[wordup] The ethics of eating — Consider the farmworkers

[Adam Shand]

From: Ramsey Margolis <heuristics at mac...>

The ethics of eating
Consider the farmworkers
By Eric Haas
May 20, 2009

On a recent Saturday, I took a trip out to rural Oregon with about 20  
other Slow Food Portland members. We woke early and drove through the  
dreary morning rain, leaving behind the streets of Portland for the  
vast agricultural fields of nearby Marion County. We were seeking the  
origins of our food.
I helped organize the event, which was billed as an opportunity to  
“Share a Meal With the People Who Feed Us.” The idea was to meet with  
migrant farmworkers and to learn more about the different places they  
live: either in housing provided by their employers, or in housing  
created by a local nonprofit, the Farmworker Housing Development  
Corporation (FHDC). FHDC staff agreed to take us on a tour of the  
farms and of their development in Woodburn, after which we would share  
a potluck lunch with the residents there.

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  Much farmworker housing is hidden from public view.

The day was inspired largely by Carlo Petrini, the founder ofSlow  
Food, who insists that our food be “Good, Clean, and Fair.” By this he  
means that our food should be fresh and healthy, it shouldn’t depend  
on chemicals that destroy the environment, and the people who grow it  
should be compensated well for their work.

His ethics, I think, are admirable. They are simple and elegant. But  
they can be quite difficult to put into practice.

Many of us know that the ways in which we typically grow, process,  
distribute, and consume food in this country are harmful to our health  
and the environment. As a nation, we are coming to understand that the  
production and consumption of a “conventional” tomato, for example,  
means degraded soils, polluted waterways, poisoned air, and toxins in  
our bodies. Given the state of our health-care system, as well as the  
threat of global climate change, this conventional tomato affects us  
in ways that are increasingly difficult to ignore.

It’s no wonder, then, that the “good” and “clean” elements of  
Petrini’s ethic have become major preoccupations in the American mind.  
And because of our increased awareness, I think, we’ve already  
developed some relatively good ways to address our concerns; on the  
West Coast, at least, it’s easy to find fresh and locally grown  
organic produce almost any time of year.

The problem is that this doesn’t necessarily account for how “fair”  
the food is.

Long hours and low pay are the industry standard, even for many  
organic and small-scale farms. In the worst cases, farmworkers are  
held against their will and forced to labor as indentured servants —  
continually paying off debts to their employers — in a system legally  
defined as slavery. In Florida, for example, a state that one federal  
prosecutor recently called “ground zero for modern-day slavery,” at  
least five operations involving more than 1,000 workers have been  
prosecuted for violation of anti-slavery statutes since 1997.

It’s unclear how pervasive these conditions are, or where exactly they  
exist. It is clear, however, that they’re far more common than we’d  
like to admit. They represent an egregious extreme of abuse, but they  
are also part of a continuum: the mistreatment of agricultural workers  
is a deeply entrenched problem in this country, and has been for a  
long time. In 1972, for example, the average life expectancy for a  
farmworker was 47 years; in 2008, it was 49.
According to FHDC staff, rates of cancer, asthma, birth defects, and  
tuberculosis for farmworkers all hover somewhere around 25 percent  
above national averages. In general, hard work, toxic chemicals, and  
poor nutrition degrade workers’ immune systems; unsanitary and crowded  
housing exposes them to disease; and low pay makes decent medical  
treatment extremely difficult to find. The few laws that prohibit  
these scenarios are rarely enforced, and the undocumented-immigrant  
status of many workers prevents them from reporting abuses or  
advocating for their rights.

A large proportion of migrant laborers live on the borders of the  
fields where they work, typically paying their employers about $50 per  
week to stay in run-down shacks and trailers. The statistics on just  
how many people live this way don’t exist, because the studies haven’t  
been conducted; as a rule, these farms hide the housing far from view  
and guard it with private security forces. Entry onto the property is  
illegal, even for union organizers, unless a worker has given them an  
explicit invitation to enter. Such invitations are virtually  
impossible to receive, of course, since it would mean instant  
dismissal and deportation for whomever made it.

Our tour
The harvest season in Marion County won’t start for another few weeks,  
so the farms we visited on Saturday were empty; they were also  
unguarded, however, which gave us the rare opportunity to see housing  
facilities up close.

Even with a fresh coat of paint on their exteriors, the buildings were  
obviously dilapidated. Inside, concrete walls were stained with black  
mold and rust. Bedrooms were crammed with bunk beds, and the  
mattresses were nothing more than wooden planks or sheets of  
carpeting. The air was dank and sickly. The floor was smeared with a  
brown layer of bacterial mud.

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  A different kind of kitchen.
At both farms we visited, it looked as though someone might’ve made a  
recent effort to clean. The dirt was smudged, and the stains had been  
scrubbed. In both cases, however, the years of accumulated grime  
remained. Set against a bright blue-and-white sky, nestled near a  
blossoming field of tulips, these conditions seemed particularly  
horrendous.

Fire extinguishers were mounted in every doorway at the first farm we  
saw, and a sign was posted in the kitchen at the second, imploring  
workers to clean up after themselves — as though safety and sanitation  
were genuine concerns.

Who built these hovels, and how could they charge rent to the people  
who live here? Is it simply a matter of farmers trying to meet the  
bottom line? Are the economics of agriculture really so dire?

And what do these conditions say about us, the people who pay money to  
support them? What does it mean that we feed ourselves with food grown  
from filth and suffering?

The people who live here
On Saturday, we weren’t able to meet anyone currently living on the  
farms, but we did meet many who had lived on farms like these  
recently, or whose parents had.

During lunch at the FHDC development, which is called Nuevo Amanecer,  
or “New Dawn,” I spoke with a woman who had moved from a farm in  
eastern Oregon, where she had shared a single trailer with 10 other  
workers. “Oh, and with their children,” she added as an afterthought,  
as though it hardly made a difference. “There must have been four or  
five children, too.”

What could life possibly be like for 15 or 16 people living inside one  
trailer?

And then, because we were eating, I found myself wondering about the  
people who had grown the vegetables on my plate. What were their lives  
like? What hardships did they endure?

I asked the woman, who prefers to go unnamed, whether she ever thought  
about such things while she ate. “I’m not stupid,” she said. “I know  
where my food comes from. What can I do about it? I’ve got to eat  
something.”

The things I encountered on Saturday were hard and ugly; they were  
difficult to understand. They were so distant from my daily experience  
that I’ve had to fight the impulse to forget, or even to disbelieve  
what I saw. I continually have to remind myself, as another FHDC  
resident explained to me, “Es muy duro, pero es una realidad.” It’s  
very hard, but it’s a reality.

Transforming reality
Before I went to Marion County, my awareness of these problems was  
abstract; I read about them and was troubled, but only in a vague way,  
the way that any injustice might prod my conscience. As a consequence,  
the solutions I sought were similarly vague. I thought of grappling  
with labor law, immigration reform, NAFTA, CAFTA, and the Farm Bill.  
Ultimately, however, the prospect of affecting such a mess of  
legislation was debilitating, and I didn’t do anything at all.

But after visiting Nuevo Amanecer, I’ve become convinced that even  
relatively small and incremental changes can be enormously  
significant. The FHDC’s accomplishments in Oregon — like those of the  
UFW in California, or the CIWin Florida — provide a clear example of a  
way in which a few dedicated people can make a tangible difference in  
others’ lives.

The apartments at Nuevo Amanecer are quiet and comfortable. They’re  
small, but they’re clean, they’re affordable, and they even seem to  
foster a sense of communal pride among residents. The people who live  
here are all farmworkers. Most of them are seasonally unemployed, and  
they all make less than $16,000 annually. If it weren’t for an  
intricate combination of federal funds and private donations  
subsidizing rent, these families would be living in the fields.

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  A kitchen area at Nuevo Amanacer.
Nuevo Amanecer has a community center where teachers offer lessons in  
computer skills and English; there’s green grass for kids to play on,  
and a community garden for growing food. The residents I spoke with  
regularly called their situation a “gift from God,” a “blessing,” and  
a “relief.” The development provides them with a respite from grinding  
poverty and all that it entails — illness, fatigue, gang violence, an  
overwhelming sense of isolation — which can otherwise destroy the  
fragile ties holding peoples’ lives together.

FHDC has spent almost 15 years establishing its facilities in  
Woodburn, but even so, there’s far from enough housing available. At  
present, there’s a waiting list with 250 families on it, and the staff  
estimates it would take them more than 57 years to meet existing  
demand. And that’s only in Woodburn.

Clearly, this isn’t a panacea. But it is a model that can be  
replicated elsewhere, and it’s doing incalculable good for those who  
can live there. It’s a reason for hope.

The label approach
As hopeful as it is, Nuevo Amanecer does little to address the  
systemic nature of the problem at hand. As any of the staff there will  
tell you, it is only one small component of the nationwide efforts  
that are necessary. Given the historical difficulty of effecting large- 
scale change on this issue, however, the specifics of such a solution  
are far from clear. And new strategies seem to be in order.

Can we use what we’ve learned from the efforts to make food “good” and  
“clean” to also make it “fair”? Could we use a combination of market  
forces and government regulations like those that created the organic  
label to develop a “humane” label, perhaps — something like a domestic  
version of fair trade?

The idea seems promising. The danger, however, is that any standards —  
like their organic counterparts — would be extremely difficult to  
enforce, and we’d be creating powerful economic incentives for farmers  
to violate them.

Moreover, the integrity of the standards — again, like their organic  
counterparts — would be susceptible to the influence of large  
corporations, who continually exert pressure on government officials  
to include as many questionable practices as possible under the  
“ethical” label.

An Oregon Tilth inspector recently informed me that 23 percent of  
organic produce was found to have toxic chemical residue on it. He was  
proud of this statistic, as though it were proof of the efficacy of  
enforcement. While it is certainly better than the 73 percent found in  
conventional produce, it’s hardly good enough for my tastes; I told  
him as much, and he was offended.

“Grow your own,” he said. “Nothing’s perfect.”

Sadly, I think he’s right. Whether the contamination is willful or  
inadvertent, caused by the spray from neighboring fields, it seems  
obvious that no scheme of classification and inspection will ever be  
foolproof.

We don’t feel comfortable leaving minimum-wage regulations or fire  
codes up to consumer choice, so why should we allow the market to  
dictate the lives of migrant farmworkers? This is a matter of human  
rights, and relying solely on a label to effect change would still  
allow injustice to continue — by sanctioning it, in fact, as  
“conventional.”

Growing your own
Ultimately, it may be true that the only way to understand where your  
food comes from, and to feel good about it, is to grow it yourself.

Before you object that such an ideal is impossible to achieve,  
consider the fact that in 1943 — at the height of our national Victory  
Garden enthusiasm — almost 20 million Americans were gardening.  
Collectively, they produced approximately 40 percent of the food  
consumed in the country at the time. Consider also the communal  
gardens, the neighborhood kitchens, and the food-storage facilities  
that cropped up across America. In the past, when we’ve felt the need  
to do so, we’ve been able to radically transform the ways in which we  
feed ourselves.

Think back, then, but also think forward; think of the aquaculture  
schemes and the rooftop gardens being established in cities today. The  
contemporary possibilities of small-scale urban food production are  
still waiting to be explored. Our metropolitan landscapes can be  
remade into fertile ground.

Whatever the promise of such an approach, however, complete self- 
sufficiency probably isn’t viable for all Americans. And growing your  
own — while it does allow you to feel virtuous and independent —  
doesn’t change the living conditions for farmworkers.

Any produce grown on farms might depend upon inhumane treatment, and  
our silence in this matter — even non-participation — is still a form  
of complicity. No matter where we shop or what we grow, we should not  
ignore the importance of comprehensive legislative change, nor places  
like Nuevo Amanecer.

We need to develop an ethical relationship with our food.

Start by learning where your food comes from. Enable yourself to make  
it better, cleaner, and fairer, even if it can’t be perfect. Go out to  
the farms near where you live; try to meet the people who grow your  
food. Better yet, buy directly from farmers you know, or grow your own  
and share your bounty with neighbors. Finally, if you feel so  
inclined, take the time to share your experiences with others.

Eric Haas is a Portland, Oregon, writer interested in food activism.