Like health care workers and emergency medical workers, America’s farmworkers, like these in Oxnard, Calif., are putting themselves in harm’s way for the rest of us. Credit… Norma Galeana/Reuters.
America’s 2.5 million farmworkers are among the groups most at risk of contracting the coronavirus. And if they are at risk, our food supply may be too.
Picture yourself waking up in a decrepit, single-wide trailer packed with a dozen strangers, four of you to every room, all using the same cramped bathroom and kitchen before heading to work. You ride to and from the fields in the back of a hot, repurposed school bus, shoulder-to-shoulder with 40 more strangers, and when the workday is done, you wait for your turn to shower and cook before you can lay your head down to sleep. That is life for far too many farmworkers in our country today.
(Greg Asbed, “What Happens If America’s 2.5 Million Farm Workers Get Sick?” NYTimes, 4-3-20)
Greg Asbed, a founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2017 for his role in developing the Fair Food Program to protect farm workers’ human rights.
I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.
EthicalDative 
Food Notes 2
America’s 2.5 million farmworkers are among the groups most at risk of contracting the coronavirus. And if they are at risk, our food supply may be too.
Picture yourself waking up in a decrepit, single-wide trailer packed with a dozen strangers, four of you to every room, all using the same cramped bathroom and kitchen before heading to work. You ride to and from the fields in the back of a hot, repurposed school bus, shoulder-to-shoulder with 40 more strangers, and when the workday is done, you wait for your turn to shower and cook before you can lay your head down to sleep. That is life for far too many farmworkers in our country today.
(Greg Asbed, “What Happens If America’s 2.5 Million Farm Workers Get Sick?” NYTimes, 4-3-20)
Greg Asbed, a founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2017 for his role in developing the Fair Food Program to protect farm workers’ human rights.
(c) 2020 JMN
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About JMN
I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.