Farmworkers increasingly struck by COVID-19

[GrowPro]

Have you guys seen this news?

In absence of federal action, farm workers’ coronavirus cases spike

Florida, North Carolina and Washington preview further spread as harvest season advances.

www.politico.com

Yikes! That's troubling news and quite shocking considering how much space rural areas have which is where most farms are located. Plus rural areas tend to have much smaller populations which should also help contain the spread. I'm surprised that farmworkers don't have quick easy access to numerous handwashing stations of some sort (I was in the military, you can wash your hands anywhere). They need to wash their hands to keep the food chain from getting contaminated and surely they need to wash their hands to get the pesticides and herbicides off their hands before eating or drinking. Why aren't they wearing masks regularly anyway to protect against the inhalation of parasites, herbicides, and pesticides? It seems to me that the best practices that would protect our food chain from contamination will also protect the workers from the coronavirus.

 

[OhSusanna]

That's just how most large farms work. To keep their costs low, many farmers hire migrant workers who are generally poor and will work and live in whatever condition they can find, because they need the money. Rows of vegetables aren't spaced for social distancing, and they shouldn't be. That would be a poor use of land. Some crops aren't easily handled by machines, so migrant workers walk the link and do the picking. Sometimes they're paid by how much they can pick per day, so as you can imagine they might not focus on social distancing themselves. Some farmers provide housing to the workers - for rent. It's usually severely cramped and in poor condition. So even if the migrant workers social distancing in the field, they aren't when they're off duty.

Unfortunately, that puts the attack on the Hispanic population since that's usually the ethnicity of migrant workers who work the fields and band together with extended family. There's a lot of underlying racism that's pushing the blame onto farmworkers. The farmworkers who have almost no legal protections and need to work even when sick if they want to put food on the table and have a place to live. One governor mentioned how these workers live like sardines in a can. Well, yeah. So if we want to stop COVID-19 so badly then raise the wages so their workers won't have to live like that. Of course, people also want to buy cheap food which plays into this as well.