writing
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
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 