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kalikshama -> RE: What would you do if you learned that your partner was illegal? (2/24/2012 6:35:42 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LillyBoPeep
Great point, MIP -- as someone originally from KS, and currently living in another ag state (NE), there are quite a few regular Americans doing farm labor jobs; they aren't "unwanted" jobs. I didn't sign up for this program because I didn't hear about it, but I would've. =p I actually like working outdoors, and I'm a rural person anyway. I grew up doing ag-type work in my grandpa's business, so it's really not that alien to me.
Is NE agriculture like tomato farming in Florida?
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/09/08/how-the-modern-day-tomato-came-to-be/
Eatocracy: Who are the workers?
Estabrook: They are primarily people from Southern Mexico, Northern Central America, Guatemala. United Farm Workers estimate that 70 percent of all farm workers in this country, not just tomato pickers, are undocumented immigrants.
Eatocracy: What are their working conditions like?
Estabrook: Slavery is what is happening. There is no way to gloss it. You can't say "slavery-like." You can't say "near-slavery." "Human trafficking" doesn't even do it credit. Here are some things that are in court records; it's all been proven.
People are being bought and sold like chattels. People are locked and shackled in chains at night in order to prevent them from escaping. People are being beaten severely if they're too tired to work, too sick to work or don't want to work hard enough. People are beaten even more severely or murdered if they try to escape. They receive little or no pay for their efforts.
That, to me, is slavery. It's like 1850, not 2011.
Eatocracy: How does a worker end up in this situation?
Estabrook: First of all, there have been 1,200 slaves freed in seven separate prosecutions in Florida in the last 15 years. The way that they get into slavery is often a slippery slope.
I talked to one guy who'd just crossed the border and hit the town of Immokalee, Florida. He was homeless and staying at a mission. He was standing outside and a guy pulled up in a pickup truck and said, "Hey, want work? I'll pay you?" and he named a price that was twice the going rate."
The man told him, "My mother cooks for the crew, and we'll just deduct that from your check, and you can even stay on my property; I've got some buildings. We'll just take that from your check."
This all sounded good, but you know what happens. Even though he picked enough tomatoes to supposedly get out of debt to his boss, he was never told that.
Everything cost money. It even cost him $5 to hose himself off with a backyard hose every day. There was plenty of liquor supplied at a very high price. He was kept enslaved for two and a half years before he broke out.
Eatocracy: How did he say he broke free?
Estabrook: This is telltale of the conditions they live under. He and three or four other slaves had been locked for the night in the back of the produce truck that was going to go out in the fields the next day. There was no toilet or running water.
As dawn broke, they noticed that there was a little gap between the rivets. He got on the shoulders of another man and they punched and kicked their way through the roof. He slid down the side of the truck and got a ladder so they rest of them could crawl out and run to safety.
Eatocracy: Have there been any health concerns for the workers?
Estabrook: Florida tomatoes can be sprayed with more than 100 different fungicides, pesticides and herbicides. Some of them are what the Environmental Protection Agency calls "acutely toxic" - which is a nice way of saying they can kill you. The containers come with skulls and crossbones.
I talked to three or four dozen tomato workers during the course of my research and I'd ask them if they'd ever been sprayed. It was like asking them if they put their pants on one leg at a time. They'd say, "Of course! It happens every day." It's illegal, but it happens. Florida tomatoes have to be sprayed regularly or they'll die because of all the insects and diseases there.
Most workers now are first generation Hispanic, so they know there have been short term effects.
Eatocracy: Have there been more long-term cases studied?
Estabrook: Years ago, the workers were African American, and they didn't migrate - they stayed put.
There's an area in Central Florida, not far from Disneyworld, called Lake Apopka. In the 40s, someone got the idea of draining half the lake and planting crops in the muck. Then they decided to take it one step further and in the off season, re-flood the cropland. They thought it would help the fertility and kill off weeds and they kept doing that for four decades.
All the pesticides that were on the crops went into the water and were pumped back into the lake, then pumped back on the crops. Not only were there people working in those fields; they were living in trailers next to the fields.
Today, even though they haven't farmed in that area since 1998 because it became so bad, they closed the lake down, twelve years later these people are finding themselves with all sorts of immune diseases and endocrine disruptor related diseases. These have all been traced to pesticide exposure in animals. They have a rate of birth defects four times the Florida average.
In its wisdom, the Florida government provided millions of dollars to study water birds, and found out yes indeed, they'd been poisoned by these pesticides and it spent a million and a half to study the alligators of this area and found out they, too had reproductive harm - the male alligators' genitals were much smaller than normal.
It wasn't until this year that they set aside $500,000 to give to a little clinic that these 2500 workers could go to - and Governor Scott just vetoed it a few weeks ago.
The wealthy farmers received over $100,000,000 for the land. The workers got zip. These are American-born African Americans who have lived on this land for generations.
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