Simranjit Singh is a second-generation American farmer, but his agricultural roots go back 900 years.
Before his father moved to California from India in 1991, before India gained independence from Britain in 1947, before his Sikh culture took root in 1469, the civilizations of Northern India worked various agricultural lands. Singh, 28, is part that unbroken lineage.
On a secluded 100-acre farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, he and his father tend the family’s raisin and almond orchards, determined to keep their heritage vital.
“Whatever is passed to me from my father is so valuable that I would be a fool to throw it away,” he said. “Farming will always be at the core of who I am.”
Over the past century, ethnic diasporas from all over the world have labored in these fields, as people from Armenia, Mexico, Southeast Asia, China and many other places have built lives and families rooted in central California’s fertile soil. It’s a place whose economy and lifeblood are defined by the land and the people who work it. Punjabi Sikhs are among the most recent migrants to try their luck.
The Sran farm, where Singh works with his father, Sarbjit Sran, is a full-time business with just the two men running most day-to-day operations. Singh’s mother, Jaswinder Sran, 55, sometimes joins them in the fields. Only during the late-summer harvest does the family hire contract laborers to reap the ripened crops.
Discussion about this post