{"id":3340,"date":"2020-04-28T12:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T12:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/farmworkers_face_covid19_risk\/"},"modified":"2021-03-18T13:40:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T13:40:13","slug":"farmworkers_face_covid19_risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/farmworkers_face_covid19_risk\/","title":{"rendered":"How do we deal with the ‘ticking time bomb’ in agriculture?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Reid Maki is the director of child labor advocacy at the National Consumers League and he coordinates the Child Labor Coalition.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been referred to as a \u201cticking time bomb,\u201d the coronavirus and its potential impact on farmworkers\u2014the incredibly hard-working men, women, and children who pick our fruits and vegetables and provide other vital agricultural work. Farmworkers perform dirty, back-breaking work, are notoriously underpaid for it, and now face great risk from COVID-19.<\/p>\n

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Farmworker advocacy groups that National Consumers League (NCL) works with or supports\u2014such as Farmworker Justice, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and a national cadre of legal aid attorneys\u2014have spent weeks strategizing about ways to protect the community they know is especially vulnerable to the virus.<\/p>\n

Advocates have reached out to administration officials and Congress for desperately needed resources to support impoverished farmworkers with little to show for it. Despite their essential contributions to the economy, farmworkers have been cut out of the emergency relief packages. The Trump Administration has even revealed plans to lower pay for agricultural guest workers who sacrifice home and family to come to the United States to perform arduous farm labor. Advocates fear that decreasing guest worker wages would drive down wages for farmworkers already living and working in the United States.<\/p>\n

Farmworkers are poor, with extremely limited access to healthcare and, due to their poverty, often work through illness. The risks of an outbreak is especially great because workers often toil in close physical proximity to one another as they harvest, ride to the fields in crowded buses and cars, have limited access to sanitary facilities, including hand-washing, and often live in overcrowded, dilapidated housing.<\/p>\n

The majority of farmworkers are immigrants from Mexico or are the children of Mexican immigrants. The community is socially isolated from mainstream America. Poverty forced many farmworkers to leave school at an early age. It also causes them to bring their children to work in the fields so that child labor can supplement their meager incomes. Language and cultural barriers further their isolation. NCL, through the Child Labor Coalition<\/a> (CLC), which it founded and co-chairs, has committed to the fight to fix the broken child labor laws that allow children in agriculture to work at early ages\u2014often 12\u2014and to begin performing hazardous work at age 16.<\/p>\n

When the virus began to move into America\u2019s rural areas, many socially- and culturally-isolated farmworkers hadn\u2019t heard about the virus.\u00a0 Some were confused that the grocery store shelves were empty and that the bottled water they usually buy suddenly cost much more.<\/p>\n

In some cases, farmworkers reported that the farmers they work for have not told them about the virus or the need to take special precautions while working. Farmworkers face an alarming dearth of protective equipment. Many farmworkers groups, including UFW and Justice for Migrant Women<\/a>, are urgently racing to provide masks and other protective gear.<\/p>\n

A farmworker with COVID-19 is unlikely to know he or she has it and, therefore, very likely to keep working and infect their family and coworkers. Recently, a growers group tested 71 tree fruit workers in Wenatchee, Washington, according to a report in the Capital Press newspaper<\/a>. Although none of the workers were showing symptoms of COVID-19, 36 workers\u2014more than half\u2014tested positive!<\/p>\n

The conditions faced by farmworkers are a \u201csuperconductor for the virus,\u201d noted advocate Greg Asbed of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in a New York Times opinion piece<\/a><\/em>, in which he concluded that \u201cthe U.S. food supply is in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current circumstances reminded Asbed of a previous crisis: \u201cA century ago in \u2018The Jungle,\u2019 Upton Sinclair wrote about how the teeming tenements and meatpacking houses where workers lived and labored were perfect breeding grounds for tuberculosis as it swept the country. Now there is a new pathogenic threat and the workers who feed us are once again in grave danger,\u201d said Asbed, adding that the \u201c two most promising measures for protecting ourselves from the virus and preventing its spread\u2014social distancing and self-isolation\u2014are effectively impossible in farmworker communities\u201d because farmworkers live and work so closely together.<\/p>\n

The looming food crisis is not just an American phenomenon, reported the\u00a0New<\/a> York<\/a> Times<\/a><\/em>. \u201cThe world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year,\u201d noted reporter Abdi Latif Dahir. \u201cThe coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes\u2014leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat,\u201d added Dahir.<\/p>\n

An article in The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0warned that, in the United States, the farm\u2013to-grocery distribution system is breaking down under the strain of the virus and that farmers are plowing in fields of crops. The Trump administration has announced a $19 billion plan to buy agricultural products and get them to food banks, which are experiencing shortages and, in some cases, mile-long lines of cars waiting for help.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the federal government\u2019s responses have been focused on helping farmers\u2014which is fine; we all want farmers to be helped\u2014but we cannot forget or neglect the needs of desperately poor farmworkers. In the absence of federal aid, some states are working to protect vulnerable farmworker populations. To help achieve social-distancing, Washington State has set housing rules requiring guest workers have double the current space.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin issued similar rules requiring six-foot social distancing for farmworkers as they work in the fields, ride on buses, and sleep in grower-provided housing. The plan mandates protections for farmworkers<\/a> who acquire the virus and calls for fines of up to $500 for violations.<\/p>\n

In an April 15\u00a0letter<\/a>, Pennsylvania\u2019s Governor Tom Wolf urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to \u201ctake swift and decisive action to publicize and implement a plan to immediately and equitably stabilize the agriculture industry, and to support agriculture producers, food processors, workers, and local food systems, regardless of the size of the operation. This plan must include resources, guidance, and protection for these workers,\u201d Wolf continued. \u201cEvery sector of agriculture, food processing and distribution, retail, grocery stores, and farmers markets are negatively impacted by COVID-19 and need support.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe closing of many child care facilities has meant many farmworker women must stay home with children, which translates to lost income and fewer workers for farmers,\u201d noted Cleo Rodriguez, a CLC-member who heads the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe closing of schools may mean that younger teens are increasingly pulled into agricultural child labor,\u201d suggested Norma Flores L\u00f3pez, who heads the CLC\u2019s efforts to protect farmworker children. \u201cWe\u2019re very concerned with the number of children that are going to be working in the fields,\u201d said Flores L\u00f3pez, adding that child labor increases children\u2019s risk of exploitation, wage theft, and sexual exploitation.<\/p>\n

Concerned about these developments, the CLC wrote letters this week to several appropriators and the Committee on Agriculture, asking for additional nutritional and childcare resources for farmworker families.<\/p>\n

We all need to eat. It\u2019s incumbent upon us to protect farmworkers and our food supply chain. \u201cIt\u2019s time to step up,\u201d said Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what consumers can do to help protect farmworkers in these dire circumstances:<\/p>\n