This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're joined by Katie Dotterer who uses her company AgvoKate to advocate for agriculture while also teaching farmers Spanish to improve on-farm communication.
Dotterer grew up on a dairy farm in Clinton County, Pennsylvania. As a young woman milking alongside Spanish-speaking farmworkers, she developed a passion for Spanish and enjoyed spending her shifts speaking to co-workers in their native language.
Dotterer continued to pursue dairy, including briefly owning her own dairy, but eventually decided to embrace her love of Spanish. Over the course of her career in dairy, she identified a language barrier that often existed between farmers and workers and decided she could do something about that.
She now offers Spanish classes with curriculum designed specifically for farmers. Her students may not need to know how to ask where the nearest library is, but learning how to talk about animals, tools and chores is useful.
"The very first vocab list, I'm just going to give you an example, in dairy, you're learning how to say cow, heifer, bucket, gate. I have specific milking parlor terminology," Dotterer says.
She teaches classes that focus on other farming operations, too. "Here's a fun fact. In swine, I learned that there are six different ways to say piglet depending on where somebody is from," she says, explaining the need to take various dialects into account while teaching.
While there are some who might argue it's the Spanish-speaking workers' responsibility to learn to speak English, Dotterer disagrees.
In her opinion, employers of Spanish-speaking workers have the responsibility to learn how to communicate effectively with their employees.
"I'm not asking you to be fluent, but you could meet them halfway," says Dotterer. "There's nothing wrong with learning how to say, 'Good morning. How is your family?' 'Hey, the cow is sick.' 'Can you grab the red bucket?'"
In addition to teaching farmers how to speak Spanish, Dotterer also gives English lessons to farm workers.
She explained that many of them want to learn English and are trying, but added that English is a difficult language to learn.
The language and cultural barriers may make things difficult at times, but Dotterer stressed that maintaining respect and positive relationships with Spanish-speaking workers is important, citing the critical role these workers play in US agriculture.
"I used to say that the US agriculture industry would be crippled without the immigrant labor force. I no longer say that. I say that we would actually be non-existent," says Dotterer.
You can find more information on the Lancaster Farming story discussed in the beginning of this episode here:
