulted from this research was used by left-of-center organizations in California to convince courts that then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the census form would result in violations of the Constitutional requirement that the Census count “the whole number of persons in each State.” ²⁷ When California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) and a collection of local California governments sued to block the citizenship question, a coalition of left-of-center groups led by the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court against the question that relied heavily on CIRS’ research. ²⁸ A federal judge ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, imposing a permanent injunction against placing the question on the 2020 Census. ²⁹

The U.S. Supreme Court took up the issue in United States Department of Commerce v. State of New York. When the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative again filed an amicus brief with the Court that relied heavily on CIRS’ research to make its arguments, CIRS joined the brief as an amicus curiae. ^{30 31}

Based in part on CIRS’ research, the Supreme Court ruled that states with significant immigrant populations would be harmed if a citizenship question made those people less likely to be counted by the Census, reducing those states’ relative share of federal resources. ³² However, a divided Court further ruled that while Ross had the power to reinstate the citizenship question to the Census, the manner in which the Commerce Department had done so violated federal law and while it gave the Commerce Department the power to remedy those violations, there was not enough time before the Census deadline to do so. ^{33 34}

Immigration Law

The California Institute for Rural Studies has taken a radical, far-left position against proposed bipartisan agricultural immigration law reforms that placed it in conflict with other left-wing groups, including the United Farm Workers union. ³⁵

In 2019 and again in 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. ³⁶ The proposed law, which did not receive hearings in the U.S. Senate, was a negotiated compromise between farmers, food producers and agricultural and food industry workers. ³⁷ It combined reforms to agricultural guest worker visa programs and increased use of the federal E-Verify system with a program to give undocumented immigrants working in agricultural jobs the opportunity to earn green cards through continued employment in such jobs. ³⁸

The legislation was supported by agricultural industry and labor groups including the United Farm Workers, Farmworker Justice, the National Council of Agricultural Employers, and National Farmers Union. ^{39 40 41 42 43} The coalition in support of the bill framed it as legalizing the existing agricultural workforce, while simultaneously updating federal immigration policy to allow enough legal workers into the country to meet employers’ future needs. ⁴⁴

However, CIRS executive director Ildi Carlisle-Cummins criticized the legislation for placing continued employment requirements on agricultural workers who had entered the United States illegally as a condition of receiving legal work status. ^{45 46}

CIRS instead called for the elimination of the H-2A “guestworker” visa program and instead for undocumented farmworkers to receive permanent residence visas regardless of whether or not they were working in the United States, as well as free housing of migrant farmworkers by farmers, price controls on food products, free health care and education for migrant farmworkers and their children regardless of immigration status, and for migrant farmworkers to be eligible for Social Security benefits. ⁴⁷

1.  California Institute for Rural Studies. Accessed October 2, 2023. https://cirsinc.org/
2. Don Villarejo – Obituary.” Davis Enterprise, January 7, 2022. https://www.davisenterprise.com/obituaries/don-villarejo/article_fb5d9169-0214-51e6-a8db-f7b12aec2275.html.
3. “CIRS Strategic Compass – California Institute for Rural Studies.” California Institute for Rural Studies, 2020. https://cirsinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CIRS-Strategic-Compass-2020-1.pdf.
4. “Don Villarejo – Obituary.” Davis Enterprise, January 7, 2022. https://www.davisenterprise.com/obituaries/don-villarejo/article_fb5d9169-0214-51e6-a8db-f7b12aec2275.html.
5. Kasler, Dale. “How Pandemic Delivered Humbling Defeat for California’s Struggling Farmworkers Union.” Sacramento Bee, April 24, 2021. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article250507059.html.
6.  “About CIRS – Archived Page Accessed by Wayback Machine.” California Institute for Rural Studies, September 30, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200903030609/https:/www.cirsinc.org/about-cirs/about-cirs-2.
7. Jones, Dave. “AG Health and Safety Center Honors Longtime Partner Villarejo.” UC Davis, January 24, 2016. https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/ag-health-and-safety-center-honors-longtime-partner-villarejo.
8. Pasner, Yara. “Don Villarejo,” November 24, 2021. https://donvillarejo.github.io/.
9. Villarejo, Donald, and Stephen A. McCurdy. “The California Agricultural Workers Health Survey.” Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health 14, no. 2 (2008): 135–46. https://doi.org/10.13031/2013.24347.
10. Jones, Dave. “AG Health and Safety Center Honors Longtime Partner Villarejo.” UC Davis, January 24, 2016. https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/ag-health-and-safety-center-honors-longtime-partner-villarejo.
11. “History of CIRS.” California Institute for Rural Studies. Accessed October 3, 2023. https://cirsinc.org/history/.
12. Carlisle-Cummins, Ildi. “Ildi Carlisle-Cummins – LinkedIn.” LinkedIn. Accessed October 3, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ildi-carlisle-cummins-558b5758.
13. “CIRS Strategic Compass – California Institute for Rural Studies.” California Institute for Rural Studies, 2020. https://cirsinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CIRS-Strategic-Compass-2020-1.pdf.
14. “Careers.” California Institute for Rural Studies, 2023. https://cirsinc.org/careers/.
15. “Team.” California Institute for Rural Studies, 2023. https://cirsinc.org/team/.
16. “CIRS Strategic Compass – California Institute for Rural Studies.” California Institute for Rural Studies, 2020. https://cirsinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CIRS-Strategic-Compass-2020-1.pdf.
17. Carlisle-Cummins, Ildi. “Ildi Carlisle-Cummins – LinkedIn.” LinkedIn. Accessed October 3, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ildi-carlisle-cummins-558b5758.
18. “Careers.” California Institute for Rural Studies, 2023. https://cirsinc.org/careers/.
19. “History of CIRS.” California Institute for Rural Studies. Accessed October 3, 2023. https://cirsinc.org/history/.
20. Villarejo, Don. “A NEW PARADIGM IS NEEDED FOR LABOR RELATIONS IN AGRICULTURE: CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE AND FARM LABOR, 1975-2014.” California Institute for Rural Studies, June 24, 2015. https://centralvalleypartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/A-New-Paradigm-Is-Needed-For-Labor-Relations-In-Agriculture-2015-.pdf.
21. Villarejo, Don. “A NEW PARADIGM IS NEEDED FOR LABOR RELATIONS IN AGRICULTURE: CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE AND FARM LABOR, 1975-2014.” California Institute for Rural Studies, June 24, 2015. https://centralvalleypartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/A-New-Paradigm-Is-Needed-For-Labor-Relations-In-Agriculture-2015-.pdf.
22. Kasler, Dale. “How Pandemic Delivered Humbling Defeat for California’s Struggling Farmworkers Union.” Sacramento Bee, April 24, 2021. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article250507059.html.
23. Kasler, Dale. “How Pandemic Delivered Humbling Defeat for California’s Struggling Farmworkers Union.” Sacramento Bee, April 24, 2021. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article250507059.html.
24. Kissam, Ed, Gail Wadsworth, and Jo Ann Intili. “Troubled Reflections: Summary of Themes and Implications for Census 2020.” The Center at Sierra Health Foundation , February 2019. https://www.shfcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SJVCRP_Troubled_Reflections_Summary.pdf.
25. Kissam, Ed, Gail Wadsworth, and Jo Ann Intili. “Troubled Reflections: Summary of Themes and Implications for Census 2020.” The Center at Sierra Health Foundation , February 2019. https://www.shfcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SJVCRP_Troubled_Reflections_Summary.pdf.
26. Kissam, Ed, Gail Wadsworth, and Jo Ann Intili. “Troubled Reflections: Summary of Themes and Implications for Census 2020.” The Center at Sierra Health Foundation , February 2019. https://www.shfcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SJVCRP_Troubled_Reflections_Summary.pdf.
27. Espiritu, Nicholas, and Joanna Elise Cuevas Ingram. “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE CENTRAL VALLEY IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION COLLABORATIVE, ET AL. IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS.” United States Supreme Court, April 1, 2019. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-966/94993/20190401163220758_18-966%20Brief.pdf.
28. Espiritu, Nicholas, and Joanna Elise Cuevas Ingram. “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE CENTRAL VALLEY IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION COLLABORATIVE, ET AL. IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS.” United States Supreme Court, April 1, 2019. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-966/94993/20190401163220758_18-966%20Brief.pdf.
29. ^[1] Seeborg, Richard. “FINAL JUDGMENT AFTER REMAND, ORDER OF VACATUR, AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION.” State of California v. Wilbur Ross,  Case 3:18-cv-01865-RS, August 1, 2019. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/.
30. Espiritu, Nicholas, and Joanna Elise Cuevas Ingram. “BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE CENTRAL VALLEY IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION COLLABORATIVE, ET AL. IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS.” United States Supreme Court, April 1, 2019. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-966/94993/20190401163220758_18-966%20Brief.pdf.
31. “Department of Commerce v. New York.” Oyez, June 27, 2019. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/18-966.
32. “Department of Commerce v. New York.” Oyez, June 27, 2019. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/18-966.
33. “Department of Commerce v. New York.” Oyez, June 27, 2019. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/18-966.
34. Biskupic, Joan. “Exclusive: How John Roberts Killed the Census Citizenship Question | CNN Politics.” CNN, September 12, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/12/politics/john-roberts-census-citizenship-supreme-court/index.html.
35. Nateras, Myrna Martinez. “California Orgs Working with Farmworkers Oppose the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.” American Friends Service Committee, June 11, 2021. https://afsc.org/newsroom/california-orgs-working-farmworkers-oppose-farm-workforce-modernization-act.
36. Lofgren, Zoe. “Bipartisan House Members Reintroduce the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2023.” Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, June 30, 2023. https://lofgren.house.gov/media/press-releases/bipartisan-members-reintroduce-farm-workforce-modernization-act-2023.
37. “Letter of Support for Farm Workforce Modernization Act.” U.S. Congressman Dan Newhouse, November 18, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20201027093257/https://newhouse.house.gov/sites/newhouse.house.gov/files/Letter%20of%20Support%20for%20Farm%20Workforce%20Modernization%20Act%20.pdf
38. Lofgren, Zoe. “Bipartisan House Members Reintroduce the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2023.” Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, June 30, 2023. https://lofgren.house.gov/media/press-releases/bipartisan-members-reintroduce-farm-workforce-modernization-act-2023.
39. Sherman, Jocelyn. “UFW & UFW Foundation Hail Passage of Landmark Immigration Bills ‘emancipating’ Farm Workers and Dreamers and TPS Recipients.” UFW, March 19, 2021. https://ufw.org/fmwa31821/.
40. “The Farm Workforce Modernization Act: A Bipartisan Bill That Would Provide a Path to Immigration Status for Agricultural Workers and Revise the H-2A Program.” Farmworker Justice, March 2021. https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FarmWorkforceModernizationAct-FactSheet-FJ-2021.pdf.
41. “Facts about What the Farm Workforce Modernization Act Does – NCAE.” National Council of Agricultural Employers, November 2019. https://www.ncaeonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Farm-Workforce-Modernization-Act-Summary.pdf.
42. “Farm Workforce Modernization Act Creates a More Functional, Compassionate Farm Labor System – National Farmers Union.” National Farmers Union, March 18, 2021. https://nfu.org/2021/03/18/farm-workforce-modernization-act-creates-a-more-functional-compassionate-farm-labor-system/.
43. “Letter of Support for Farm Workforce Modernization Act.” U.S. Congressman Dan Newhouse, November 18, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20201027093257/https://newhouse.house.gov/sites/newhouse.house.gov/files/Letter%20of%20Support%20for%20Farm%20Workforce%20Modernization%20Act%20.pdf
44. “Letter of Support for Farm Workforce Modernization Act.” U.S. Congressman Dan Newhouse, November 18, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20201027093257/https://newhouse.house.gov/sites/newhouse.house.gov/files/Letter%20of%20Support%20for%20Farm%20Workforce%20Modernization%20Act%20.pdf
45. ^[1] Hall, Alex. “Nearly Half a Million California Farmworkers Could Gain Legal Status under New Bill.” KQED, March 26, 2021. https://www.kqed.org/news/11866519/nearly-half-a-million-california-farmworkers-could-gain-legal-status-under-new-bill.
46. Nateras, Myrna Martinez. “California Orgs Working with Farmworkers Oppose the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.” American Friends Service Committee, June 11, 2021. https://afsc.org/newsroom/california-orgs-working-farmworkers-oppose-farm-workforce-modernization-act
47. “Viewpoint: Abolish the H-2A Program!” Labor Notes, April 22, 2022. https://labornotes.org/blogs/2022/04/viewpoint-abolish-h-2a-program.