The image is striking. The sideways baseball cap, the heavy open-mouthed gaze, and the great burden of the large bucket of under-ripe green tomatoes hoisted into the air. The precious cargo being stabilized only by a shoulder and a white-gloved hand. This image is not rare, in fact, it is commonplace in the Immokalee work camps where workers are severely underpaid and hard labor and injustice have become the norms in these Florida fields.
Josh Viertel, who is president of Slow Food USA, recently marched with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in the snow-filled streets of Boston to demand wage fairness and declare solidarity between the slow food movement and the workers that provide the food we savor and need. Viertel's opening speech of the march is filled with imagery of hope in what the future could look like if justice and dignity were shared with the workers who pick the nutrition that arrives in supermarkets across the country. If thought, value, and worth are given to the food we put into our bodies, then thought, value, and worth must also be given to way our food is grown, harvested, and processed, lest we forget where our food actually comes from.
In his speech, Viertel tells a story of a young man born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and the plight that his future holds as an immigrant worker in the Immokalee fields. Gerardo Reyes shares ties to the food system just as Viertel, but instead of doing so out of interest, his ties to the food industry are through necessity. He is a field worker and organizer for the CIW and also shares the same birth year as Viertel. Having been born in Mexico, Reyes has been deemed exploitable by the current industrial agriculture system. Out of site and out of mind, Reyes and other workers, have been devalued to the point of forced slavery, having been paid in illicit drugs, cigarettes, and having been forced to live in despicable housing conditions such as a locked Uhaul truck with no facilities.
Just as profit drives food to become fast, its production processes are devalued in the same hurried fashion. Tomatoes in our supermarkets have lost their flavor due to having been picked from the vine before they've ripened, a chicken nugget's origin is questionable as to whether it had actually been derived from chicken meat, and we've become disconnected from the workers that harvest our food. A close friend, Star, who is raising a young son, struggles to connect food with its inception.
“Milk comes from a cup!” stated Thor in exuberance and pride.
Star, dismayed, asked again, “No honey, where does it come before we pour it in the cup?”
“From the fridge!” Thor beamed, knowing he got it right this time.
The difficulty of explaining where our food comes from is not because we don't care, but because we no longer engage with our food production. A carton of milk is easily plucked from the cooler in the supermarket, transferred to a cart, then to shopping bag, placed in our refrigerator, then poured into a cup for us to gulp down. Modern processes have deemed it unnecessary and, in fact, inefficient for everyone to have a cow for milking at our residence, but is efficiency really worth it? Does separating ourselves from where and how our food is produced help humanity or hurt it?
The Immokalee workers have a long struggle in front of them, but as Viertel and others recognize the importance of linking where their food comes from, and who harvests it, the battle is closer to being won. Little victories, such as the 1 penny-per-pound increase in tomato picker wages will compile, and hopefully snowball, to the point where the picker is no longer an invisible character in the story of food. The field workers will be given the credit they deserve for their hard work and the important role they play in our current agriculture system.
As Viertel states at the end of his address, “The world is ours to make,” (1) I agree that the lives of the Immokalee workers depend on all of us and our collective abilities to help compassion and justice break into our flawed food system.
Work Cited
1. Viertel, Josh. Life. The Atlantic. Mar 2, 2011. Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/03/we-are-all-farmworkers/71951/. Accessed Mar 25, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment