US (MO): Migrant farmworkers remain crucial to harvest

Each year thousands of migrant farmworkers pass through the Midwest to plant and harvest many of the crops we buy in the grocery store. The list includes pumpkins in Illinois, sugar beets in Minnesota and strawberries in Wisconsin. Most fruits, nuts and vegetables that must be picked by hand is likely harvested by a migrant farmworker.

There are about 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the U.S., according to the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture. But despite their essential contribution, many migrant workers still struggle to obtain a full education and basic healthcare services.

According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, 50 percent of these workers lack proper documentation. A quarter of them live below the poverty line and 41 percent completed only their primary education.

Stephen Borders, program director at United Migrant Opportunity Services, has been working with migrant workers for more than a decade to connect them to housing services, legal aid and Head Start programs. He says the majority of the people he works with make just $5,000 to $10,000 a year. But what concerns him most is their social isolation.

And their work isn’t easy. After waking up at 5 a.m. to get her kids to school, 30 year-old migrant farmworker Veronica Jaramillo works from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. climbing up and down a ladder picking apples and filling a bag that can weigh around 60 pounds. She fills giant crates, about the size of a large bathtub, and is paid just $13 per crate.

“Right now it’s cold, it’s rainy and there’s days we don’t want to get up,” Jaramillo said. “But it’s got to be done. We have to support our families.”

For Jaramillo, working as a migrant farmworker runs in the family. Her parents, both Mexican immigrants, raised their children travelling from one crop to the next. At 13, Jaramillo began working in the fields part-time. When she didn’t complete high school, seasonal farm work became a familiar and steady way to earn an income. Her mother Maria, now 57, has worked in the fields for 35 years and remembers raising a family while constantly on the move.

At the end of the season, because there is less fruit on the trees, Jaramillo estimates that she fills around five crates of apples a day, netting $65. That works out to less than $8.50 an hour.

After the apple harvest, Jaramillo plans to return to Florida where she’ll try to find a more established job for the winter. If she can’t find anything she’ll work picking citrus, even though the pay is poor and the temperatures can be scorching.

Source: kunc.org