Today, as a capstone to Hispanic Heritage Month, we hear from Nathan Medina, a former Groundwork staffer who is a career-long advocacy and government affairs professional. Read other Equity Series interviews!—As told to Jeff Smith

NATHAN MEDINA: These days there’s so much to talk about relative to Hispanic Heritage Month. But I’d like to begin by talking about our contributions to farming.

You know, our real problems in the United States are not based on the people who are doing much of the thankless labor in our food systems; not the people plucking asparagus in Oceana County, Michigan. No, they are not the problem. We’ve been deceived into believing that our neighbor is our enemy. And when we are divided amongst ourselves—distracted by that idea—a giant data center company can swoop in and purchase 1,000 acres of farmland and build a data center in the middle of a community that is primarily rural and agricultural.

And all this is happening at a very vulnerable moment in our agricultural world, because a whole generation of farmers is about to retire out of the profession. Farming has a very, very high age demographic for people who practice it. If you are 40 and farming, you are in the younger range.

So there’s a whole opportunity to capitalize on these demographic shifts, and it’s really something that we’re going to have to pay attention to within the next three to five years. The next administration, in particular, will have to look at this transition very, very closely if we are to handle it successfully, both for the farmers and the farm laborers. What good is farming if you don’t have the people you need to harvest, and you have to plow under your crop?

Many children of today’s American farmers don’t want to keep farming, but many immigrants would love to have a beautiful farm; and they have the skills to manage it. How can we make that transition happen? Anecdotally, we’ve heard stories about that kind of transition from families across Michigan, people who have had to halt a transition because of immigration policies. We’ve heard stories from the front line of people who are ready to make the transition, and then families that have been coming for essentially several generations and who are interested in taking over a farm have to stop because of their status or because of the restrictions on visas.

The challenges are innumerable for our farmers, from the cost of inputs—fertilizers or electricity or now diesel fuel—the challenges can seem insurmountable, even for those who have a passion for it. Then, coupled with a USDA that is not as engaged in next-gen farming as previous administrations have been. So, yes, older farmers need a way to transition out successfully, and Latino farmers can be an important part of that ownership transition.

I know with this being Hispanic Heritage month, I’m here to talk about the experience of the Latin diaspora. But it seems like the issues affecting Hispanic Americans are the issues that are affecting many, many other groups too. And it’s just that perhaps Latinos were the canary in the coal mine.

When my grandpa immigrated here from Mexico, he filled out one short form. It was essentially an intake form, and that’s all it was. It wasn’t hiring an attorney and taking tests; coming in on a work visa and getting a sponsorship and building a life. Back then, families went back and forth across the border, as my own family did. I’ve been doing genealogy, and my grandfather’s father was born in Texas, but my grandfather was born in Mexico. Back then, the concept of the U.S.-Mexico border was different; it was more porous.

So, for my entire life, I had thought that my family came to the United States in 1918 or 1919, when my grandfather would have been four or five years old, but it turns out we’ve been here since my great-great-grandfather was born in the 1850s. So my whole perspective of being an American has also changed because now I feel like, “Whoa—we’ve not just been here a century. We’ve been here almost 170 years,” so the genealogy has been very, very eye-opening.

People might have come from Eastern Europe or Czechoslovakia or Poland or Germany or Ireland and we’ve been here just as long as them or longer. So I feel a bit more pride in my position now with that understanding of that ebb and flow, and I think that if more people understood the nuance, maybe they would be a little less hardline about things.

What I’m seeing these days across Michigan is a generational shift occurring. That’s the undercurrent of everything that’s going on broadly in our culture, and it’s also happening in the Hispanic community with the next generation of leaders. Some of these “new” Latino leaders have been doing work in the community for 25 or 30 years, but they’ve never been able to take the mantle from the elder generation. We’re finally seeing that transition take place. The current leadership generation is finally handing over the reins.

I’m very, very hopeful because that means that we’re also seeing a new generation of political leaders coming about. There’s still only a handful of Hispanic legislators in Lansing, but we’re starting to see more Hispanic staff and advocates. We’re seeing more people at the university level, so it means we’re obtaining higher levels of education and are involved in these spaces. We finally have seats at the table in a way that is significant, and it doesn’t feel as tokenized as maybe it did in the ’90s or 2000s.

So I think that Latinos are ultimately in a place where we are considered to be valued and engaged members of the community, and that we belong. Even with the current state of affairs at the national level, I’m very, very hopeful for the transition I’m witnessing. I’ve been doing legislative work in Lansing since college, and now I’m in my 40s. Formerly I was often the only person of color, or the only Latin person, at a table, and it is not that way anymore. I’m glad that is becoming a distant memory. It bodes well not only for the folks who are becoming young professionals today, but also for my own children, who are four and six years old. It’ll be less of a rarity and less of a novelty, especially by the time they come of age.