National Geographic: “While empty grocery store shelves and mile-long food bank lines have become less prevalent than during the early days of the pandemic, advocates say essential workers and their families are still as vulnerable as ever…”
Fall is officially here, and in Immokalee that means that the sidewalks along Main Street, the four-lane road running through the heart of the Florida farmworker community, are filling up with migrant workers returning from northern states. The new harvest season is just around the corner, and with it, the potential for another major outbreak of COVID-19.
Indeed, even as new cases surge across the Midwest, and a broader resurgence of the virus threatens to crest in states across the country as schools reopen and restrictions loosen, it has been clearly established that the novel coronavirus hits some communities far harder than others – and few harder than low-income, rural communities of essential workers like Immokalee.
Over the past month, there has been some excellent reporting documenting the deeply troubling response, or lack thereof, by public officials charged with protecting farmworker communities. In addition to John Bowe’s excellent piece in the Nation (which you should make sure to check out if you missed it earlier this week!), we’re bringing you a round-up of recent reporting on the pandemic’s threat to farmworker communities, and the urgent need for state and local officials to take action ahead of the Florida harvest.
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Washington Post: “Nearly every suggestion we gave about how to meet the needs of the farmworker community — from early community-wide testing, to effective health education, the need for contact tracing and isolation areas apart from overcrowded housing — was met with initial rejection and delay,” [Gerardo] Reyes Chavez said…
First up, the Washington Post reported last month on the coronavirus’s devastating impact on U.S. farming communities and used the Collier DOH’s delay in response to the pandemic in Immokalee as an example for how health officials nationwide have downplayed the virus’s danger for essential farmworkers:
Virus’s unseen hot zone: The American farm
In Yakima County, Wash., some fruit orchard owners declined on-site testing of workers by health departments at the height of harvest season even as coronavirus infections spiked. In Monterey, Calif., workers at some farms claimed foremen asked them to hide positive diagnoses from other crew members. And in Collier County, Fla., health officials did not begin widespread testing of farmworkers until the end of harvest, at which point the workers had already migrated northward.
At the height of harvest season, growers supplying some of America’s biggest agricultural companies and grocery store chains flouted public health guidelines to limit testing and obscure coronavirus outbreaks, according to thousands of pages of state and local records reviewed by The Washington Post. […]
[…] Eleven states (California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin) have introduced mandatory protections for farmworkers during the pandemic that include providing PPE and requiring physical distancing, workplace disinfection and worker testing. Many issued recommendations only after seeing significant outbreaks among farmworkers in their states. Twenty states have issued nonenforceable guidance, and 19 states, including Florida and Texas, have issued no recommendations. […]
[…] Florida’s spring harvest made the state the earliest test ground for vulnerabilities among fruit and vegetable pickers. Farmworker advocacy groups say county health officials were slow to grasp the spread of infection and fatalities in farmworker populations, in part because hospital officials and medical examiners did not consistently collect data by occupation or race. […]
[…] Advocates say Hispanics were also undercounted in neighboring Collier County, a heavily agricultural area. By the end of May, Immokalee, a farming community in the county, had more than 1,000 positive cases, one of the highest infection rates in the state, according to state health department statistics.
“Since we have been using the medical examiner’s data to confirm known individuals who have died, we know that just about everyone we’ve confirmed in Immokalee is in fact Indigenous Mayan or Latino, but they are listed as White,” said Marley Monacello, a staff member with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
According to Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a coalition leader, the organization wrote to the Collier County Board of County Commissioners on March 23 and to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and 14 others on April 2, laying out the risks to farmworkers. There was no response from the governor or board; they heard back only from a staff member of one state representative, Monacello said.
“Nearly every suggestion we gave about how to meet the needs of the farmworker community — from early community-wide testing, to effective health education, the need for contact tracing and isolation areas apart from overcrowded housing — was met with initial rejection and delay,” Reyes Chavez said. […]
[…] Collier County health officials twice turned down offers from Partners in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit health-care organization, to conduct contact tracing in Immokalee, according to Matthew Hing, a doctor with the organization that has had success in contact tracing in Massachusetts.
Kristine Hollingsworth, public information officer for the Florida Department of Health in Collier County, said the offers were declined because any group that assisted in contact-tracing efforts would need to become a background-screened volunteer of the agency or a contracted agency approved by the Florida Department of Health.
Testing of farmworkers did not ramp up until June. By that time, much of the Florida growing season was over and many seasonal farmworkers were on the move.
“By then the state had successfully sent the problem up north,” said Robin Lewy of the Rural Women’s Health Project. “It was shushed and covered up. We didn’t think about the farmworkers because it’s convenient to forget them.”
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Fox 4: “To prevent another gut-wrenching hit like that this harvest season, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried reached out to major farming communities across the state to provide additional COVID-19 testing for farmworkers. St. Lucie, Hendry, Hillsborough, and Miami-Dade counties accepted. Collier County did not…”
And like clockwork, news broke this week here in Immokalee of the inexplicable, unilateral decision by the Collier County Department of Health to reject additional testing resources for the farmworker community from the Florida Department of Agriculture. In spite of the extremely high likelihood of a resurgence of cases in Immokalee during the harvest season, the Collier County Health Department has not only refused additional testing for the community, but rejected the free support of Partners In Health, an internationally-renowned public health leader, in advising the county’s contact tracing efforts. The Collier DOH also abruptly canceled its community health worker outreach program ahead of the season. Instead of implementing a plan together with community organizations, the DOH appears to be falling into a disturbing pattern of unilaterally rejecting or dismantling response efforts, while ignoring the calls for more resources from the community whose health and safety is on the line in the first place.
Here’s the story as reported by the local Fox 4 news channel:
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National Geographic: “While empty grocery store shelves and mile-long food bank lines have become less prevalent than during the early days of the pandemic, advocates say essential workers and their families are still as vulnerable as ever…”
The incomprehensible failure of state and local officials to promote public health among essential farmworker communities is by no means unique to Florida.
Two weeks ago, National Geographic published an excellent and in-depth look at the dangerous and unregulated workplace conditions endured by farmworkers in the blueberry industry. Outside of the Fair Food Program, in which enforceable and verifiable standards for health and safety are monitored on a daily basis by farmworkers themselves, these kinds of protections in U.S. agriculture are virtually nonexistent. As farmworkers enter yet another harvest season this fall, National Geographic‘s article serves as a urgent plea for state and local officials to not only offer specific guidelines for protecting farmworkers during this time, but actually create avenues to enforce the standards they are setting forth as well:
“‘It Doesn’t Feel Safe.’ Inside one of the world’s blueberry capitals”
Migrant farmworkers in New Jersey risk COVID-19 to stock your fridge
[…] Hammonton [New Jersey] is the self-proclaimed “blueberry capital of the world,” with 56 blueberry farms located in and around the town of about 14,000 people. Every year an estimated 6,000 migrant farmworkers, the majority from Mexico, Haiti, and across Central America, arrive at the farms for the eight-week harvest. Harvest time varies, but generally begins in early June and ends by late July.
Blueberries are big business in New Jersey: the state annually produces between 40 million to 50 million pounds, 80 percent of which comes from the Hammonton area, amounting to roughly $70 million in annual revenue.
Farm work is one of the most dangerous and low-paying occupations in the United States. “Non-payment of wages, or really low wages…pesticides, vehicle safety, and workplace accidents” are some of the long-standing problems farmworkers face, according to Jessica Culley from Farmworker Support Committee (CATA), a nonprofit organization headquartered in New Jersey. COVID-19 has only made the job riskier. Social distancing is nearly impossible. A majority of migrant farmworkers live in crowded camps on the farms, sharing bathrooms and dormitory-style sleeping quarters. […]
[…] D.D., a woman of Haitian descent, has been working at the same Hammonton farm every summer since 2002. “This year there’s not as many people,” she said. “They’re scared of coming because of COVID.” For those who are there, that means more work, more pressure, and little room to raise concerns about safety.
D.D., her husband, and their three children travel from Florida for the harvest each year. She said they were tested for COVID-19 when they arrived, but did not receive daily temperature checks, as the state had advised. The New Jersey State Department of Health issued safety recommendations for farms in May, but farms are not required to follow them. “The document itself is a good one in most respects, but the implementation was left to the discretion of the farm employers and farm labor contractors, and there was no enforcement or accountability measures in place,” said Culley. […]
[…] The pandemic has drawn attention to both essential workers and the nation’s food system, which Culley hopes can be an opportunity for change. “The role of farmworkers has been highlighted, in some cases celebrated,” she said. “[We’ve] been trying to figure out how to leverage this moment where it seems like there’s some recognition of the contributions that farmworkers make to our society.”
While empty grocery store shelves and mile-long food bank lines have become less prevalent than during the early days of the pandemic, advocates say essential workers and their families are still as vulnerable as ever. Eight states have issued mandatory regulations for protecting agricultural workers from exposure to COVID-19, and activists are fighting for New Jersey to pass the Farm Worker Epidemic Health and Safety Act, which will legally require testing and safety guideline compliance. Said Culley: “It’s time to make sure that these folks who are doing really important, critical work for our country are taken care of.”
That’s a wrap for today’s news on the COVID-19 front. Be sure to check back next week as we bring you the latest from Immokalee and the battle to protect the farmworker community against the unfolding public health crisis.