Farmworkers on Frontlines of Pandemic Endangered While Maintaining Food Chain

April 6th 2020

A tacit farmer piles dead leaves on mounds storing planted yams to keep them moist until harvest time (Sgt. Rey Ramon)

By Bill Berkowitz

As grocery stores across the country struggle to keep their shelves stocked with all goods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, the health and safety of the agricultural workers that supply them are being ignored. Hundreds of thousands of America’s farmworkers are being told that they are “essential” workers and that they should keep on working despite inadequate health and safety precautions, and without any guaranteed benefits should they get sick. Close working conditions in the fields and in packing facilities put farmworkers at risk for contracting the coronavirus, which and ultimately may jeopardize America’s food chain.

According to The Guardian’s Susie Cagle, California’s “roughly 400,000 agricultural workers are exempt from shelter-in-place orders, and vital agriculture work is continuing to keep markets stocked nationwide.” However, farmworkers – many of whom are on temporary work visas or are undocumented -- have no job security and if they become ill or lose their jobs, face uncertain prospects for receiving unemployment benefits. The workers in this essential industry subsist at the margins of poverty. 

The last National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2017 found that the average farmworker family had an annual income between $17,500 and $20,000.

While growers and labor contractors claim that are implementing new rules in the fields, those rules are falling far short of protecting the workers. Workers maintain that they are “without proper protections let alone information about the risks involved in their essential labor, and without hope of any share in expanded unemployment benefits should they fall ill or lose work,” Cagle reported.

One farmworker told journalist David Bacon that ““Because of the rains we’re working in the mud,” he explained. “We work close to each other so social distancing is impossible. They tell us to wash our hands, but there are lots of people for each station and the soap runs out. People normally have colds at this time of year, and many of us have to work anyway because of the economic pressure. With the virus, that’s dangerous. But the growers just want production.”

“We live 8 to 10 people in a house, so how would we isolate? Some have their own room, but I know one farm where everyone sleeps in bunk beds in a big room,” Luis Jimenez, head of the Alianza Agricola in New York state, told Bacon in his story for Capital & Main, which was co-published by The American Prospect. “At work we have to help each other all the time, like when we have to move a cow. You can’t do this alone, and the job requires it. The ranchers say that health is important, but I feel they’re really only concerned with getting the work done.”

Of the estimated 400,000 farmworkers in California, only about 10,000 are unionized. “An additional 20,000 are in California on H2A visas, a visa category that has seen some processing delays amid coronavirus shutdown orders,” Cagle pointed out. 

There is little support for workers -- many of whom suffer from pre-existing conditions related to working around pesticides and dust for many years -- get sick. Many workers have no health care, and while they might qualify for the additional sick leave provided through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the national legislation that expanded paid leave amid the Covid-19 crisis, many do not have insurance or the money  to pay for healthcare.

“What we noted immediately was that workers were not being provided protections or information. [Growers are] not even trying. And that’s gotten workers very scared,” said Armando Elenes, secretary-treasurer of the United Farm Workers of America. “The last hands that touched that produce before the consumer puts it in their mouth is a farm worker’s hands, so we better care about what happens to these workers.”

“They’re getting paid the same, yet they’re exposing themselves to more dangers,” said Irene de Barraicua, spokesperson for Líderes Campesinas, an advocacy organization of and for California female farm workers. “There is no standard for safety orientation. Sometimes we’re hearing they just get a five-minute talk – stay six feet apart, don’t do this, don’t do that – but they’re working in big crowds. It feels like it’s not being taken seriously because the money is more important.”

Cagle also pointed out that “With the more farming-intensive spring season about to set in, and a surge in Covid-19 cases expected statewide, there’s a small and rapidly closing window to establish meaningful safety measures in the fields. An outbreak in the farm worker community would wreak havoc on an already strained food system.” 

As restaurants close down and events are cancelled, it is likely that farmworkers will experience accelerated layoffs. According to Cagle, “Growers maintain that overall, the food system is healthy, but the near total closure of food service in restaurants, event centers, office parks and college campuses has decimated business for some farms.”

“The foodservice sector represents roughly half of all fresh produce sales,” said Cory Lunde, a spokesman for the Western Growers Association. “With the near-complete evaporation of this outlet for fresh produce, many growers in Arizona and California have seen their orders cancelled, or requests for delays in payment from their buyers.”

Ironically, the Trump administration, which has made its bones with its supporters by raiding workplaces, splitting up families and deporting undocumented workers, now finds itself in need of these workers. Many workers are carrying letters from their employers declaring that the Department of Homeland Security considers her “critical to the food supply chain.” While those in possession of the letters are not guaranteed safety from deportation, it does provide a veneer of safety. 

Nevertheless, “Some people are really confused by the message. The government is telling them it needs them to go to work, but it hasn’t halted deportations,” said Reyna Lopez, executive director of P.C.U.N., a union representing agricultural workers in Woodburn, Ore.

According to The New York Times’ Miriam Jordan, “The pandemic has also put many of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operations on hold. On March 18, the agency said it would ‘temporarily adjust its enforcement posture’ to focus not on ordinary undocumented immigrants, but on those who pose a public safety or criminal threat.”

David Bacon, a former UFW organizer, and now an independent writer and photographer, told me in an email that, here are a number of things that can be done to mitigate the risks farmworkers are working and living under: 

“[G]et rid of the exclusion of undocumented people from the relief act just passed, and stop requiring SS numbers at the unemployment office or for other benefits.  That would give people more freedom to decide whether they want to work or not.  

“Growers have to start providing transportation to and from the fields in which workers can maintain a reasonable distance from each other.”  

“The biggest problem is the crowded living situations of so many people, who because of poverty often live with several families in the same house, in garages, motel rooms or even outside under trees. 

“Public health authorities have to start prioritizing outreach to people in rural areas in these situations, with rapid response teams able to provide testing.” 

“It’s sad that it takes a health crisis like this to highlight the farmworkers’ importance,” said Hector Lujan, chief executive of Reiter Brothers, a large family-owned berry grower based in Oxnard, Calif., that also has operations in Florida and the Pacific Northwest. Lujan, whose company employs thousands of field workers, told The New York Times: “Maybe one of the benefits of this crisis is that they are recognized and come out of the shadows.”