Foodies and farmworkers

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser explains “Why being a foodie isn’t ‘elitist.’” 

In short, he says:

A food system based on poverty and exploitation will never be sustainable.

To see the “poverty and exploitation” on which our current system is based, we don’t have to look any farther than the farmworkers who make agriculture possible.  In North Carolina, half of farmworker families face food insecurity at some point during the year.  Annual incomes for farmworkers average less than $12,000.  Most farmworkers are exempt from minimum wage laws, and all are exempt from overtime provisions, despite long work days during peak harvest.

How much exploitation went into this salad?Schlosser argues that large agribusinesses “don’t want people to think about what they’re eating. The survival of the current food system depends upon widespread ignorance of how it really operates.”  One of the crucial cogs in this industrial machine is the backbreaking human labor required to hand-pick 85% of the fruits and vegetables we eat.  But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, if we are going to move towards a truly sustainable food system, it’s time to make changes in the way we treat field and poultry workers.

It’s time for farmworkers to reap a harvest of dignity instead of exploitation and abuse.  It’s time for poultry workers to have safe working environments.  No one should have to risk his or her health or future for a job. 

Schlosser’s article is a reminder that this topic is never popular.  It’s always easier to ignore the difficult questions than to raise them. 

Now you have been warned: you might be called an “elitist” if you ask who picked your food or if you include farmworkers in your table prayers.  But we can’t afford to ignore this reality any longer – our current food system remains unsustainable because it is based on poverty and the exploitation of the workers who reap our harvests.

You can make a difference - click here to get involved with the Harvest of Dignity campaign.

Comments

[lamb shanks recipes]

It’s a play on three factors – politicians' innate activism, the self-perpetuating industry of single issue campaigns, and the natural fear in all of us that what we’re doing must have a bad side to it.