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Fully revised and updated through 2024, my book Finding America's Farmworkers: Reaching Out in North Carolina is now available in a web version. To begin reading visit findingamericasfarmworkers.com When I moved to North Carolina from Chicago in 2005, I had no idea that so much of our nation's food was still harvested by hand. Now, … Continue reading Finding America’s Farmworkers
It's a sad truth that tens of millions of people in the United States depend on free food to keep their families from going hungry. Many of these moms and dads plant and harvest fruits and vegetables or raise and package chicken and other meats, all for the lowest possible wage. As a result, the … Continue reading To Feed Those Who Feed Us
We know he was 30 years old, a citizen of Mexico, working at a North Carolina tobacco and sweet potato farm. It was just the second week of his first year working there, authorized by an H-2A temporary seasonal work visa. We know area temperatures neared 100 on the fifth day of September. It was … Continue reading The Death of a Farmworker
"Qué tipo de cultivo están cultivando aquí?" I asked the men. “What type of crop are you growing here?” We were huddled in the frigid and rundown trailer where these North Carolina farmworkers cooked and ate their meals. I was just starting some research for a book, visiting labor camps to introduce myself. It was … Continue reading You grow what?
I’m a Wall Street technology manager. Two years ago I set out, citizen journalist style, to learn and write about people whose lives are very different from mine: migrant farmworkers. These are the men, women and children who harvest most of the fresh produce you see at America’s grocery stores. I’ll share what I learned … Continue reading Considering the farmworker: What I’ve learned
From my 2014 blog The Considerate Omnivore... Last summer I accompanied some college students doing educational and health care outreach at migrant farmworker camps. They were generally dismal places, ill-maintained and no place I’d ever want to spend the night. Except for one. It was mid July. Hot. I’d been traveling all day with Julie … Continue reading The Nice Camp
From my 2014 blog The Considerate Omnivore... Each year, a little-known contest by a little-known agency in Washington, DC lets children of migrant farmworkers portray their lives in essays and drawings. The annual contest by the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs invites these children to submit essays and artwork for judging by a panel, with … Continue reading The lives of child farmworkers in their own pictures and words
From my 2014 blog The Considerate Omnivore... Danny should feel comfortable here and the tomato pickers should see him as one of their own. But he doesn’t, and they don’t. Eighteen-year-old Daniel Guzman is in a labor camp in the South Carolina Lowcountry, some 500 miles away from Immokalee, Florida where he grew up in … Continue reading 500 miles from Immokalee
From my 2014 blog The Considerate Omnivore... Thanks to a recent feature on The Daily Show and a slew of media attention (links below) a lot more people are now aware of the problem of children working in U.S. tobacco fields. This attention is a very good thing, but the problem goes way beyond tobacco: … Continue reading It ain’t just tobacco
Michael Durbin 