Agricultural workers are already among the most vulnerable to extreme heat. For pregnant workers, those risks are higher because the body must work harder to cool down and requires more liquids, making it more easily dehydrated. While protections exist, experts say they need better enforcement and more are needed. The Associated Press interviewed four agricultural workers who recounted experiences of working in extreme heat while pregnant.
Here are takeaways from AP's story:
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A water cooler with beads of condensation on it sits in a sugarcane field in Niland, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025.
A farmworker harvests pears at an orchard in Naches, Wash., Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
FILE - A doctor uses a hand-held Doppler probe on a pregnant woman to measure the heartbeat of the fetus, Dec. 17, 2021, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
A farmworker harvests pears at an orchard in Naches, Wash., Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Average temperatures are increasing globally, including in the U.S.'s most agriculturally-productive states. Since the start of the 20th century, California temperatures have increased almost 3 F (1.67 C). Warming has accelerated, and seven of the past eight years in that state through 2024 have been the warmest on record. In Florida, average temperatures have increased by more than 2 F (1.11 C).
When it comes to how the body reacts to heat, even small temperature increases can be significant.
One study found that agricultural workers had more than 35 times the risk of heat-related deaths than other workers. In the U.S., an estimated one-third of farmworkers are women — an increasing share of the farm workforce.
Pregnancy increases the risks of extreme heat because the body has to work harder to cool down. Heat exposure has been linked to increased risk of miscarriages, stillbirths, preterm births, low birth weight and birth defects.
Combining pregnancy and heat with physical labor can more quickly overwhelm the body’s cooling system, increasing the likelihood of dehydration, heat illness and heat stroke.
Farmworkers are also less likely to demand employers provide adequate shade, water or rest, or speak out when they’re feeling overheated for fear of being fired or having immigration enforcement officials called on them.
Pregnant farmworkers in rural areas generally have less access to maternity care because clinics are farther away. Other times, they can’t miss hours of work or aren’t given time off. Many also don’t get employer-sponsored medical care or paid leave.
Compounding these risks is the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Health care providers have reported seeing fewer walk-ins, patients delaying prenatal care and more pregnant patients whose first doctor’s visit was for labor and delivery, according to research by the group Physicians for Human Rights. Others have reported an increase in no-shows and canceled appointments.
No federal heat protections exist, although the Trump administration appears to be moving forward with a proposed rule. Some states, including California, have their own protections, while others, like Florida, have barred local governments from implementing their own. In states with protections, advocates say they’re not adequately enforced and pointed to a widespread distrust of reporting systems.
More than 30 states and cities have laws requiring employers to provide accommodations for pregnant workers. Most recently, 2023’s federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” to pregnant workers, those who recently gave birth or have medical conditions related to birth or pregnancy. Other laws make it illegal to fire or discriminate due to those factors.
Even so, some experts said there aren’t enough legal protections for pregnant workers. “It’s probably one of the reasons why we have some of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in high-income countries in the world,” said Ayana DeGaia, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington in Harborview.
Others said it's also unclear how some of these protections are enforced in agriculture and how they benefit women farmworkers.
In Florida, a top U.S. producer of indoor plants and tropical foliage, the nursery industry’s mostly women workers have joined a fight for heat protections. In California, workers have been advocating for guaranteed compensation when they lose wages due to heat waves and other extreme weather events, as well as extra pay when they work during dangerous weather conditions.
The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
A water cooler with beads of condensation on it sits in a sugarcane field in Niland, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025.
A farmworker harvests pears at an orchard in Naches, Wash., Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
FILE - A doctor uses a hand-held Doppler probe on a pregnant woman to measure the heartbeat of the fetus, Dec. 17, 2021, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
A farmworker harvests pears at an orchard in Naches, Wash., Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
WALDEN, Colo. (AP) — Hydrologist Maureen Gutsch trudged through the mud and slush to confirm a grim picture: Colorado just had its worst snowpack since statewide record keeping began in 1941.
Even more troubling, mountain snow accumulations peaked a month early and contained just half the average moisture.
As a warm winter with poor skiing conditions gave way to early springtime record heat, snow is vanishing from all but the highest elevations in the West. It's a clear sign that water shortages could worsen the ongoing significant drought, barring an unexpected deluge.
Gutsch struggled to match the mood of the sunny, 56-degree (13.3 degrees Celsius) weather as she stood in a section of the Rocky Mountains that's considered the headwaters of the Colorado River.
“We love being out here. We love being in the snow, taking these measurements. This year, it’s kind of hard to enjoy it because it’s slightly depressing with the conditions that we’ve seen,” said Gutsch, who is with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Department hydrologists told The Associated Press of the dismal, record-low snowpack after concluding their field assessments late Tuesday.
Cities in the region are imposing water-use restrictions, and ranchers are wondering how they will feed and water their cattle. Meanwhile, the threat of devastating wildfires looms.
Ranchers in Colorado's scenic mountain valleys near the Continental Divide are, in a sense, among the first in the region affected by drought, being nearest to the melting mountain snowpack.
They hardly need Gutsch to tell them how parched this winter and spring have been. They remember past droughts — bad ones in 2002, 1981, 1977 — and wonder just what this dry winter will mean for their operations.
“I’ve never seen it so warm so early and no snow all winter long,” said Philip Anderson, a retired teacher who also has ranched most of his life in Colorado's North Park valley.
The heaviest snows in the Rockies fall in late winter and early spring, including now. Snowfall isn't unusual in the highest regions even into June.
Anderson’s place is at about 8,100 feet (2,500 meters) in elevation. There, in a typical year, a foot (30 centimeters) or more of snow will linger on his pastures until springtime, helping the grass to green up and stock water ponds to refill.
But without snow on the land, his cows are grazing his grass before it can grow high, and several of his ponds are dry. The ditch that would usually move water from the nearby Illinois River to his property is also dry — tapped already by neighbors with more senior water rights than his.
“A lot of the people which are closer to the mountains have to let the water go by and let those folks with the senior water rights have it,” Anderson said.
The last time Anderson had to haul water in his truck from a nearby wildlife refuge was in 2002. That same year, he had to sell off his herd.
North Park — about 100 miles (161 kilometers) from the South Park valley that inspired the cartoon TV show — is a headwaters of the eastward-flowing Platte River system. Thirty-five miles (56 kilometers) to the west of Anderson's place, across the Continental Divide, is the Stanko Ranch on the Yampa River.
Jo Stanko dreads low flows because they allow her cattle to wade across the Colorado River tributary. Then they need to be rounded up and brought back home.
This year, Stanko has been watering her parched meadow earlier than ever in her 50 years of ranching. She plans to cut hay before June and is considering buying hay soon to feed her 70 cows afterward.
“Hay's always a good investment, you know, because it might be really expensive,” she said.
An old saying in the West is that whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over. It applies all the more when water becomes scarce amid a decades-long drought driven in part by human-caused climate change.
Meanwhile, the river's Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming remain at an impasse in negotiations with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada to create new rules for managing the water during shortages.
Like the water itself, time is running short — the current rules expire in September.
A recent federal plan would conserve river water “completely on Arizona's back,” Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting in March.
Upper Basin states say their cities, farmers and ranchers already use far less water than they are entitled to under the existing agreements. That's because they honor senior water rights — some of which date to the 1880s — before those who own newer rights during droughts, Becky Mitchell, the Colorado River negotiator for Colorado, recently told other Upper Basin representatives.
“When there is less, we use less. This is not voluntary and no one gets paid as a result,” Mitchell said.
After missing multiple deadlines set by federal officials in recent months to, at least, create outlines of an agreement, the two sides are hiring more lawyers in case the dispute goes to court.
After the driest and warmest winter on record, Salt Lake City announced a 10% daily cut in water use.
Reductions will be voluntary for residents, but the biggest nonresidential water users will have to consume no more than 200,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) per day.
On the other side of the Rockies, Denver Water approved limits to watering lawns and other restrictions, with hopes of achieving a 20% cut.
Water officials urged even less watering. Lawns in the Front Range region are just beginning to green up and don't need watering twice a week until at least mid-May, they pointed out.
The city gets much of its water from mountain snow that accumulates east of the Continental Divide and on the western side. Tunnels under the mountains divert half the city's water from snow-fed streams on the western side.
“We’re 7 to 8 feet (2 to 2.4 meters) of snow short of where we need to be,” Nathan Elder, water supply manager for Denver Water, said in a statement. “It would take a tremendous amount of snow to recover at this point, so it’s time to turn our attention to preserving what we have.”
On the same day Denver approved the water restrictions, the city set a new high temperature record for March: 87 degrees (30 Celsius).
The previous record of 85 degrees (29 Celsius) was set just a week earlier.
Drought was bearing down west of the Rockies, too. In California, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada measured only 18% of the average for this time of year, state data showed.
Hot, dry weather is a recipe for wildfires. While other parts of the U.S., including the South and Southwest, face higher fire risk this spring, forecasters expect the threat in the Rockies to rise as above-average temperatures and below-normal precipitation persist into summer.
This week, the region is getting a reprieve of cooler, damper weather, with snow back in the forecast by the end of the week in North Park. But Anderson said he needs a lot more — half an inch (1 centimeter) of rain every other day for several days — to get out of the drought.
Until then, he suggested that North Park senior and junior water-rights holders work together to ensure everybody has enough.
"It’s pretty serious,” Anderson said. “If we just talk and communicate together and cooperate, we might be able to make it through this. But we’ll see.”
Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, contributed.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Philip Anderson pulls plastic off a bale of hay, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Walden, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)
Domestic well water fills a stock tank, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Walden, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)
Philip Anderson looks at a dry ditch that usually transports water for stock and irrigation, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Walden, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)
Snow surveyors, hydrologist, Maureen Gutsch, left, and Clinton Whitten weigh a snow sample, Monday, March 30, 2026, in Kremmling, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)
Clinton Whitten and hydrologist Maureen Gutsch, back, measure snow, Monday, March 30, 2026, in Kremmling, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)
