Children as young as 6 help harvest blueberries in America

Scripps News investigates child labor on farms, one of the least restricted and most dangerous places for kids to work.


Zach Cusson / Scripps News

By Patrick Terpstra and Karen Rodriguez and Zach Cusson

 Jul 11, 2023

A pint of blueberries begins its journey to the neighborhood grocery store in a field like many others found on thousands of acres in southeast North Carolina.

The fruit thrives on bushes growing in the acidic, black, sandy soil near the Atlantic coast.

At the beginning of each summer, clusters of farmworkers race to pick the berries at their sweetest during a season that lasts just two months.

A Scripps News investigation found children as young as 6 years old are helping to harvest one of America's favorite superfoods.

The discovery comes years after the U.S. Department of Labor fined six North Carolina blueberry farms in 2009 for violating child labor laws, according to federal Wage and Hour Department enforcement records reviewed by Scripps News.

Those records show no documented cases of underage work on blueberry farms in the state since 2017, even as the Labor Department reports a surge of illegal child labor across industries in recent years.

Scripps News met a mother who says two of her three children, ages 6 and 8, work alongside her picking blueberries at a North Carolina farm.

The mother agreed to share their story in the privacy of her rented home and requested her family not be identified out of fear of retaliation.

The mother said they are undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, and that her two children, a 6-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son, began picking blueberries when school let out for summer.

Her daughter stands beside her with small feet still caked in dirt from a day in the fields.

"I take them to work because my husband isn't in good health and is sick," the woman said in Spanish. "He went two or three months without working and we needed to pay rent."

The mother said on the farm she can also watch her kids while they help make ends meet.

Her son began working with her in sweet potato fields two seasons ago at the age of 6, she said. "It is sad because a child shouldn't have to work," she said.

Estimating how many kids are working in similar blueberry fields is difficult.

Many farms are fenced off or have towering "no trespassing" signs posted to keep visitors away.

And Scripps News confirmed that the North Carolina Department of Labor tracks child labor complaints, but not for farm jobs. North Carolina is one of 17 states that exempts agriculture from child labor laws.

Young children working on farms spans generations, said Yessie Bustos, a leader of the nonprofit Student Action with Farmworkers based in Durham, N.C.

"I think it goes back to the fact that farmworkers are not entitled to a fair minimum wage, so they're getting paid by the piece," Bustos said. "That's kind of why you will see a lot of family members out there in the fields, because you need to be able to at least make enough money to provide for the family."

Bustos, 30, recalls picking blueberries herself as a 12-year-old in Michigan.

"For our family, it was a way for us to supplement income," she said.

She looked at a photo shared by the mother of her 8-year-old blueberry worker son, bucket in hand.

"I think of my inner self, like my inner child at the time, not really knowing why I'm doing this, just knowing I have to," Bustos said.

Research from the federal government says about half a million children, age 17 and under, are working on American farms.

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"It's backbreaking labor," said Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy for the National Consumers League and the Child Labor Coalition.

He has long pressed for stronger federal protections for kids in agriculture.

"We have a copy machine around the corner here in the office, and I can't bring in a 12-year-old nephew to work on that copy machine, but that same child can be put on a farm and work 12- or 14-hour days," Maki said.

Federal law allows youth as young as 12 to work in agriculture if they have their parents' consent and it's not during school hours.

There also are exceptions that allow children of any age to work on a farm owned by a parent or on other "certain very small farms" outside of school hours, according to a statement from the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor.

A Labor Department spokesman declined to answer whether the farm where the mother said she works with her children was violating any child labor laws.

Earlier this year the Biden administration announced a crackdown on employers hiring kids to work dangerous jobs in other industries, fining contractors illegally employing teens to clean meatpacking plants in the dead of night.

There has not been the same sweeping action targeting agriculture.

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A Scripps News investigation found suspicions of child labor went back years before authorities took action against a Nebraska meatpacking plant.

"Monitoring the millions and millions of acres of U.S. farms is difficult," Maki said. "It's not impossible, though. I think that may be the case that they really could focus more on dangerous jobs."

A farm is a dangerous place to work, especially for minors.

One federally funded research study found about 33 children get hurt working on U.S. farms every day.

In 2018, a report from the federal Government Accountability Office found the "majority of work-related child fatalities were in agriculture" even though "agriculture employs a small percentage of working children."

The mother of the two young children helping with the blueberry harvest this summer said they sometimes complain about the summer heat.

"Yesterday my daughter had a lot of headaches," the mother said. "Last night she was complaining that her head hurt and she couldn’t stand it."

Bustos remembers the danger of heavy farm machinery.

"The example I always share is, I learned how to drive a blueberry picking machine before I even learned how to drive a vehicle," she said. "The thing is like three or five times the size of a regular car. They're huge."

Bustos and other advocates for farmworkers are pressing Congress to bring rules for employing minors on farms in line with other industries.

The CARE Act would raise the minimum age for work on commercial farms to 14 years old, while adding restrictions for all minors who work in agriculture.

It has not gained traction on Capitol Hill despite years of efforts to get it passed.

Bustos estimates there is a 50-50 chance children have had a hand in harvesting a typical pint of blueberries purchased by consumers.

"They should ask themselves, how are we putting them in a position where that's the only way to make ends meet?" she said.

After a day of work, the 8-year-old boy who goes to the blueberry fields still finds time to play.

He shows off his collection of Matchbox cars and, behind the house, his family’s pet chickens and turtles.

His mother said she sees education as a way for their children to eventually leave farm work behind them.

"I always tell my kids, first give thanks to God, and I tell them, I want you to take advantage of your time at school," the boy’s mother said. "I take them to the fields so they realize what working the fields is like and so they work harder in school."

They are lessons that come from a life of hard work beginning at a tender age.

Data analysis by Daniel Lathrop and Rosie Cima

Clues From Bird Flu’s Ground Zero on Dairy Farms in the Texas Panhandle

BY AMY MAXMAN

MAY 27, 2024
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Photo: USDA.

In early February, dairy farmers in the Texas Panhandle began to notice sick cattle. The buzz soon reached Darren Turley, executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen: “They said there is something moving from herd to herd.”

Nearly 60 days passed before veterinarians identified the culprit: a highly pathogenic strain of the bird flu virus, H5N1. Had it been detected sooner, the outbreak might have been swiftly contained. Now it has spread to at least eight other states, and it will be hard to eliminate.

At the moment, the bird flu hasn’t adapted to spread from person to person through the air like the seasonal flu. That’s what it would take to give liftoff to another pandemic. This lucky fact could change, however, as the virus mutates within each cow it infects. Those mutations are random, but more cows provide more chances of stumbling on ones that pose a grave risk to humans.

Why did it take so long to recognize the virus on high-tech farms in the world’s richest country? Because even though H5N1 has circulated for nearly three decades, its arrival in dairy cattle was most unexpected. “People tend to think that an outbreak starts at Monday at 9 a.m. with a sign saying, ‘Outbreak has started,’” said Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the World Health Organization. “It’s rarely like that.”

By investigating the origins of outbreaks, researchers garner clues about how they start and spread. That information can curb the toll of an epidemic and, ideally, stop the next one. On-the-ground observations and genomic analyses point to Texas as ground zero for this outbreak in cattle. To backtrack events in Texas, KFF Health News spoke with more than a dozen people, including veterinarians, farmers, and state officials.

An early indication that something had gone awry on farms in northwestern Texas came from devices hitched to collars on dairy cows. Turley describes them as “an advanced fitness tracker.” They collect a stream of data, such as a cow’s temperature, its milk quality, and the progress of its digestion — or, rather, rumination — within its four-chambered stomach.

What farmers saw when they downloaded the data in February stopped them in their tracks. One moment a cow seemed perfectly fine, and then four hours later, rumination had halted. “Shortly after the stomach stops, you’d see a huge falloff in milk,” Turley said. “That is not normal.”

Tests for contagious diseases known to whip through herds came up negative. Some farmers wondered if the illness was related to ash from wildfires devastating land to the east.

In hindsight, Turley wished he had made more of the migrating geese that congregate in the panhandle each winter and spring. Geese and other waterfowl have carried H5N1 around the globe. They withstand enormous loads of the virus without getting sick, passing it on to local species, like blackbirds, cowbirds, and grackles, that mix with migrating flocks.

But with so many other issues facing dairy farmers, geese didn’t register. “One thing you learn in agriculture is that Mother Nature is unpredictable and can be devastating,” Turley said. “Just when you think you have figured it out, Mother Nature tells you you do not.”

Cat Clues

One dairy tried to wall itself off, careful not to share equipment with or employ the same workers as other farms, Turley recalled. Its cattle still became ill. Turley noted that the farm was downwind of another with an outbreak, “so you almost think it has to have an airborne factor.”

On March 7, Turley called the Texas Animal Health Commission. They convened a One Health group with experts in animal health, human health, and agriculture to ponder what they called the “mystery syndrome.” State veterinarians probed cow tissue for parasites, examined the animals’ blood, and tested for viruses and bacteria. But nothing explained the sickness.

They didn’t probe for H5N1. While it has jumped into mammals dozens of times, it rarely has spread between species. Most cases have been in carnivores, which likely ate infected birds. Cows are mainly vegetarian.

“If someone told me about a milk drop in cows, I wouldn’t think to test for H5N1 because, no, cattle don’t get that,” said Thomas Peacock, a virologist at the Pirbright Institute of England who studies avian influenza.

Postmortem tests of grackles, blackbirds, and other birds found dead on dairy farms detected H5N1, but that didn’t turn the tide. “We didn’t think much of it since we have seen H5N1-positive birds everywhere in the country,” said Amy Swinford, director of the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory.

In the meantime, rumors swirled about a rash of illness among workers at dairy farms in the panhandle. It was flu season, however, and hospitals weren’t reporting anything out of the ordinary.

Bethany Boggess Alcauter, director of research at the National Center for Farmworker Health, has worked in the panhandle and suspected farmworkers were unlikely to see a doctor even if they needed one. Clinics are far from where they live, she said, and many don’t speak English or Spanish — for instance, they may speak Indigenous languages such as Mixtec, which is common in parts of Mexico. The cost of medical care is another deterrent, along with losing pay by missing work — or losing their jobs — if they don’t show up. “Even when medical care is there,” she said, “it’s a challenge.”

What finally tipped off veterinarians? A few farm cats died suddenly and tested positive for H5N1. Swinford’s group — collaborating with veterinary labs at Iowa State and Cornell universities — searched for the virus in samples drawn from sick cows.

“On a Friday night at 9 p.m., March 22, I got a call from Iowa State,” Swinford said. Researchers had discovered antibodies against H5N1 in a slice of a mammary gland. By Monday, her team and Cornell researchers identified genetic fragments of the virus. They alerted authorities. With that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that H5N1 had hit dairy cattle.

Recalling rumors of sick farmworkers, Texas health officials asked farmers, veterinarians, and local health departments to encourage testing. About 20 people with coughs, aches, irritated eyes, or other flu-like symptoms stepped forward to be swabbed. Those samples were shipped to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All but one was negative for H5N1. On April 1, the CDC announced this year’s first case: a farmworker with an inflamed eye that cleared up within days.

Thirteen dairy farms in the panhandle had been affected, said Brian Bohl, director of field operations at the Texas Animal Health Commission. Farmers report that outbreaks among the herds last 30 to 45 days and most cows return to milking at their usual pace.

The observation hints that herds gain immunity, if temporarily. Indeed, early evidence shows that H5N1 triggers a protective antibody response in cattle, said Marie Culhane, a professor of veterinary population medicine at the University of Minnesota. Nonetheless, she and others remain uneasy because no one knows how the virus spreads, or what risk it poses to people working with cattle.

Although most cows recover, farmers said the outbreaks have disrupted their careful timing around when cattle milk, breed, and birth calves.

Farmers want answers that would come with further research, but the spirit of collaboration that existed in the first months of the Texas outbreak has fractured. Federal restrictions have triggered a backlash from farmers who find them unduly punishing, given that pasteurized milk and cooked beef from dairy cattle appear to pose no risk to consumers.

The rules, such as prohibiting infected cattle from interstate travel for 30 days, pose a problem for farmers who move pregnant cattle to farms that specialize in calving, to graze in states with gentler winters, and to return home for milking. “When the federal order came out, some producers said, ‘I’m going to quit testing,’” Bohl said.

In May, the USDA offered aid, such as up to $10,000 to test and treat infected cattle. “The financial incentives will help,” Turley said. But how much remains to be seen.

Federal authorities have pressed states to extract more intel from farms and farmworkers. Several veterinarians warn such pressure could fracture their relationships with farmers, stifling lines of communication.

Having fought epidemics around the world, Farrar cited examples of when strong-arm surveillance pushed outbreaks underground. During an early 2000s bird flu outbreak in Vietnam, farmers circumvented regulations by moving poultry at night, bribing inspection workers, and selling their goods through back channels. “Learning what drivers and fears exist among people is crucial,” Farrar said. “But we always seem to realize that at a later date.”

A powerful driver in the U.S.: Milk is a $60 billion industry. Public health is also bound to bump up against politics in Texas, a state so aggrieved by pandemic restrictions that lawmakers passed a bill last year barring health officials from recommending covid-19 vaccines.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said that when he heard that federal agents with the CDC and USDA were considering visits to farms — including those where farmers reported the cattle had recovered — he advised against it. “Send federal agents to dairy that’s not sick?” he said. “That doesn’t pass the smell test.”

From Texas to the Nation

Peacock said genomic analyses of H5N1 viruses point to Texas as ground zero for the cattle epidemic, emerging late last year.

“All of these little jigsaw puzzle pieces corroborate undetected circulation in Texas for some time,” said Peacock, an author on one report about the outbreak.

Evidence suggests that either a single cow was infected by viruses shed from birds — perhaps those geese, grackles, or blackbirds, he said. Or the virus spilled over from birds into cattle several times, with only a fraction of those moving from cow to cow.

Sometime in March, viruses appear to have hitched a ride to other states as cows were moved between farms. The limited genomic data available links the outbreak in Texas directly to others in New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Dakota. However, the routes are imprecise because the USDA hasn’t attached dates and locations to data it releases.

Researchers don’t want to be caught off guard again by the shape-shifting H5N1 virus, and that will require keeping tabs on humans. Most, if not all, of about 900 people diagnosed with H5N1 infections worldwide since 2003 acquired it from animals, rather than from humans, Farrar said. About half of those people died.

Occasional tests of sick farmworkers aren’t sufficient, he said. Ideally, a system is set up to encourage farmworkers, their communities, and health care workers to be tested whenever the virus hits farms nearby.

“Health care worker infections are always a sign of human-to-human transmission,” Farrar said. “That’s the approach you want to take — I am not saying it’s easy.”

This story was originally published by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Amy Maxman is public health local editor and correspondent for KFF Health News.

Donald Trump’s Assault on the Wages of American Workers

BY LAWRENCE WITTNER

 MAY 21, 2024
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Image by Mika Baumeister.

Although Donald Trump, as president, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union address that he had produced a “blue-collar boom” in workers’ wages, the reality was quite different. Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S. government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by blocking raises and imposing wage reductions.

Only the preceding year, Trump derailed vital wage legislation. In July 2019―with the pathetically low federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour for a decade and some 13 million workers holding two or more jobs to support their families―the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Raise the Wage Act. If enacted, the legislation would have gradually increased the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour over a six-year period. But, instead of supporting the legislation or proposing an alternative, the Trump White House announced that, if the Senate passed the House bill, Trump would veto it. Consequently, the measure died in the Republican-controlled Senate. According to the AFL-CIO, the legislation would have raised the pay of 40 million American workers.

That same year, Trump’s Department of Labor succeeded in rolling back planned wage increases for millions of workers by restricting eligibility for overtime pay. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the Labor Department had issued a rule substantially raising the income level below which workers were paid time and a half for work done beyond 40 hours per week. But the Trump Labor Department, seizing on a delay in implementation occasioned by a judicial decision, lowered the level by more than $20,000, thus depriving 8.2 million American workers of the right to overtime pay secured under Obama.

In August 2018, Trump canceled a scheduled 2 percent pay raise for millions of civilian federal employees, leading to criticism even from some Republicans. This action, plus other administration assaults on the rights of public employees, led to a massive flight of workers from government service. By the fall of 2019, there were 45,000 vacancies in the Department of Veterans Affairs alone. To fill these vacancies, the Trump administration hired large numbers of temp workers at low wages and with minimal benefits.

Yet another administration policy that undercut workers’ wages emerged with the Trump Labor Department’s issuance of a “joint-employer” rule. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 had been fashioned to ensure that businesses using staffing companies or subcontractors would be accountable for complying with basic workplace protections. Even so, the Trump administration’s joint-employer rule substantially limited liability for wage and hour violations, thereby making it harder for workers to hold all parties accountable. As a result, U.S. workers lost an estimated $1 billion annually thanks to subcontracting or wage theft by employers.

Of course, not all Trump administration attempts at holding down wages succeeded. In 2017, the Trump Labor Department proposed that employers could simply pocket workers’ tips, as long as the workers were paid the minimum wage. Economists estimated that this policy would lead to the loss of $5.8 billion per year in tips for workers, 80 percent of whom were women. But after the discovery that Trump’s Secretary of Labor had gone to great lengths to hide his department’s findings about how harmful the new policy would be, Congress stepped in and amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit employers from seizing the tips of their employees.

Another Trump administration failure occurred in connection with reducing the wages of farmworkers, some of the most exploited, lowest-paid workers in the United States. In mid-2019, the Labor Department proposed a new regulation that would change the rules of the H-2A visa program, used by agricultural employers to hire migrant farmworkers for seasonal work―for example, by President Trump’s wineries. As one of the rules changes would lower wage rates for H-2A farmworkers and, consequently, for their U.S. counterparts, the United Farm Workers challenged it in federal court and, ultimately, prevailed.

Although the “real wages” (after adjusting for inflation) of American workers did rise during Trump’s presidency, the rise was minimal. According to a 2020 Congressional report, during Trump’s first three years in office, workers’ “real average hourly earnings increased by an average of just 0.9 percent.” Admittedly, there was a very substantial jump in real average earnings in the fourth year. But this jump reflected the fact that, in 2020, a disproportionate number of low-wage workers lost their jobs thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and, therefore, were not included in wage calculations.

And even these minimal wage gains usually reflected factors other than administration actions. Responding to the failure of the federal government to ensure adequate wages for workers, many states and cities enacted minimum wage raises, fueling wage growth for the most poorly-paid. Indeed, a study by the National Employment Law Project found that the median wage for low-wage workers climbed much more sharply in states that raised their pay floors than in states that didn’t. In addition, a surge in strike activity by teachers and by unionized workers at major U.S. companies during 2018 and 2019 increased wages for yet another portion of the nation’s workforce.

Overall, then, far from sparking a wage boom, the policies of Trump and his administration depressed the wages of American workers.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press.)