A little over two years ago I had an opportunity to visit the tomato fields of Chandler Mountain in northeastern Alabama. It is a beautiful place kept profitable by a migrant farmworker community that may no longer be there.
It was in a tomato packing shed in Chandler Mountain in October, 2011 that some 50 growers, workers, brokers and business people met with Alabama State Senator Scott Beason, sponsor of anti-immigrant legislation that was scaring away migrant farmworkers, to no avail. The Senator’s position was bolstered by the fact that Alabama had a 9.9 percent unemployment rate.
So the migrant farmworkers stayed away and the farmers were forced to find other labor sources to get the tomatoes picked. They tried elevating wages, offered jobs to students and the unemployed and even brought inmates from the state prison to the farms.
In the end, the work was too hard for all the groups they brought in and the tomatoes rotted in the fields. Later, some of the contractors were able to bring migrants back to the fields by assuring the farmworkers that the laws on the books were not going to be enforced.
These laws, whether enforced or not, continue to be part of the political landscape of Conservative rural regions especially in the South. The results include the fact that without the labor to pick the crops, over the last years, the United States has had to almost double its import of fresh fruits and vegetables from Mexico and other countries rather than produce them here.
Now with potential import tariffs, the costs of putting food on the dinner table may go up to levels never seen before. On top of that, the newly announced Trump tariffs are creating an impossible situation for the farmers, especially from the Midwest, as other buying countries put on reciprocal tariffs on our export of grains and the profit margins from the vast corn, wheat and soy bean production disappear.
It is ironic that many of the same farmers that are about to lose everything voted and are supportive of the President and national administration that is doing this to them. It is almost like the humorous story told to me by a friend that left Mexico City at a time when the city had record smog, to live in the clean air of Merida in the Yucatan peninsula.
He missed the smog so much that he was always on the look out for older cars that blew smoke out of their tailpipes. Smog is a curse sometimes like the current labor laws and national policies affecting farmers in America.
I am reminded of the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s children, Cain and Abel, and the lead to the first murder documented in the scriptures. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a sheepherder.
I do not know about now, but at the time, God preferred sheepherders over farmers and expressed that at the altar of sacrifice. It is because of God’s stated prejudice against farmers that Cain came to kill his brother Abel and was banished from the community.
As part of a farming and farmworker family in my early years, I saw how weather, drought, irrigation and pesticides among other things, affected the growth and yield of crops. To add labor shortage and policies designed to destroy a way of life is indeed a curse.
Farmers in America probably think that they are in the good graces of God. Hopefully He still is not thinking of Cain.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
