Approximately 70% of agricultural workers in the U.S. are foreign-born. More than half of those are undocumented.
That means that…. The avocado on your morning toast? The apple in your kid’s lunch? The lettuce in your salad at dinner? At least one of those was picked by someone the country is actively persecuting as illegal.
Think about that next time you’re in the produce aisle.
The avocado on your morning toast? The apple in your kid’s lunch? The lettuce in your salad at dinner? At least one of those was picked by someone the country is actively persecuting as illegal.
I grew up in Eastern Hillsborough County, near Plant City, Florida. I played club soccer on fields cut from farmland, under the giant strawberry water tower. One of my longtime teammates was the child of two undocumented immigrants. I drove the backroads past strawberry fields and citrus groves. Saw the work. Felt the heat. Knew the rhythm of it even as a kid.
Five in the afternoon, heads bent low. No shade. No seats. Just bodies moving, bending, standing, in the hot Florida sun.
I also saw the housing. The shuttle buses. The scale of the work needed to be done. The relentlessness of the pace. This wasn’t a summer job. This was survival.
And it’s absolutely necessary work.
Yet, we don’t have enough of it. Roughly one-third of crops never make it off American farms due to labor shortages.
Most Americans wouldn’t do this work. Only about 30% of farm workers are U.S. born.
Not in that heat. Farm work is one of the most hazardous jobs in America with a fatality rate seven times higher than that of the average job.
Not for that pay. The average income for a U.S. farmworker is $20,000 to $25,000 a year.
And so, they don’t.
Now, I’m not excluded from this conversation. I’m a naturally born American, and I don’t do this work. I don’t want to do this work. Fortunately, I don’t have to. However, I understand that someone does, literally, have to. Because if they don’t, we go hungry.
And that’s the part we don’t talk about.
That most of us benefit from this system while pretending we’re not connected to it. That we eat the fruit and ignore the labor.
But once you’ve seen it—really seen it—there’s no going back. Once you understand who’s doing the hardest, most essential work in our food chain, it becomes almost impossible to choose persecution over provision.
Once you understand who’s doing the hardest, most essential work in our food chain, it becomes almost impossible to choose persecution over provision.
You don’t have to know every story. Not everyone’s a hero out there. But, the work speaks for itself.
It’s not romantic. It’s not redemptive.
It’s brutal.
Prison inmates have better working conditions.
But the job gets done, and it keeps the country fed.
That should at least be enough.