Cornucopia’s Take: Organics are firmly rooted in attention to and care for the environment, animals and humanity. Farm labor is fraught with complex issues in need of our attention. True sustainability will ensure all farm workers a safer, more well-paid living.


Phantoms in the fields: Mexican workers drawn to harvest California crops, despite hardships and talk of a wall
The Sacramento Bee
by Mark Arax

Source: Damian Gadal

SELMA – There’s a stretch of Highway 99 in the middle of California where the new plantings of almonds at last give way to vineyards. This is where Selma, raisin capital of the world, still lives and dies by the grape. When the berries sugar up fast, as they have this year, harvest comes early.

The season finds the farmer at his most sour, contemplating an age-old question: Can enough workers be rounded up to pick the crop? He knows from empirical evidence that few citizens of the United States are willing to do the work. He knows that Selma’s salvation lies across the border.

When a grape grower plows under his father’s vines and plants almonds, he doesn’t speak of heartache or profit or pests or the need to save water. The reason, he’ll plainly tell you, is labor. A nut doesn’t require a hand to pick it. Because a machine does all the work, nothing bleeds in an almond orchard. The grape harvest, on the other hand, remains a race against rot: man against sky, man against fruit, man against man.

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