Farmworkers: The Hands That Feed You

by Angelina Novelli

Produce Pickers in Oxnard, CA. Image credit Alex Proimos

Victoria Sánchez De Alba – who grew up in Salinas, California picking fruit and produce alongside her parents – watched her father die from cancer, a memory that has caused her to become active in advocating for the rights of farmworkers: “I do it for my dad because he died of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, and non-Hodgkin Lymphoma is associated with pesticide exposure.”

When selecting meals, restaurant patrons can seem far more interested in the repercussions on their own health or the environment than repercussions on the health of those who harvested their food. Just take a look at a menu at any one of San Francisco’s restaurants and you’ll see descriptions that include free range, organic, locally grown, or humanely raised. Fair labor practices for the people picking our food is an essential part of the conversation that often goes missing.

Many San Franciscans would be surprised to learn that the food which is prepared and served in our city’s numerous restaurants is harvested by workers who are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA), whose unstable, low-paid labor leaves them unable to plan for their futures, and who may be exposed to pesticides at work with impunity. As a high schooler, De Alba was herself misted with pesticides by a crop duster flying overhead. As she describes the incident, it is clear that her indignation and distress remain today

I looked up; I thought it was raining, sprinkling. They said, “no, they’re spraying to kill the insects.” I said, “well, what about us? Don’t we count?” ~ Victoria Sánchez De Alba

The National Cancer Institute’s Agricultural Health Study (AHS), studies published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, and ample other research have found an increased risk of cancers and other chronic illnesses in farmworkers. For instance, AHS found twice the risk of bladder and colon cancers among workers with the highest lifetime exposure to the weed killer imazethapyr as compared to those who had no exposure to this herbicide.

Imazethapyr has been one of the most commonly used herbicides on crop fields in the United States for the past 30 years. Farm workers have also been documented as having increased rates of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma – the cancer that killed De Alba’s father – leukemia, and even asthma.

“What’s so disturbing is that farm workers are invisible and their wellbeing is below the radar,” as De Alba relates. She does see some signs of hope, though. Since her time in the fields, De Alba notes that there have been changes made in when insecticides and herbicides can be applied – “to my understanding. . . they cannot spray like they used to spray while people are working; they have to spray at certain times of the day.”

However, some things have also gotten worse. A particularly toxic insecticide, chlorpyrifos, which was in the process of being banned toward the end of the last presidential administration, was put back into use when President Trump took office. Most commonly used on corn, chlorpyrifos is also used to control roundworms on other crops, such as broccoli and cauliflower.

While the National Pesticide Information Center states that increased cancer risks have not been found in studies of rodents exposed to chlorpyrifos, studies of human populations have found more than double the risk of lung cancer. Cancer is also far from the only concern in humans exposed to chlorpyrifos.

Chlorpyrifos works by blocking an enzyme that controls messages between nerve cells, preventing the central nervous system from functioning properly and eventually killing the exposed insects. Humans with heavy exposure to chlorpyrifos experience the same neurotoxic effects and some studies have shown long-term reduced neurological functioning in animals exposed to this insecticide. It is important to note that these outcomes have only been observed in populations with heavy exposure, similar to what is experienced by farmworkers.

“[Farmworkers] bring food to the stores, to the restaurants and, you know, no one ever mentions them and what they have to go through.” ~ Victoria Sánchez De Alba

Those of us consuming corn or broccoli at a restaurant in San Francisco are extremely unlikely to experience negative outcomes from any residual chlorpyrifos on our food. The human body is able to clear small amounts of organophosphate insecticides like chlorpyrifos with no lasting harm. The workers who breathe it in day-in and day-out, on the other hand, may not be so lucky. This is a class of pesticides for which social justice concerns are especially prominent due to their nearly exclusive impact on rural communities and workers with heavy exposure.

As De Alba expresses, “[farmworkers] bring food to the stores, to the restaurants, and you know, no one ever mentions them and what they have to go through.”

Beyond substantially increased environmental exposure to harmful chemicals, farmworkers also have fewer workplace protections than nearly any other class of worker in the United States. The National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) was enacted in 1935 to protect the rights of employees to collectively bargain with their employers for improved working conditions and wages, without fear of retaliation. Farmworkers are specifically excluded from protection under the NRLA, however, and there are many parts of the country where they can be fired for simply joining a union.

While the California Agricultural Relations Act provides more protections for farmworkers in our state than in any others, farmworkers nationwide still live extremely precarious lives. The primary protection afforded to California farmworkers by this act is the right to collective bargaining, something workers in other industries are guaranteed on a national level.

Without federal protection from the NRLA, farmworkers are excluded from wage and hour standards, protections from child labor, workers compensation insurance, and unemployment insurance. It can cripple their ability to organize or protest. At any moment, a farmworker can be told that their work is no longer needed, making it extremely challenging to save and plan for the future, especially given the low wages found in the agricultural industry.

A quarter of farmworkers have a family income that falls below the federal poverty line, one of the highest rates of poverty of any occupation in the United States. While 25 percent may not sound high, many families in the agricultural labor industry have numerous members, including children, working in order to earn enough to live barely above the federal poverty line. The average hourly pay rate for nonsupervisory farmworkers in 2017 was $12.47 per hour, well below San Francisco’s minimum wage and well below a living wage in California and other parts of the country.

Due to the fluctuating need for their labor, farmworkers can find themselves working over 40 hours a week for months and then not at all. Three quarters of farmworkers earn less than $10,000 a year.

Increased legal protections and regulatory oversight is an important element of the solution to these problems, but as the 2011 Inventory of Farmworker Issues and Protections notes, “incentives for these types of top-down reforms do not currently exist.” In San Francisco restaurants where this issue has not been brought to light, the onus is on the patrons of the restaurant to make it a priority. We must demand that fair labor practices be treated just like fair trade is in our retail stores – a badge of pride for the retailer, and something the consumer expects to see.