Environmental Justice and Farm Labor by Rebecca E. Berkey

Author:Rebecca E. Berkey [Berkey, Rebecca E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Rural
ISBN: 9781317293675
Google: 3VMlDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-02-17T04:31:29+00:00

4 Case study in conventional agriculture

The Farmworker Association of Florida

Introduction to the Farmworker Association of Florida

I first encountered the Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF) while I was living in Orlando and working in higher education, first at a small, private liberal arts institution in a position focused on issues related to social change, and next as an instructor for a Business Ethics and Social Responsibility course at a different institution. Through participation in their organization with programs like the Toxic Tour, the Bandana Project, and the Lake Apopka Farmworker Memorial Quilt Project, in addition to engaging my students in pesticide health and safety trainings, pursuing dialogue on the ramifications of current capitalist business models and their impact on workers, and traveling to several nurseries and farms to work alongside the farmworkers, the stories of the people that this organization represents gripped me as they have many others. Over the course of my eight-plus-year relationship with FWAF, I never cease to be in awe of the sheer scale of the work they do, and their continual motivation to lift up farm work as a profession that is valued with dignity for all who have suffered in farm labor historically.

In this chapter I detail their work, focusing on the work of the Apopka area office, with which I worked most closely. The story of this area, its farmworkers, and the work of the organization exemplifies and magnifies many of the issues discussed and detailed in Chapters 2 and 3, specifically as they pertain to workers in large-scale, corporate, conventional agriculture. South Apopka has been the subject of many articles, books, and even short films, and after spending time there it is easy to see why—it’s hard to believe that what has happened, and continues happening there, is real and that most people are unaware of the realities that face the people who harvest our food. It is as Nolan Kline and Rachel Newcomb assert:

Our vision of American farm life was shattered the day we first drove across the street from the Farmworker Association office into a world of intense poverty and suffering. Although the journey was not far in physical distance, it took us far away from the romanticized, almost American Gothic perceptions of farming that most Americans have and plunged us into the frightening realities of farm workers living in shacks with dirt floors.

(2013, p. 169)

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