CHAPTER 14
FARMWORKERS AND FOOD WORKERS: THE NEGLECTED VICTIMS OF OUR FOOD SYSTEM
My guess is that most of us don’t think of farmworkers and food workers when we eat. Somehow cheap food magically shows up in grocery stores and in restaurants. While we may obsess over what we eat and whether it’s healthy, and even think about how our food is grown and whether it’s organic or grass-fed, we don’t often think about who grows it, cooks it, or serves it. We may not fully grasp the impact of our food choices and the food system on the people who actually grow, pick, transport, and serve our food—the farmers and farmworkers, meat-packers, truckers, restaurant workers, and retailers.
Farmworkers and food workers are the largest sector of workers in America, numbering more than 20 million. Without farmworkers and food workers we wouldn’t be able to eat. They rarely make a living wage and are subjected to harsh working and living conditions, including modern forms of slavery, sexual harassment, abuse, lack of health care, and exposure to toxic agricultural chemicals. And most of them are brown or black. Three-quarters of those living below the poverty line1 and the 50 million food-insecure people in America are mostly black, Latino, or Native American.2 And people of color suffer disproportionately from diet-related diseases, labor abuses, lack of access to resources, and the environmental consequences of our food system.
The issues of our global agricultural system are complex and interconnected, and they affect everything from our health and our economy to climate change and the much-neglected plight of food workers and farmworkers.
FOOD SERVICE WORKERS AND THE OTHER NRA
More than half of all food workers and farmworkers are in food service. They are among the most exploited and underpaid workers in the country. According to the Labor Department, seven out of the ten lowest-paying jobs are in the food industry, all paying less than $20,000 a year.3 The very people who grow and serve our food are often not able to feed their own families on the wages they receive. These workers have been left out of the protections afforded most other workers in our economy. In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act passed; a few years later the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage, excluded farmworkers and domestic workers from the most basic workers’ rights.
These antiquated labor laws don’t provide the protections afforded most other workers. Restaurant and other tipped workers’ minimum wage is $2.13 an hour, unless state laws provide higher wages. Fifty-two percent of fast-food workers require food stamps and other government assistance costing taxpayers $153 billion a year.4 More than 50 percent of workers reported illness or injury on the job, and the majority didn’t have health insurance. Instead, they use emergency rooms or urgent care centers, offloading the cost of underpaying workers to the taxpayers. Workers of color make an average of $5,600 a year less than white workers in the food sector. Farmworkers have a sevenfold higher mortality rate than other workers. Pesticide exposure poisons 10,000 to 20,000 farmworkers each year and causes chronic health problems in millions more.5
The powerful trade lobby the National Restaurant Association, the other NRA, is one of the most influential lobby groups in the country. It vigorously opposes minimum wages and has been able to keep the minimum wage for food service workers at $2.13 an hour.6 After the Civil War, the restaurant industry lobbied to hire the freed slaves, pay them nothing, and have them work for tips alone. Workers of color get paid $4 less an hour than white workers, and immigrant workers are subject to exploitation and fear of their employer’s control over their visa status. Female workers often have to accept sexual harassment so they can feed their families on tips. Yet it has been estimated that if food workers received a minimum wage of $12 an hour it would increase the average household’s food cost just 10 cents a day.
In 2013 One Fair Wage launched a campaign to raise the minimum wage for food workers to $12 an hour; they have had success in eight states and two municipalities and continue to raise awareness and advocate for change. These and other grassroots efforts can help raise awareness and create local change but must be scaled to become national policy. We need to be honest about the true cost of our food. The price we pay at the checkout counter or the restaurant is not the cost of our food or of the effects it has on humans, nature, and our economy.
THREATS AND VIOLENCE
Pay and working conditions aren’t the only problems. Often through threats of violence and intimidation, workers are forced to work against their will, perpetuating harsh, unfair, and often illegal working conditions. More than 80 percent of female farmworkers in California’s Central Valley have reported sexual abuse or harassment.7 Much of our produce comes from Mexico and Central American countries, where workers suffer even worse abuses. The average farmworker in Mexico makes just $8 to $12 a day, and farming in Mexico “employs” 300,000 children. They are subject to slavery and violence. After protesting for reporting their employers’ illegal wage deductions for food and housing, eighty Mexican farmworkers “disappeared.”8 In Mexico, our biggest source of avocados for our smoothies, guacamole, and avocado toast, many of the farmers are extorted and even murdered by the drug cartels, who sell their “blood avocados” to Americans, who consume 200 million pounds a year.9 Might want to check where your avocado comes from. Local farmers in Mexico have fought back against the cartels, but it is often not enough.
These stories are pervasive in our food system, affecting the poor and disenfranchised, who are just trying to make a living. Chicken workers are a good (or bad) example. We Americans love our chicken, eating 89 pounds per person per year. The chicken production lines have doubled their speed in the last 30 years, and now workers have to process thirty-five to forty-five chickens a minute. Each worker does the same repetitive task, processing a chicken every two seconds for eight hours with one thirty-minute break. This causes repetitive motion injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, and poultry workers suffer five times the illness the average worker does. Chicken workers receive very low wages, $11 an hour. Often these are immigrant workers who live in a climate of fear of being fired, deported, or harassed. Workers are often denied bathroom or stretch breaks, forcing them to wear diapers to work. If you are eating your average chicken (90 percent of which has been processed into prebreaded, prefried, or preseasoned chicken-like substances), just imagine a poor chicken worker peeing into her diaper so you can have cheap chicken.
HEALTH RISKS
Being a farmworker is one of the most dangerous jobs in America. In Chapter 1, I mentioned their higher death rates and exposure to pesticides. The numbers of those who are poisoned are likely even higher if we account for the long-term effects of chronic toxin exposure, including cancer, type 2 diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, and developmental disorders, among others.10 Farmers’ risk of Parkinson’s is 70 percent higher than that of the average population because of pesticide exposure.11 Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist, doesn’t pull punches when it comes to characterizing the harm Big Ag causes—she calls them the “poison cartel.” Chemicals known as herbicides and pesticides damage the brain, cause cancer, and disrupt hormones.
Many other countries have banned the chemicals we use in the United States, such as:12
Atrazine, which disrupts hormones, damages the immune system, and is linked to birth defects
Paraquat, which is linked to Parkinson’s disease
Neonicotinoids, which are linked to the disappearance of honeybees (which are essential for pollination)
Glyphosate, which we have discussed at length and which is linked to cancer13
1,3-dichloropropene, which is linked to cancer and is one of the most widely used pesticides in California
These chemicals are also known as obesogens and can cause obesity and type 2 diabetes.14
The risks of injury and harm from agricultural chemicals are also borne by taxpayers. These workers, often living below the poverty line, have no health care and depend on emergency rooms and Medicaid. The food system disproportionately affects the poor, immigrants, and people of color who actually work in the food system.
The CHAMOCOS study of Hispanic agricultural workers in Salinas, California, found that these workers were 59 percent more likely to get leukemia, 70 percent more likely to get stomach cancer, and 63 percent more likely to get cervical cancer than the average population.15 They also have about 40 percent more organophosphate pesticides in their urine, including pregnant and breastfeeding women. Babies exposed to these chemicals have lower IQ and cognitive function, behavioral issues, and attention deficit disorder. It is estimated that children younger than age five have lost 41 million IQ points because of exposure to environmental chemicals including pesticides, mercury, and lead.16 What is the cost of that on future generations’ happiness and productivity? These kids are born prepolluted. These chemicals are not regulated by the FDA for human safety like medication. They are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), also asleep at the wheel. Approve first, ask questions later (or not at all).
And it is not just farmworkers who are at risk. It’s the food workers involved in the production, processing, distribution, and retail sectors of our food system. They are exposed to repetitive stress injury (remember the chicken processors who have to do the same motion thousands of times a day and wear diapers because they are denied bathroom breaks), physical risk, cleaning chemicals, biological hazards (from bacteria), and carcinogenic compounds.17 Food workers have a 60 percent higher risk of occupational injury and illness than nonfood workers, and their risk of death is nine and a half times higher.18
FOOD FIX: THE VICTORY OF TOMATO FARMWORKERS
The story of the tomato farmworkers in Florida is one of tragedy as well as hope, possibility, and the power of grassroots efforts to transform communities and find a path to justice and fair food. Just outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the small town of Immokalee, immigrant farmworkers grow and harvest 80 percent of America’s tomatoes. The average backbreaking day of labor would yield the farmworkers $62 if they could pick 4,000 pounds, or 125 buckets, of tomatoes. That leads to an average of less than $10,000 a year with no benefits and few rights. These workers are also subjected to abuse including beatings, sexual harassment, child labor, forced labor, and lack of shade, water, and breaks.
A disparate group of farmworkers from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti banded together in 1993 to create the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to fight for better wages and working conditions. Appealing to the growers failed, so they went to the big purchasers of tomatoes like the Yum! Brands, including Taco Bell, Burger King, and KFC, and asked them to pay an extra penny a pound for their tomatoes. At first, they refused, but after the coalition launched campaigns like “Boycott the Bell” in 2004, they agreed, and other big companies followed suit, including McDonald’s, Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, Subway, and the big food service providers including Aramark, Sysco, Compass, and Sodexo. (Wendy’s and Publix supermarket chain refused to participate.) These companies have agreed not to increase the price of tomatoes in stores or restaurants and to sign on to the Fair Food Program (see the “Food Fix” below). This coalition of farmworkers found a creative solution to injustice by creating the Fair Food Program, which mandates that growers provide basic protections for their workers.
“The Coalition of Immokalee Workers created a student/farmworker alliance. And now their model is being replicated by folks in the dairy industry, and it might get translated soon to folks in the poultry industry,” says Navina Khanna, director of HEAL Food Alliance. “They have set up a fair food standards council where they’re the ones holding the corporations or the farms accountable and doing third-party verification.”
The documentary Food Chains exposes the abuses of farmworkers and provides hope with the story of the Immokalee farmworkers. There is still much to be done across other farm systems and products, but this is a start.
FOOD FIX: EMPOWERING FARMERS AND FOOD WORKERS
That American workers should have basic rights would seem to be a given. But for farmworkers and many food workers it is not. Here’s how we can change that.
1. Restaurant and food retailers must agree to the Fair Food Program19 and pressure growers to adhere to its basic tenets for workers’ rights:
No forced labor, child labor, or violence
At least minimum wage for all employees
Pay workers for all their work
No sexual harassment or verbal abuse
Freedom to report mistreatment or unsafe working conditions without the fear of losing their job—or worse
Access to shade, clean drinking water, and bathrooms while working
Time to rest to prevent exhaustion and heat stroke
Permission to leave the fields when there is lightning, pesticide spraying, or other dangerous conditions
Transportation to work in safe vehicles
These rights are enforced through worker-to-worker education, audits, transparency, complaint resolution, and market-based enforcement. If restaurants and food retailers want to be part of the Fair Food Program, they must enforce those rights by the growers or stop buying from them.
2. Support Fairtrade products. Fairtrade International is an organization that supports farmers and farmworkers in dozens of poor countries while also working to protect the environment. Part of its mission is to promote fairness and justice in trade. Poor farmers in developing countries are frequently exploited. Fairtrade ensures that any product that carries its certified logo meets strong standards. The organization requires that products be sustainably sourced, that they be made in a way that doesn’t pollute the land or waterways, and that farmers and workers receive fair prices. It’s comforting to know this when you a buy a Fairtrade certified product. Look for their logo and support the important work they do.
3. Support advocacy groups ensuring safe and fair working conditions. A growing movement, exemplified by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is ensuring safe and fair working conditions for our food workers and farmworkers. The two groups most active in organizing and advocating around these issues are the Food Chain Workers Alliance and the HEAL Food Alliance.
The Food Chain Workers Alliance represents 370,000 workers in the United States and Canada, from farmers to farmworkers, from processors to packers to those who transport, prepare, serve, and sell food. They work to improve wages and working conditions for their members and to create a more sustainable and affordable food and agricultural system.
The work of the HEAL Food Alliance (HEAL stands for health, environment, agriculture, and labor) is focused on creating a platform for real food and bringing together diverse groups, including fifty organizations that represent farmers, farmworkers, and food chain workers, rural and urban communities, scientists, public health advocates, environmentalists, and indigenous groups. HEAL connects the dots across the whole food system and has laid out a ten-point plan for addressing the negative impact of our current food system on health, the economy, and the environment.20
“In general,” says director Navina Khanna, “what we’re trying to do is divest power from the stranglehold of corporations that are setting our policies and dominating the marketplace and that have bad practices around environment, worker health, animal health, and so on. We want them to invest their money into the kinds of systems that are more cooperative, that provide ownership opportunities for workers, that are ecologically sustainable. One of our campaigns is targeting the three biggest food service providers for school cafeterias in college campuses, prisons, and hospitals—that’s Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group. Collectively, that’s bigger than McDonald’s. They do a huge amount of purchasing, so we have a set of demands for them around their carbon footprint and that they buy more from producers of color and from sources that treat their workers well. We’re trying to move them away from those bad practices and then reinvest that money in local economies.”
Their strategy includes providing a living wage for farmworkers and food workers by extending the protections of the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which haven’t been updated since the 1930s. HEAL also recommends making agricultural supports extend to small farmers and independent producers, especially those of color, and supporting young farmers and regenerative agriculture. (More on this in Part 5.) HEAL also advocates for limiting junk-food marketing to children and treating junk-food and beverage companies like tobacco companies (from which they have taken their playbook), including taxes, warning labels, restricted advertising, and age limits for purchasing. The HEAL Food Alliance advocates for coordinating all our food policies and changing them to support the health of our citizens, our economy, and our environment.
While some of their proposals are difficult to imagine being implemented given the current corporate control of the political process, their platform is raising awareness of the problems and inequities that exist throughout the entire food system.
When taken as separate issues, the problems of poverty, racism, chronic disease, corporate manipulation of the poor and minorities, health inequities, violence, crime, suicide, mental illness, declining academic achievement, national security, and farmworker and food worker abuses seem overwhelming. But when filtered through the lens of food injustice and social justice, they are all connected to our modern industrial, ultraprocessed food and agricultural system. Through that lens, the fix seems clearer, but not simple. The actions required for a solution require individual awareness, collective action, business innovation, grassroots efforts, political will, changes in legislation, and regulation of and limits to corporate actions that allow abuses that perpetuate the current system. Defining the problem is the start of hope, of understanding the roots of the challenges that face us as a society and as a global community. The next place we will explore is the beginning of it all: the food we grow and the power of our agricultural system to be the solution to, rather than the reason for, our broken food system.