Salinas Valley is the part of California tucked in between Monterey and Carmel, commonly referred to as “The Salad Bowl”. It’s named that because of the high volume of food it produces for all Americans. It’s a beautiful place that I’ve visited several times.
This week, I spent a lot of time driving through the fields while the workers were harvesting, giving me an eye opening front row seat to their process.
Wow, they sure did have a lot of short workers. I’m sure they weren’t children, just short adults. Right?
They were also covered head to toe. Every worker tries to protect as much skin as possible. Temperatures can be breezy and cold, or reach the high 90’s, it doesn’t matter. The safety from the chemicals is what matters. Even still, the average lifespan of these workers is only 49 years.
But, I’m sure those chemicals have nothing to do with it, right?
I’m sure those same chemicals are “good” for you and your family to eat?
While I was watching these workers give their life for the food on our table, social media (both here and England) filled up with enough hate speech to make a person lose their appetite. What troubles me most about certain populist movements and the intensely nationalistic rhetoric that flourishes is how the conversation of “us versus them” ALWAYS focuses on the weakest among us.
You’re mad that “illegals” have taken a mythical job that you weren’t offered, and that you wouldn’t do, and that you would die from doing before turning 50? And you want to be mad about it, fine. But, why be mad at the person who’s barely surviving? Why blame the person who travels to work packed into a 40 year old school bus pulling port-a-potties that will later remove their own feces.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” – Matthew 25:45
Be angry at the actual root of the problem. Who’s REALLY responsible for illegal employment in this country? The 16 year old working the field for a slave’s wage or the multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation with a fleet of attorneys and lobbyists?
Between the amount of produce being grown with nasty fracked water and this trip through The Salad Bowl, I have further committed to buying from my local farmers and to growing even more of our own produce.