Isadore Hall III is no William B. Gould IV, and the workers who harvest California’s crops will be worse off for it.

Gould, a Stanford Law School professor-emeritus, is one of those rare individuals who spans the gap between high-level scholarship and real-world understanding of the plight of workers.

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Gould is exactly the sort of person Gov. Jerry Brown would want to serve on the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which he created when he was governor the first time. In the 1970s, the board was a vital part of the growth of the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez’s movement. By this decade, however, the board had become moribund, and the UFW is more a presence in Democratic politics than it is in the fields.

“My whole life is about labor law,” Gould, appointed board chairman in 2014, told me. “What I hoped to accomplish was to make the ALRB relevant again.”

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“My whole life is about labor law,” Gould, appointed board chairman in 2014, told me. “What I hoped to accomplish was to make the ALRB relevant again.”

In Gould’s assessment, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act “is a dream statute.” Wielded properly, it would provide important protections in union disputes and remedy deficiencies in the National Labor Relations Act, the Depression-era law that excludes farmworkers from its protections.

Last week, having concluded that the board had become irrelevant to farmworkers, Gould sent a letter informing the governor that he was stepping down. Not that the need for protection has passed.

The letter notes that farmworkers are “disproportionately plagued by homelessness, diabetes and lack of health insurance.” But the board goes long stretches without receiving any new cases. Union organizing is at most lackluster.