writing
Finding America's Farmworkers: Reaching Out in North Carolina 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, twenty years later, that hasn't really changed. Much of the produce in any grocery store--the peppers and melons and berries … Continue reading Finding America’s Farmworkers
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
In 1981, the travel writer Tom Miller made a spot-on prediction. President Reagan was then planning an experimental program to allow US growers to hire 50 thousand Mexican farmworkers each season on temporary contracts, a program that would be enacted into law in 1986 as the H-2A visa program. Writing in The New York Times, … Continue reading The New Bracero
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
Michael Durbin 