How coronavirus threatens the seasonal farmworkers at the heart of the American food supply

April 3, 2020 By The Conversation


Many Americans may find bare grocery store shelves the most worrying sign of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their food system.

But, for the most part, shortages of shelf-stable items like pasta, canned beans and peanut butter are temporary because the U.S. continues to produce enough food to meet demand – even if it sometimes takes a day or two to catch up

To keep up that pace, the food system depends on several million seasonal agricultural workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants from Mexico and other countries. These laborers pick grapes in California, tend dairy cows in Wisconsin and rake blueberries in Maine.

As a sociologist who studies agricultural issues, including farm labor, I believe that these workers face particular risks during the current pandemic that, if unaddressed, threaten keeping those grocery store shelves well stocked.

Essential labor

It is difficult to accurately count the number of hired agricultural laborers in the United States, but official sources place the number at
1 million to 2.7 million people, depending on the time of year.

Most of these workers are employed seasonally to perform the hard manual labor of cultivating and harvesting crops. One-half to three-quarters of them were born outside of the United States, with the majority holding Mexican citizenship.

The H-2A visa program authorizes noncitizen agricultural laborers to work in the United States. This program allows farmers to recruit workers for seasonal agricultural jobs, provided the workers return home within 10 months.

But the H-2A program doesn’t cover enough workers to meet the needs of the food system. In 2018, only 243,000 visas were issued under the program – far less than the total number of workers needed to power the farm economy.

Government research suggests that approximately half of the remaining workers on U.S. farms are in the United States without legal authorization. These workers often live in the U.S. year-round, choosing to be in legal limbo rather than risk crossing an increasingly policed border. Some travel from state to state, following the harvest cycle of crops.

These farmworkers play an essential role in U.S. agriculture. They pick fresh fruits and vegetables, which are often difficult or impossible to harvest mechanically. They milk cows on dairy farms. In my home state of Iowa, they detassel the hybrid corn varieties – a form of pollination control – that farmers rely on.

Remove these workers, in other words, and large sectors of the American food system would grind to a halt.

Dangerous conditions

Yet there are several factors that put them at higher risk during the pandemic.

For example, social isolation is almost impossible for farmworkers, who often live and work in close proximity to one another.

Those in the H-2A program typically live in on-site, dormitory-style housing, with up to 10 people sharing sleeping quarters and restroom facilities.

The mostly undocumented workers not covered by H-2A visas frequently work for labor contractors, who arrange for their transportation to work sites in shared vans or trucks.

And once on the job, workers interact closely to harvest crops at a rapid pace.

This near-constant physical proximity to one another can facilitate the rapid transmission of the coronavirus.
Seriously susceptible

The nature of their work also makes farmworkers especially susceptible to serious coronavirus infections.

Although COVID-19 tends to be most severe in the elderly and people with underlying health conditions, farm laborers face working conditions that may elevate the risk for severe disease.

Exposure to dangerous pesticides is not unusual, and agricultural workers must also contend with lung irritants from dust, pollen and crops. This can trigger asthma attacks in farmworkers and their children and contribute to other respiratory disorders. Heath officials have found that these conditions contribute to serious coronavirus infections.

Moreover, farmworkers face a number of barriers to accessing medical care, ranging from linguistic and cultural differences to lack of reliable transportation to the limited number of medical facilities in many rural communities.

These barriers are especially high for the many undocumented farmworkers, who are not eligible for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which does cover workers on H-2A visas.

They may also be reluctant to seek medical care, not wanting to draw attention to themselves in a political climate in which immigration laws are strictly enforced. And farmworkers aren’t typically granted sick leave.

Finally, the labor contractors who employ undocumented workers generally pay only for work that is completed. This means that a day at the doctor’s office is a day without pay – no small sacrifice for a worker making less than $18,000 a year.
Impact on the food supply

But what would an outbreak of COVID-19 among farmworkers mean for the food system?

Fortunately, the risk of direct transmission of the coronavirus passing from farmworkers to consumers through food products is low.

However, widespread infections among farmworkers could make it difficult for farmers to harvest crops. Even before the pandemic, farmers in many agricultural areas were already struggling with labor shortages.

The coronavirus could make this problem worse, potentially causing the loss of crops that cannot be harvested in time. Demand for farmworkers peaks in the summer, so this problem is only a few months away.

Another concern is that fewer workers, fearful of the coronavirus, will apply for H-2A visas to work on U.S. farms, instead seeking work in their home countries. Farmers in hard-hit Italy are already grappling with a similar issue. And on the other side of this issue, the suspension of visa services at U.S. embassies and consulates may restrict the number of H-2A visas given out.

Eventually, consumers could begin to see the impact of any labor shortages in the form of higher prices or shortages of products ranging from strawberries and lettuce to meat and dairy.

There’s no easy solution, but a good start would be ensuring farmworkers are able to follow effective social distancing guidelines, are wearing protective gloves and masks, and are able to get the medical care they need without fear of lost wages or deportation.

Americans depend on these laborers to continue putting food on their tables during this crisis. A little support would go a long way.

Michael Haedicke, Associate Professor of Sociology, Drake University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

After enduring ‘complete hell’ during pandemic, food workers face obstacles getting COVID-19 vaccinations

“Vaccinating our essential farmworkers will ensure the safety of their workplaces, their homes, their families, our food supply, and the vital services that they perform.”

By

 Leah Douglas

 -

February 1, 2021Common Dreams

The thousands of workers who pick, pack, and process our food have become eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine in many states. But they still face obstacles to actually getting the vaccine, as companies sort out their vaccination policies and advocates struggle to secure enough doses for a workforce that ranks among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Labor organizations and the food industry spent months pushing for agricultural and food processing workers to be in early distribution phases of the Covid-19 vaccine. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that agricultural workers be vaccinated in Phase 1b, and many states have followed suit.

Yet with the vaccine rollout moving slowly because of continued shortages and with some states shuffling around their priority populations, there are still unanswered questions about how and whether the vaccines will actually get to workers and about what role food manufacturers will play in getting shots into arms.

Florida is now requiring vaccine recipients to show state driver’s licenses or proof of residence, potentially excluding the state’s 200,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers

Meanwhile, food system workers are still contracting the virus at workplaces across the country. More than 85,500 food and farmworkers have contracted Covid-19 and at least 368 have died as of Jan. 27, according to FERN’s tracker. Nearly 7,000 cases have been added to the database since the beginning of January, even with just a few states regularly reporting data.

Kristy Tijerina, a worker at a JBS meatpacking plant in Plainwell, Michigan, says it’s essential that the vaccine be allocated to the industry’s workers as quickly as possible. At her plant, at least 88 workers have contracted the virus and one has died. Tijerina herself contracted Covid-19 in the spring, and her father died of the virus in August.

“It’s just getting really bad right now,” she says of the case rates in her community. “The more everybody gets vaccinated, it’s a lot better for everybody working here together.”

One obstacle to expediently vaccinating food workers is the still-changing prioritization of essential workers in states’ vaccination phases. Amy Liebman, director of environmental and occupational health at the Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN), which has been supporting local health systems in vaccinating farmworkers, says it’s “been a disappointment” seeing food and farmworkers still unable to access vaccines in many states, given their high risk of contracting Covid-19.

“First and foremost, we need the doses,” Liebman says.

In California, home to as many as 800,000 farmworkers, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently shifted the state’s vaccine distribution structure to be age-based, leading to concerns that many essential workers would need to wait longer for their shots. Florida, another major agricultural producer, is now requiring vaccine recipients to show state driver’s licenses or proof of residence, potentially excluding the state’s 200,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers from being vaccinated at all.

“Farmworkers are among the most vulnerable populations, because they work in close proximity to each other [and] they go home, often to multigenerational households,” said Fresno County supervisor Brian Pacheco at a vaccination site on Wednesday. Fresno County became one of the first counties in the country to begin vaccinating farmworkers this week and plans to vaccinate more than 3,000 agricultural workers in the coming days at vaccination sites around the county.

“Vaccinating our essential farmworkers will ensure the safety of their workplaces, their homes, their families, our food supply, and the vital services that they perform,” Pacheco said.

One of the logistical questions facing employers and health departments is where, exactly, workers should get inoculated. Particularly for migrant farmworkers, who may relocate between shots, vaccine distribution must happen at easily accessible locations, says Leibman. MCN is aiding in that effort with a virtual case management program that can help workers figure out how to get a second vaccine dose if they move after their first shot.

“We need to make sure that the vaccine is available to workers rather than the workers being available to the vaccine,” she says.

For meatpacking workers, the best option is to get vaccinated at work, says Mark Lauritsen, vice president of meatpacking at the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Many large meatpacking plants have their own health clinics, where workers already receive medical care. Workers may be less nervous getting vaccinated in a familiar setting, he says.

“We’re going to work to make sure that it’s an efficient process and a safe process, and that there’s no barriers to accessing [the vaccine],” he says. “The power of having it right there at the plant means we get to these people with very few obstacles.”

Yet there’s also an essential role for public health departments, especially in cases where workers may not trust their employer or report to work on a regular schedule. Advocates who represent subcontracted workers in food processing recommended recently that local health departments be “heavily involved” in vaccine distribution to ensure that temporary workers are reached.

In some states, meatpacking and other agricultural workers can already receive the vaccine or will qualify imminently. Iowa’s meatpacking workers are expected to be able to set up vaccine appointments by Feb. 1, and in Kansas, they began to qualify for vaccine appointments on Jan. 26.

Meatpackers are still figuring out some of the details of how they will vaccinate workers. Nikki Richardson, director of communications for JBS, says vaccination logistics are still being determined at each plant, and that in some cases, public health departments, pharmacies, or local health clinics will carry out worker vaccinations. But the company is “prepared for our phase of vaccine allocation whenever it may occur,” Richardson says.

Tyson Foods plans to “offer vaccinations on-site at our facilities, at no cost, while our team members are on the job,” said the company’s public relations manager, Derek Burleson. Tyson has contracted with Matrix Medical Network to coordinate its worker testing and vaccination, so the timing of vaccinations will depend on when states make vaccines available to Matrix, Burleson says.

Meatpacker JBS says it will pay workers $100 to get vaccinated. A critic called the incentive program an “attempt to distract from the company’s failure to protect its workers.”

Smithfield did not respond to questions about the specifics of its vaccination program.

Employers are also still sorting out whether to incentivize or compensate workers for getting vaccinated. In the grocery sector, where at least 109 union workers have died of Covid-19 and more than 17,000 have contracted the virus, some retailers are introducing incentives to encourage workers to get the vaccine, though they’re not requiring it. For instance, Instacart will pay $25 to employees who take time off to the get vaccinated. Trader Joe’s will give its workers two hours of pay per vaccine dose.

So far, JBS is the only meatpacker that has said it will pay workers to get the vaccine—$100 for employees of the Brazilian-owned meatpacker and its subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride. But that approach isn’t uniformly popular.

Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, said in a statement that JBS’s incentive program is an “attempt to distract from the company’s failure to protect its workers.” Local 7 represents workers at a JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado, where six workers have died of Covid-19 and nearly 450 have been sickened by the virus. The company should quickly restore hazard pay for its workers and implement daily testing, among other precautions, Cordova said.

Meatpackers are also mixed on whether the vaccine should be mandatory for their workers. JBS is “currently focused on achieving the highest voluntary participation rate possible,” says Richardson. Tyson is “strongly encouraging team members to take the vaccine but are not mandating it,” says Burleson.

Lauritsen says the UFCW is opposed to making the vaccine mandatory and that receiving the vaccine should not be a condition of employment. Besides, he says, workers are ready to get the vaccine without it being made compulsory.

“Given the work that’s been done, the complete hell that these folks have went through during this pandemic,” he says, “our members are ready to get the vaccination, and the sooner the better.”

Leah Douglas  is an associate editor and staff writer at FERN. Prior to joining the team, she worked for three years as a reporter and policy analyst with the Open Markets Institute, where she researched economic consolidation and monopolization in the food and agriculture industry. She founded and wrote Food & Power, a first-of-its kind resource on food sector consolidation.

Farmworkers say they are essential workers without essential protections

March 25-31 is officially designated as National Farmworker Awareness Week.

By Austa Somvichian-Clausen | March 28, 2021
HECTOR MATA/AFP via Getty Images

Story at a glance

Though farmworkers were deemed essential and have started to finally receive vaccines, many of them, especially those who are undocumented, face multiple barriers that keep them isolated and vulnerable.

Farmworkers suffer from a lack of protections and benefits that keep them living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Organizations such as Justice for Migrant Women and Farmworker Justice are working to push forward policies that better protect farmworkers.

When Norma Flores López was growing up, her least favorite crop to pick was the onion.

“For any 12-year-old coming back from spring break, the last thing they want us to smell like was onions, and let me tell you: once you have that smell on your hands, you cannot wash it off,” says López.

“That made me very not popular at school [she laughs], so those were actually sort of my first moments of realizing, oh man, I'm not like some of these other kids. These kids were coming back from spring break with a suntan from the beach, and I was coming back very tan because I was out in the field helping my parents.”

Now the Chief Programs Officer for Justice for Migrant Women, López comes from generations of agricultural and farm workers. Despite being a natural-born U.S. citizens, both of her parents dropped out of school by the end of the sixth grade — heading to the fields to help their parents out.

“It didn’t matter that they were U.S. born, and I point that out because I think that people tend to think like this is an issue of people who are undocumented,” she says. “Pointing out the desperate poverty that my U.S. born [parents] grew up in is important. They ended up not being able to get an education, but instead were dedicated to a life of working in the field, and that's what we ended up being raised as well.”

López’ parents are two of the nation’s 2.5 million farmworkers, an estimated 32 percent of which are female, including thousands of teens and girls as young as 12. While the exact number is unknown, at least 300,000 farmworkers are under the age of 18.

As she got older, López began to work with programs meant to aid families of farmers and migrant children. It is through sharing her firsthand experiences that made her realize the power of storytelling to create a lasting change and impact.

Now, she works alongside other inspiring women such as Mónica Ramírez, a lawyer and activist who founded the organization Justice for Migrant Women. Ramírez also came from a family of farmworkers and has devoted her life to serving this key group of essential workers that are often forgotten, most recently raising more than $4 million in aid for farmworkers affected by the pandemic.

“I think what's important to notice is that farmworkers have been historically left out of a lot of protections that I think many people take for granted,” says López. “They don't have the right to organize, don’t have guaranteed overtime pay, the benefit of retirement, and those that are undocumented are particularly vulnerable. They're doing everything to be able to help this country, but in the end they will not have any sort of benefits, or any retirement plan.”

Also considered by experts to be highly vulnerable are the many women and girls working in agriculture, whose jobs are low-paid, dangerous and isolated, putting them at risk of sexual abuse, including sexual harassment and exploitation, by bosses, crew leaders and co-workers. López tells us this is an issue that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, as female farmworkers and migrants have been stuck at home in small communities and often subject to domestic abuse.

For many farmworkers working in rural areas, it has also been a challenge to book appointments to receive a coronavirus vaccination. For those who are able to prove residency, challenges such as access to broadband, language assistance, transportation and proximity all pose barriers to these essential workers, who aren’t able to access essential services.

“These are the kinds of issues that we try to flag for many top political leaders—you know, as they’re putting policies together, asking them to recognize that there are people that are being left out and those that are being left out are particularly vulnerable,” says López.

For many undocumented workers, their top priority remains establishing a direct pathway to citizenship. A vision for that pathway seems to be getting increasingly clear. Just a few days ago, the House passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act with bipartisan support, providing seasonal workers with a program to earn legal status if they are continually employed in the agriculture sector.

“We’re behind the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, behind the American Dream and Promise Act, and we know that our larger undocumented community needs that pathway to citizenship,” says López.

Washington Supreme Court: Farmworkers to get overtime pay

SEATTLE — A divided Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday the state’s dairy workers are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week, a decision expected to apply to the rest of the agriculture industry.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

For the past 60 years, state law — like federal law — has exempted farmworkers from classes of workers who are entitled to overtime pay, but in a 5-4 ruling the court found that unconstitutional. The majority said the Washington state Constitution grants workers in dangerous industries a fundamental right to health and safety protections, including overtime, which is intended to discourage employers from forcing employees to work excessive hours.

The ruling applied directly only to the dairy industry, but its reasoning covers all of the 200,000-plus farmworkers in the state's $10.6 billion agriculture industry, said Lori Isley, an attorney with the non-profit Columbia Legal Services who represented the dairy workers.

“Since 1983, the Washington Supreme Court has recognized that all farm work is very dangerous work, so it's very easy to see how this will extend to all farmworkers,” Isley said. “We are so happy to see the law in our state moving forward in this direction.”

The decision makes Washington the first state to grant farmworkers overtime protections through the courts. California is phasing in some overtime protections, while New York this year began requiring overtime pay when farmworkers work more than 60 hours in a week. Maryland and Minnesota also offer overtime protections to farmworkers.

The ruling could provide a template for extending overtime in other states, said Charlotte Garden, a Seattle University Law School professor who worked on a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

“(President) Trump’s remake of the federal judiciary means that federal courts are likely to be hostile to workers for the foreseeable future,” she wrote in an instant message. “That means that in many states, workers and their advocates are going to be looking to state courts to vindicate their rights. The law in this case is obviously WA-specific, but it could still inspire new litigation strategies both inside and outside WA.”

The dissenting justices said there was no right to overtime under Washington law.

Dairies and other agriculture industry groups warned the ruling will mean vastly increased labour costs and that it could prompt more to turn to robotics, especially in the dairy industry. They can’t simply pass on higher costs to consumers because they often compete in national or global markets for their products, they argued.

Washington's farms already have some of the nation's highest labour costs, thanks in part to its high minimum wage and to the nature of the crops grown, including fruit and hops, which require intensive hand-picking.

The industry warned that applying overtime protections would leave farms with three options: limiting their harvest and leaving crops to rot, absorbing the extra labour costs, or hiring additional workers to avoid incurring overtime expenses.

The last option is untenable, since there's already a shortage of agriculture workers, the Washington State Tree Fruit Association and the Hop Growers of Washington said in a friend-of-the-court brief.

Giving the workers OT protections would also have the perverse effect of cutting workers' earnings by limiting them to 40 hours or forcing them to find additional work from a second employer — which means they'd be working longer hours without OT anyway, the organizations argued.

Dan Wood, executive director of the Washington State Dairy Federation, noted that some farms already pay $18 to $20 an hour for all hours worked — paying time-and-a-half would boost that to about $27 to $30 for hours above 40 per week.

“My phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Wood said Thursday. “You can’t operate with those costs. The political climate in Washington is far less favourable to agriculture than the natural climate.”

The court majority found the Legislature had no reasonable basis for excluding agriculture workers from the protections. The justices said agriculture work generally is dangerous, with workers exposed to diseases from animals, physical strain, and pesticides and other chemicals that can increase the risk of neurological conditions and cancer. In 2015, the injury rate for Washington’s dairy industry was nearly one-fifth higher than that of the agricultural sector.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Steven González also noted what he described as the racist origins of the overtime exemption for farmworkers. In the South, a feudal-like state replaced slavery, with Black workers continuing to toil on white-owned farms. When federal lawmakers passed major labour reforms in the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made compromises to win the support of Southern Democrats, exempting farmworkers from such protections and preserving the racial hierarchy.

Many states, including Washington, subsequently based their labour laws on the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

Latinos account for 99% of Washington's farmworkers.

“Excluding farmworkers from health and safety protections cannot be justified by an assertion that the agricultural industry, and society’s general welfare, depends on a caste system that is repugnant to our nation’s best self,” González wrote.

The ruling came in a 2016 lawsuit that two workers, Jose Martinez-Cuevas and Patricia Aguilar, brought on behalf of 300 workers against DeRuyter Brothers Dairy in Outlook, southeast of Yakima. The dairy's milking facilities were operated around the clock, and workers were required to stay until all cows were milked and to help clean the barn.

The dairy paid $600,000 to settle most of the claims, including that it failed to provide meal and rest breaks, but the workers' argument that they were entitled to OT had not been resolved. The dairy has been sold to another operator.

The majority did not say whether the workers would be able to collect back pay; that issue is expected to be addressed in future litigation.

Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

Farmworkers Face Food Insecurity While Helping Feed Others

By Sam Eaton
December 22, 2021

Mano a Mano - a nonprofit family center - has become a lifeline for many of central Oregon's agricultural workers.

More than two million farms scattered across the United States provide produce, dairy and meat that end up on our dinner plates, but the people working long hours in the fields to harvest it all are struggling to feed their own families.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. In 2020 nearly 14 million households in the U.S. - around 10.5% - were food insecure, according to the USDA's most recent report, and among those are farmworkers.

Since the beginning of the pandemic more than half of the farmworkers in Washington state have faced challenges accessing food according to recent research by the University of Washington. Another study shows 45% of Latino farmworkers in California's central valley reported food insecurity in 2020.

Ana Peña with the nonprofit Mano a Mano Family Center, says the problem is just as bad in central Oregon.

Peña is a community health worker for Mano a Mano, which means hand in hand. She says the center's food bank has become a lifeline for many of central Oregon's agricultural workers.

"Especially during summer, we'll have maseca coming in, and maseca is awesome for our tortillas, tamales, all those goodies," Peña said.

Providing traditional foods for Latino farmworkers is one thing, but Peña says for many of her clients who live and work in remote rural areas without access to transportation, just getting to the food bank is a challenge. So the food bank goes to them.

A recent tri-state COVID-19 farmworker study revealed that fewer than a quarter of farmworkers in Washington state were able to access food banks because of their limited operations and overlap with work hours.

"They also earn an incredibly low wage where even though they're harvesting the food we all eat they can't afford those same foods themselves," Peña said. "So we're making sure that they have the same opportunities as other folks to have enough food for themselves and their families."

Because of shutdowns from this winter's flooding and the seasonal nature of farm work, many of the agricultural workers in this complex can’t find work right now.

Cristina Carrio is from Guatemala. She says she works seasonally on berry farms, and she's waiting for the season to start up again.

Carrio says it's been difficult to keep her three children fed and the electric and gas bills paid. Mano a Mano food boxes mean she’ll be able to make traditional posole and tamales for Christmas.

The farmworkers are essential workers, but long hours, remote locations and low pay make the group especially vulnerable to food insecurity.

The hunger farmworkers experience may be even worse than the numbers suggest. Oregon State University sociology professor Mark Edwards has researched food insecurity in the western U.S. for two decades. He says most official data on farmworker food insecurity comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which presents its own set of challenges.

"So a federal survey is conducted, and you can imagine that farm workers are, as a group, not going to trust this group, especially if they are here without documents and they're living busy lives, not necessarily in places that are easy to find by surveyors," Edwards said. "And so, they are underrepresented in the surveys, I'm sure, so we don't have excellent data that describes this."

Edwards says the best data often come from nonprofit organizations like Mano a Mano.

"The people who are out serving among these workers and asking questions and telling the story of what it is that they are experiencing," Edwards said.

With each box delivery, Peña and her team learn more about the challenges farmworkers are facing. One man says he isn't able to work because of leukemia. Another is hoping to hear soon about a winter job at a mill. For all of them, these food boxes will mean the difference between skipping meals and eating well.

"People are struggling and especially now during this pandemic, and it's made a lot of people become homeless," Peña said. "A lot of people are having to ask for a food box for the first time in their lives after working like 20, 40 years."

Pride is a huge barrier. Peña says farmworkers are used to working for the food they provide for their families, and because of their mixed legal status or their fear of jeopardizing their path to citizenship, few apply for government food stamps. This means for many farmworker nonprofits like Mano a Mano are their only safety net.

"For us, farm workers have the utmost respect from our organization because, you know, we're just giving back to them what they give to us," Peña said.

Peña says the pandemic has taught everyone how essential these workers are. She just hopes that lesson will translate into real change - safer work conditions, fair pay and not letting farmworkers go hungry while working to keep food on everyone else's plates.

Mired in silence

Health of Southern California’s farmworkers needs to be a priority, says UC Riverside study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: ANN CHENEY (SECOND FROM LEFT) IS SEEN HERE WITH PROMOTORAS, SPANISH-SPEAKING COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS. view more 

CREDIT: UC RIVERSIDE.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A University of California, Riverside, study performed in the Eastern Coachella Valley, one of California’s top agricultural production regions, has found that farmworkers there lack information and the means to advocate for improved public health even when they are aware of being exposed to health risks stemming from working and living in rural farmlands.

About 76% of the 2.4 million farmworkers in the United States are immigrants, most of whom are from Mexico. In Inland Southern California, where the Eastern Coachella Valley, or EVC, is located, not much research has been done on Latinx farmworkers’ health concerns and barriers to care.

“Agricultural production demands in the U.S. impose a heavy burden on Latinx immigrant farmworkers, which shapes their health and informs their decisions about their living conditions,” said Ann Cheney, an associate professor of social medicine, population, and public health in the School of Medicine and lead author of the study that appears in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. “The health of these workers and their families should be a national priority.”

Cheney and her team used a community-based participatory research approach. They conducted nine in-home meetings in 2017-2018, with the help of “promotoras,” Spanish-speaking community health workers, to gather information on the health concerns of rural residents of the EVC as well as the barriers they face in accessing healthcare services. The majority of the 82 participants in the study were Mexican immigrants, women, and low-income. Nearly 60% of participants worked in agriculture. Many resided close to farmlands and were regularly exposed to pesticides, chemicals, agricultural runoff, and mosquitoes.

In the interviews, participants discussed health concerns related to agricultural labor, such as heat-related illness, musculoskeletal ailments and injuries, skin disorders, respiratory illness, and trauma. They expressed their concerns about environmental exposures related to agriculture and the nearby Salton Sea, a land-locked highly saline lakebed, and offered solutions to improve the health of their communities.

Respiratory illness in the ECV is disproportionately high, affecting about 20% of children living along the Salton Sea. Study participants said they were aware of the negative effects of the Salton Sea on their health. 

“Farm work exposes laborers to heat, cold, and ultraviolet rays, increasing the risk to health,” Cheney said. “Farmworkers have more exposure to pesticides than non-agricultural workers, which can increase risk for skin disease, vision problems, and respiratory-associated illness.”

Cheney added that the kind of work the farmworkers do — picking of crops, heavy lifting, and standing or kneeling for long periods — can cause injuries and chronic pain. 

“The fast-paced, high-risk working environment can affect mental health,” she said. 

The study found many farmworkers stay quiet when it comes to unsafe workplace conditions and injuries because they fear losing their jobs. Many farmworkers lack health insurance and have little access to medical facilities, sick pay, and transportation. Most are not fluent English. Indeed, the situation of rural farmworkers has not changed significantly since the farm labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez brought attention in the 1960s to the poor living and working conditions endured by farm workers.

“Much of the lack of change is tied to structural level inequities produced by macro-level processes, neoliberal economic and political policies, that extend beyond what individuals or communities can do and reflect the values of governments,” Cheney said. “An example is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994. What we know is NAFTA compromised the financial stability of small-scale farms in Mexico, the primary occupation in many rural regions of Mexico. Some estimates suggest more than 3 million people involved in agricultural labor lost their jobs and their livelihood.”

Cheney explained that the EVC is home to a large population of Purépecha, an indigenous group from Michoacán Mexico. 

“Living in the valley and working in the fields, they make up an incredibly vulnerable community as many cannot speak Spanish or English,” she said. “They speak their native indigenous language of Purépecha and are undocumented. They choose farm labor because they don’t need language or technical skills to be pickers. This, though, is the lowest ranking position in agricultural labor and least paid.”

According to Cheney, structural level interventions — interventions that change the political and economic landscape — are needed to effect positive change in the lives of farm workers.

“We need to move away from neoliberal policies that privilege those already in positions of power, open the border between US and Mexico so that those crossing the border are not labelled as ‘illegal’ and have the opportunity to find stable employment, access educational and social opportunities for themselves and their families,” she said. “Such an approach also aligns with the thinking of NAFTA — open the borders for trade to eliminate tariffs. We, too, should open the border for human migration to eliminate inequities.”

Cheney was joined in the study by Tatiana Barrera and Katheryn Rodriguez of UCR; and Ana María Jaramillo López of the College of the Northern Border, Tijuana, Mexico.

The research was funded by the Research Program on Migration and Health.

The title of the research paper is “The Intersection of Workplace and Environment Exposure on Health in Latinx Farm Working Communities in Rural Inland Southern California.”

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

DOI

10.3390/ijerph191912940 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Intersection of Workplace and Environmental Exposure on Health in Latinx Farm Working Communities in Rural Inland Southern California

WORKER SELF MANAGED ESG

A Worker-Driven Model for Protecting Labor Rights Is Successful — and Expanding

Unlike corporate models, “worker-driven social responsibility” puts workers at the center of protecting their rights.

By Derek Seidman ,

  TRUTHOUT

PublishedOctober 15, 2023

On May Day farm workers march to a Hannaford supermarket to protest the supermarket chain's refusal to purchase milk from dairy suppliers who have committed to a set of fair labor practices, on May 1, 2022, in Burlington, Vermont.

ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN / CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

LONG READ


If you consume products from capitalist markets today — and, of course, most of us do — you’ve surely seen your share of labels on name brand items promising that your purchase is “ethical”: fair trade coffee, sustainable clothing. The list goes on.

Many of these efforts, however, amount to little more than corporate marketing, a kind of image control that became fashionable beginning in the 1990s with the exposure of horrid labor conditions across global supply chains. But one model has built up a proven record of upholding crucial protections for the most at-risk workers within those supply chains: worker-driven social responsibility (WSR).

Born out of bottom-up struggle at the turn of the 21st century by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), WSR models are based on legally binding agreements with key supply chain actors that uphold worker-shaped codes of conduct that are strongly monitored and enforced, often by workers themselves, and are backed by market sanctions against violators. While corporate-aligned models have failed, numerous studies show that WSRs have been profoundly effective, in no small part because, for workers, “the need to develop and pursue an effective strategy to define, claim, and protect their human rights is existential, affecting their very lives,” writes Susan Marquis, a Princeton University professor, in a recent report.

Marquis’s report, published by Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy and Clean Slate for Worker Power, surveys the failures of corporate social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives against the successes of the WSR model. Marquis, who also wrote a 2017 book about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, shows how the WSR model is expanding, and argues that U.S. federal policies could support its further growth.

RELATED STORY

Farmworkers Push Wendy’s, Kroger and Publix to Take Stance Against Forced Labor
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is pushing the companies to join the Fair Food Program, which deters forced labor.  By Derek Seidman , TRUTHOUT March 11, 2023

“Good for the Brand But Not Effective at All for the Workers”

Globalization in the 1980s and 1990s spurred a worldwide “race to the bottom” as corporations sought out workers whom they could pay pennies on the hour to labor under sweatshop conditions. Iconic brands like Nike and the Gap faced a slew of scandals over abuses in their supply chains. This created huge public relations headaches for corporations. In response, they set up corporate social responsibility programs (CSRs).

CSRs, writes Marquis, are corporate-run programs, sometimes containing auditing arms, with published standards around conditions in their supply chains on issues like human rights and sustainability. But as CSRs proved to be ineffective at addressing those issues, civil society groups, businesses, and other stakeholders came together to form Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives (MSIs), beginning in the 2000s and into the 2010s. These, which involve partnerships between corporations and civil society groups, and sometimes governments, were intended to address “governance gaps” in CSRs around issues like human rights abuses and sustainability.

But CSRs and MSIs have one thing in common, says Marquis: Neither really protect workers. “They were good for the brand but not effective at all for the workers,” she told Truthout. “You didn’t see any real change.”

The core problem, says Marquis, is that CSRs and MSIs fail workers by design. They are voluntary for corporations. Enforcement is lax. Neither put real power in the hands of workers, the very people best equipped to define standards, monitor violations and oversee enforcement.

“What’s inadequate about these models is that they are not centered on the workers,” said Marquis. Her claims are backed up by numerous studies, including a major 2020 report that concluded the MSI model “failed in its goal of providing effective protection against abuse.”

Anna Canning is the communications director for the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network, which works to promote and expand the WSR model. She says CSRs and MSIs deal with appearance more than substance.

“There are these ubiquitous fair trade labels,” she says, “but they’re failing to address the big power imbalances that colonialism and capitalism have instilled into pretty much every aspect of our food and trade systems.”

“There’s no way that you can make the kind of change that’s needed just through consumer choice,” said Canning. “All of that stuff exists in the realm of marketing. It does not exist in the tangible world of binding agreements.”
“The Power Was Not With the Growers, But With the Corporations”

In the 1990s and 2000s, another model for protecting workers’ rights was germinating in the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida.

CSRs and MSIs fail workers by design. They are voluntary for corporations. Enforcement is lax. Neither put real power in the hands of workers

Farmworkers are not covered under the National Labor Relations Act, making unionization extremely difficult. Many are undocumented migrant workers or immigrants. Working conditions, historically, have been hyperexploitative, with violence and sexual abuse rampant, sometimes akin to slavery.

Originally a workers’ center fighting for better conditions for Florida’s tomato pickers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers developed an analysis of their situation that centered on the broader supply chain they labored within.

Who, ultimately, held the structural power within that supply chain to improve the lives of farmworkers, they asked? It was not the field owners who hired farmworkers, but the corporate behemoths, the grocery and food service giants who dominated the retail purchasing of agricultural goods. Moreover, those corporations — the Taco Bells, the Trader Joes, the Walmarts — were susceptible to consumer pressure.

This analysis gave birth to the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001, which built an alliance between farmworkers and consumers, especially students and faith-based organizations, to educate the public about agricultural supply chain abuses and to pressure corporate retailers to end their complicity.

The first high-profile campaign was against Taco Bell. Farmworkers and their allies demanded the company sign a binding agreement to address abuses like wage theft among the growers in this supply chain. Victory at Taco Bell came in 2005, and other corporations followed: McDonald’s, Burger King, Chipotle, and more, including, in 2014, Walmart, the nation’s top grocer.

Under the banner of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, farmworkers had created a social movement. They carved out a public voice. They reframed farmworkers’ rights as human rights. The media and elected officials started paying serious attention. They were altering the power relations in their supply chain.

The WSR model that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers began led to the creation of the Fair Food Program in 2011, which, to this day, is the core partnership through which the Coalition of Immokalee Workers achieves protections and gains for farmworkers.

Under the Fair Food Program, retailers and growers agree to abide by a “Code of Conduct” that is shaped by, and protects, farmworkers. This is cemented in a signed, legally-binding agreement that is enforced, largely, by workers themselves through regular education sessions and a multilingual 24/7 hotline. An independent body, the Fair Food Standards Council, conducts investigations into abuses and undertakes serious audits. The program also includes a Fair Food Premium that retailers pay that ends up in workers’ paychecks as a bonus. Any partnering grower found violating the code of conduct risks market sanctions that could cut off sales to the nation’s top buyers.

The Fair Food Program now covers multiple products in states across the U.S. and has expanded to several other countries. Its results have been widely lauded. The program received a Presidential Medal of Honor, and the UN Special Rapporteur in Trafficking in Persons called it an “international benchmark.” One labor relations professor said it was “the best workplace-monitoring program I’ve seen in the U.S.”
“We See Each Worker as a Monitor of the Program”

It was a little over a decade ago when Lupe Gonzalo first heard about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. She had seen the rampant abuses in the agricultural industry: the poverty, the wage theft, the sexual harassment and, in extreme cases, working conditions akin to slavery.

Around 2011, she was working on a farm that had joined the new Fair Food Program. When the Coalition of Immokalee Workers visited to explain the agreement, she experienced something of an awakening.

“That was the first time that, as a farmworker, in over a dozen years of working in the field, I heard about my rights,” Gonzalo recalled. “It was the first time I felt like I was being seen as a human being.”

She was hooked. She got involved with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and participated in protests and campaigns. She eventually joined the organization’s staff.

Gonzalo says the close and consistent contact between organizers and workers is crucial to the Fair Food Program’s effectiveness. “We go out to the farms and talk directly with workers,” she told Truthout. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers distributes materials and conducts educational sessions. They make sure everyone has the hotline number and knows what to do if there’s a problem.

“We see each worker as a monitor of the program,” she said.

Unlike with CSRs and MSIs, Gonzalo says, the Fair Food Standards Council conducts substantive investigations around complaints at farms. It tries to solve the problem. “They’re not just surface level investigations,” says Gonzalo. Audits involve interviewing “at least 50 percent of the workforce.”

She says the program’s success rests on it being worker-driven: “It’s the workers’ voice that’s leading to the solutions and protections for workers.”
“These Things Won’t Change Unless We Change Them Ourselves”

Soon, other worker organizations began to explore the WSR model. One of those groups was Migrant Justice, led by a community of immigrant farmworkers in Vermont, whose origins lay over a decade ago in the Green Mountain State’s dairy farms.

Thelma Gómez was 16 years old when she joined her father working in Vermont’s dairy farms in 2012. The icy weather was an adjustment, but worse was her boss’s refusal to pay her when paycheck time came around. “I felt in my bones it was unjust,” Gómez told Truthout.

Later that year, Gómez was invited to a farmworkers’ assembly. People discussed their experiences with ramshackle housing, poverty wages and grueling hours.

For Gómez, it was a revelation. “I realized that my situation wasn’t so unique,” she said. “Everybody was experiencing some form of labor abuse.” Moreover, it didn’t need to be this way. “The organizers of the assembly told us it doesn’t matter what country you came from: You have human rights,” she said.

Gómez threw herself into organizing with Migrant Justice. “I felt a responsibility and a commitment to this work because I came to understand that these things won’t change unless we change them ourselves,” she said.

Around that time, Migrant Justice had developed a “pyramid of power” analysis of the dairy industry that took the wider supply chain into account. The group heard about the Fair Food Program. Gómez soon trekked down to Immokalee with her young twin daughters to learn from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers firsthand.

“I was blown away by everything the CIW had accomplished,” she remembered. The key thing she took away from the WSR model was that farmworkers had to focus pressure on the top of their supply chains to win any rights for themselves.

Soon, the organization was putting these lessons into action. In dialogue with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Migrant Justice formed its signature WSR program, Milk With Dignity. The group’s first major breakthrough came in late 2017, when the Vermont-based ice cream giant, Ben & Jerry’s, signed on to the program.

Now an organizer with Migrant Justice, Gómez says the Milk with Dignity campaign has been transformational for dairy farmworkers, offering protections against sexual harassment and other abuses, as well as paid sick days and paid vacation. The Harvard Business Review has praised the effectiveness of its hotline.

Gómez says corporate-driven models in the dairy industry — for example, Chobani’s “Milk Matters” partnership with Fair Trade USA, which was lambasted by critics and media reports as ineffective — don’t empower workers to defend their rights.

“It starts with who’s driving the program. These corporate programs don’t provide the same protections for workers as WSR programs because they’re created to placate consumers,” says Gómez. “What you need is real change driven by workers themselves.”
“Learners Into Teachers”

Just as farmworkers from Vermont learned from farmworkers from Immokalee, so too is Migrant Justice passing on lessons to others.

“The dairy workers at Migrant Justice really developed from learners into teachers,” said Gómez. She invokes conversations she’s had with construction workers in Minnesota, chicken processing plant workers in Arkansas and seafood processing workers in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Marquis’s report documents the further spread of the WSR model over the past several years. Through the worker center Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha, construction workers in St. Paul and Minneapolis established a Building Dignity and Respect Program, which aims to set and monitor standards — from a $20 minimum wage to ensuring protections from retaliation — in nonunionized sectors of the construction industry that are rife with abuses, such as wage theft. Advocates hope the program will expand beyond the Twin Cities. The London-based International Transport Workers’ Federation, aided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is bringing WSR to the fishing industry in the United Kingdom. Lesotho workers launched a WSR program in 2019 to fight gender-based violence in garment factories. The Fair Food Program itself has spread beyond Florida and into multiple states and countries to cover a range of produce — sweet corn in Colorado, for example, and the agricultural industry in Chile.


The Fair Food Standards Council conducts substantive investigations around complaints at farms. It tries to solve the problem.

The biggest applications of the WSR model have been in South Asia. Following the horrific Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, garment workers in Bangladesh, who Marquis says took inspiration from the WSR model, launched the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Safety, and a similar program was launched in Pakistan in 2022. The programs have been praised, though some major corporations, such as Levi’s and the Gap, have not joined.

The expansion of WSR can also be measured by the widening of its scope. With the intensification of extreme heat, the Fair Food Program implemented new standards, including mandatory cooldown rest breaks and heightened monitoring of heat stress symptoms. It also developed mandatory standards to protect farmworkers from COVID-19.

In her report, Marquis argues that the U.S. federal government could help promote the WSR model through new policies at federal agencies and new legislation and regulation — for example, by “conditioning public purchases and other financial incentives at the government’s disposal on participation” in the Fair Food Program, or using the Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau to tie participation in the Fair Food Program internationally to imports. In February, the Department of Labor awarded a $2.5 million grant to the Fair Food Standards Council to help expand the Fair Food Program with “a pilot project to promote human and labor rights focused on cut flower farms in Chile, Mexico and South Africa.”

The Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network has been a hub over the years for the promotion of WSR. Canning is excited about the model’s expansion, but also points to challenges, such as the “corporate refusal to engage.” Current WSR campaigns include the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ longtime fight to get Wendy’s, Kroger and Publix to join the Fair Food Program, and Migrant Justice’s campaign to get Hannaford supermarkets to join Milk With Dignity.

Companies have given various rationalizations for their refusal to join these programs, including that they already have their own codes of conducts for suppliers. Kroger, which says it has its own “Human Rights Policy,” made headlines as some of its agricultural suppliers have been tied to abuses like wage theft and even modern-day slavery.

Canning also emphasizes the need to keep workers at the center of the WSR model, even if things move a bit more slowly.

“Real change takes time,” she says. “Worker-led means that with expansion into new industries, workers need time to adapt to the model. It’s not a one-size-fits-all standard that’s being just pushed down on folks in different supply chains. It’s a set of principles that are adapted by workers for their workplace and industry.”

Outside of the U.S. — for example, in Bangladesh, Lesotho and the U.K., according to Marquis — labor unions have signed onto and help maintain WSR initiatives. In the U.S., farmworkers who fall under their protections are not unionized, nor is their right to unionize permitted under federal labor law, making unionization incredibly difficult, though some states guarantee collective bargaining rights for farmworkers. With WSRs, worker organizations have found ways to win substantive labor and human rights protections, including protections from employer retaliation for voicing concerns over code of conduct violations.

Organizers like Migrant Justice’s Gómez hope to see more workers develop and implement WSR models in their supply chains. For her, the journey has been defining.

“It’s the greatest pride of my life that I’ve been able to be involved in creating the Milk With Dignity program,” she says, “and seeing the transformation that it has brought about.”

Indigenous Farmworkers Hold the Key to Healing Our Burning Planet

Grape harvesters share traditional ecological knowledge to right our relationship with the land—and each other.

BROOKE ANDERSON 

IN THESE TIMES

JANUARY 26, 2022

“Escuchen a los trabajadores,” one sign reads at the Nov. 13, 2021, picket at Simi Winery. “Listen to the workers.”

BROOKE ANDERSON

Anayeli Guzman was born into a Mixtec-speaking Indigenous community in San Miguel Chicahua in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her family raised chickens on their land, and as a child she would help plant corn, squash and radishes. They ate handmade tortillas with beans, eggs and salsa. Her grandparents taught her to care for the land and to revere the rain. Few people worked for wages. Rather, families owned small plots and grew seasonal, drought-resistant crops, exchanged produce with nearby communities and helped each other with big projects.

After migrating to the United States to be with her husband, Anayeli (along with 11,000 other, mostly Indigenous, immigrant farmworkers) toils for meager wages in the $1.9 billion wine industry of Sonoma County, Calif. In the past several years, record-breaking wildfires have ravaged the area, often during harvest season. Vineyard owners routinely escort workers through evacuation zones to pick grapes in a haze of toxic smoke.

Fed up, Anayeli and her coworkers began to organize in summer 2021. After surveying hundreds of farmworkers, their committee created the 5 for Farmworkers in Fires campaign to demand language justice, disaster insurance, community safety observers, hazard pay and clean bathrooms. Workers hand-delivered those demands to dozens of wineries. When one winery, Simi, did not respond, around 300 workers and allies picketed Simi’s lavish, $145-per-ticket wine tasting. (Disclosure: I first met Anayeli and other farmworkers as a photographer hired to help document their campaign.)

Wineries not only endanger workers’ lives by instructing them to harvest in the midst of raging climate change-fueled blazes; wineries actually accelerate climate destabilization. Industrial agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change globally, and wineries are particularly likely to erode local ecological balance through soil depletion, intensive water use and the deployment of toxic fertilizers.

Indigenous farmworkers, however, often have access to traditional ecological knowledge passed down through millennia — about how to live in right relationship with the land, water and one another — but lack the power to steward and heal the land.

Now, farmworkers are organizing to change that.

“The reality is that, in this decade, we’re going to see serious changes,” says Davida Sotelo Escobedo, communications and research coordinator with North Bay Jobs with Justice, which is helping with the campaign. ​“The rich, the land owners, are going to talk about solutions that are disconnected from the land. But those who work the land have the knowledge and leadership to show us what we need to do. There is power in remembering and uplifting this connection with the land.”

In the spirit of remembering our way forward, I interviewed two Indigenous farmworkers at the heart of this organizing effort — Anayeli Guzman and Margarita Garcia — about their memories of home, working as a farmworker today, and what they’d change if they had the power to tend the land on which they currently labor.

Anayeli Guzman (right) shows her daughter, Dalia, how to care for a pepper plant at their home in Windsor, Calif.

Anayeli Guzman (right) helps her daughter, Dalia, with a Trabajos Con Justicia (“Jobs with Justice”) bandana before the Nov. 13, 2021, picket at Simi Winery in Healdsburg, Calif.
ANAYELI GUZMAN

RESPECT. ​“The wineries treat us like they treat the earth. There is no respect for us nor for the land. The only thing that interests them is production and money. But if the workers and the land didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a harvest. There wouldn’t be anything.”

RAIN. ​“Our elders said that when it is time to plant, the first thing they’d do is offer something — be it liquid or food — to the land, because she is our mother. Before the first rains, they’d go to a cave carrying torches and candles and have a party with food, dancing and singing to ask God for rain. It is different here. Wineries expect the fruit to produce because they put chemicals and fertilizers on it.”

WATER, DROUGHT, FERTILIZERS. ​“The wineries use fertilizers which damage the land and water. Sometimes it is as if they make a plant produce or mature when it shouldn’t. It is as if they are forcing nature. We are also in a drought. At my home, there is no grass. But at the wineries, everything is green. It’s as if you’re transported to another world, as if they had their own river. It makes me sad because all the animals need water. They have a right to live too.”

CROP ROTATION. ​“There comes a time when we all must take a break. So too does the earth need a break. The farmers in my community let the land rest for a certain time. They let it breathe, let it regain nutrients for the next harvest. That doesn’t happen here. Here, it’s just constant work. As soon as the last harvest ends, they’re already pruning again.”

MUTUAL AID. ​“There used to be a lot of mutual aid — ​‘you help me, I help you,’ not, ​‘OK, you worked this many hours so you get this much cash.’ No. We worked as a team. We called it tequio. It’s a beautiful tradition and what I most miss. It is different here because you arrive and the boss tells you, ​‘Here is where we’ll work,’ and that’s it.”

MONEY WON’T HEAL THE EARTH. ​“They have to understand that there are things money cannot buy and that technology alone will not fix. This is true for the healing of the earth. We can’t just put up solar panels or buy different cars. We have to do it ourselves.”

WORKERS ARE THE REAL STEWARDS. ​“Like [Emiliano] Zapata said, ​‘La tierra es de quien la trabaja’ (‘The land belongs to those who work it’). The workers are the ones who spend time watching how the plants grow, how the grapes mature. We are more the owners than they are.”

Margarita Garcia wears a traditional huipil in her kitchen in Santa Rosa, Calif., which is “biodegradable” and “does not contain toxic material,” she says. The colors represent wild flowers back home, some of which are extinct.

Margarita Garcia advocates for the 5 for Farmworkers in Fires campaign outside of Simi Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., on Nov. 13, 2021. The campaign demands include, for example, clean bathrooms for workers.
MARGARITA GARCIA


WATER. ​“The wineries have damaged the land, the water and the environment. They use many pesticides to the point that the rivers are no longer clean. We have to be more conscious of caring for our water. Where I’m from, there’s always been drought, so we knew to use only what we needed and no more. Rainwater was recycled. We’d put containers outside and when it would rain we’d have water to water the plants. We had open air toilets and the waste would go to the plants. Same with the water from the wash — everything went to the plants.”

FIRE. ​“There was a lot of drought in my community, so there would be fires. It is not new for me. However, the fires never grew as large as they do here. The people themselves would self-organize to put out fires because there was no fire department. They’d surround the fire so that it could not jump, throw earth on it and hit it with branches. We’d intentionally burn certain areas in order to later plant corn. The ashes were used as compost to prevent insects without chemicals. Later, each town would take its turn to plant again and the trees would return.”

EXCHANGE. ​“In my community, el trueque is the exchange of crops. If a family has avocados and we have oranges, we’d exchange. If one town’s harvest was potatoes, plums, peaches and other things we didn’t have in my community, we’d exchange. We’d bring potatoes and they’d give us bread, or we’d bring tortillas and they’d give us chiles.”

KNOWLEDGE. ​“The bosses don’t respect the wisdom of the farmworkers. I remember this coworker of mine. The boss told her that she was born to work the fields because of the color of her skin. Instead of humiliating us like this, they should value our knowledge of the land. But they are interested neither in caring for the land, nor in the opinion of farmworkers. The only thing the wineries care about is extracting work from us to make money for them. Right now, you have to do what the boss says and sometimes it is against our will. But If the land owners listened to us, we could guide them about how to work with the land, not against it.”

Margarita Garcia (left) and Anayeli Guzman, among 300 other workers and community allies, rally at Simi Winery on Nov. 13, 2021, in Healdsburg, Calif., with North Bay Jobs with Justice.

Anayeli Guzman (bottom, facing the crowd) demands language justice and hazard pay, among other issues, at the Nov. 13, 2021, picket of Simi Winery.

As the planet rapidly escalates toward ecological collapse, those who put us on that path can no longer deny the collapse is imminent. They will propose technological solutions (more solar panels, more electric cars) while propagating the very same social and economic inequality that got us to this point. What we really need is to put stewardship back into the hands of people who recognize how to live in right relationship to the Earth and each other. Farmworkers, as grassroots ecologists with the wisdom and respect to take care of the land correctly, are the voices we need to heed.

All worker quotes have been translated from their original Spanish and edited for clarity and brevity.

BROOKE ANDERSON is an Oakland, California-based organizer and photojournalist. She has spent 20 years building movements for social, economic, racial and ecological justice. She is a proud union member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, CWA 39521, AFL-CIO.