American Farming Runs on Exploitation
“[The] Department of Agriculture’s failure to prepare the nation’s farmers for climate change. Of the USDA’s $144 billion budget... just 0.3 percent is dedicated to helping farmers adapt to the increasingly volatile climate conditions.”
“As farming in the U.S. continues its decades-long descent into an industrialized system rife with inequality, Americans are still focusing on the American farmer of old. ... With the passing of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Congress introduced a subcategory for agricultural workers to the H2 visa program, a vehicle for businesses to import cheap, temporary labor that had been around since 1952. The 1986 legislation marked the creation of the H-2A worker, and fundamentally shifted how farms in the United States operate. ... The living conditions for many of these workers are unsafe and overcrowded. Their wages ... ultimately amount to paltry annual salaries when compared to the strenuous nature of their work. Agriculture easily owns the highest fatality rate among all American industries. ... As a result of an entire industry and government being lined up against them, just 2.1 percent of agricultural workers are part of a union.”
“American employees in the agricultural industries make up just 1.4 percent of the U.S. workforce, and those numbers don’t appear to be jumping anytime soon. ... [A]n industry that is increasingly being built atop exploited foreign labor, that ignores basic science, and which continues to absorb tremendous subsidy money distributed to relatively few people, and rarely the ones actually working the fields.”
The New Republic, October 17, 2019: “American Farming Runs on Exploitation,” by Nick Martin
Politico, October 15, 2019: “'I'm standing right here in the middle of climate change': How USDA is failing farmers,” by Helena Bottemiller Evich