It Breaks My Heart

 (From the United Farm Workers today Oct. 27) This article explains why knowing where your food comes from and how everyone in the process from field to slaughterhouse to packing plant to transportation to your point of purchase is treated is essential. Below is a bit of background on how 1,000s of mostly brown people who don't speak English are kept like animals so corporate agricultural interests can deliver a handsome dividend to their shareholders, and so average Americans can eat well very cheaply.

Knowing this makes me ask at the Farmers Market how they products they sell made it from their farm or facility to Arlington. They always can tell me. I can't get such an answer from Whole Foods, or Tader Joe's or any other food supplier,although I shop at those places as well.

We as Americans turn a blind eye toward injustice that our purchases empower. Instead, we must demand a change that would empower inspectors to make surprise visits to big farms to see how farm workers are housed, and what kind of protective gear they are given, and if there is adequate water and protection from excessive heat. And demand that our immigration policy be reformed to honestly reflect the fact that our food supply depends on undocumented workers -- give them documents so they can legitimately work and earn legal wages and housing.

It's the least we can do as "conscious eaters."

Imagine waking up to hearing a loud "pop" and then realizing your bed had fallen through the rotted floorboards. That's what happened to farm worker José Solis Escalera and his wife as they slept in their room at a Lamont labor camp. I wish I could say conditions like that are atypical, but they aren't.

Driving around the agricultural town of Lamont, California, is like traveling back in time to the Dust Bowl era. Many of these same dilapidated homes sheltered desperate migrants seeking work in the fields. Decades of poor or nonexistent maintenance have rendered these structures unsafe to the point that they are life-threatening.

Among the unsanitary and unsafe conditions the farm worker families in these Lamont units endure are flammable wall materials close to stoves, injury-causing holes in rotted bathroom floors, broken door locks, rat and roach infestations, and hazardous stairs. In one apartment, there are no knobs on the shower, so a wrench must be used to turn on the water.

After a long day packing grapes, Martha Nieves returns home and takes a cold shower. She doesn’t do so by choice. There has been no hot water in her home since she moved in because the water heater was burned out. Compared to many farm workers, her housing is luxurious.

Farm workers shelter in structures not originally intended for human habitation, and pay rent for the privilege. Near Salinas, California, Alfredo Rosales Salvador and another farm worker share quarters—a old tin tool shed for which they pay $300 rent per month. The two young men sleep on the floor on bundles of blankets. They have no running water, nowhere to cook, nowhere to bathe, nowhere to wash their clothes or hang them up. Inside the flimsy tin structure, it’s always cold.

For America’s farm workers, the Great Depression never ended. Poverty, homelessness and despair still haunt their lives and hasten their deaths. But, there is one clear way to change the picture for farm workers. Belonging to a union can make the difference between poverty and a decent life, between fear and security, between degradation and dignity.

Help farm workers have a union of their own.