(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . In Defense of the People who Pick Your Crops [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-23 I was raised on a farm in Michigan. Just a small, general farm with my dad trying to keep his head above water and raise us kids and care for his wife in a business that really didn’t make any money. We had chickens, pigs, finally settled on milk cows as the only way to make any money at all but Dad still had to work in a factory to support us. I was milking cows with my sister and mom when I was ten and Dad was working in a car plant. We didn’t raise fruit or truck crops but a lot of farmers did. To our north were cherry orchards, not far away were pickle farms (Heinz had a canning factory in a local town, here.) And apples when they came in season, later in the fall. And there were migrants. It was a known thing, a regular cycle. Pickers came up during the season and followed from state to state to work in the orchards and fields; cherries are an early crop here n Michigan, then pickles all summer here but the workers went everywhere around the country following the crops as they ripened, finally winding up in the winters in California or Texas, I think Some were from Mexico. I don’t think anybody thought twice about it back then, I sure never heard any complaints. I do remember one lady who lived on a cherry farm telling my mom that she just stayed inside when the pickers were there but that was about as far as it went. The crops got picked, the migrants made some money, that was that. I am sure there are many who have studied the subject can give more specific, accurate details than someone who only observed it as a kid. The point I am trying to make it just that it was a regular thing back in the Fifties and Sixties. And these people were treated like crap. Just crap. When we were living on our second farm, in north-central Michigan, we were really struggling. My sister and I and my brother who had just been released from the Army wanted to help so we went to a cherry orchard there to pick cherries to bring in a little extra money. And little was the word for it. I don’t think we even made a dollar a day. We gave up within a week. It cost us more in gas to get there than we were earning. Do you know the farmers make the pickers rent the buckets each day to put the cherries in? Later when I was living in Oregon where there were more truck farms than Michigan we picked raspberries. They only picked in the mornings, afternoons were for processing the loads, driving them to the canning factories, etc. Raspberries are scratchy, nasty plants and we were dyed purple up our elbows. Again, for a dollar a day. Well, the point is not about me, it’s about the people who were doing this as a living. Yes, the pickers did have their entire families out picking. Not child abuse, not child labor. You know why? Because if they didn’t have everyone picking they didn’t make enough money to survive. Desperate, desperate people. I would also add that many of them were white, some Southern. It was not a race thing at all. Of course the kids don’t get any education. They can’t go to school, they have to keep moving from place to place to follow the crops. I talked with some of them sometimes; just regular kids trapped in a life with no damned future and no way out. When I was in Oregon they complained about no one being willing to pick crops for them. A farmer was interviewed on TV once complaining that the spoiled kids today weren’t willing to work, they just wanted things given to them. Well, I suppose a day’s working in the fields harvesting this man’s crop might have made them enough for a candy bar. How much did he make, incidentally? He didn’t mention that. And then wealthy suburbanites complain that the price of a can of corn or peas is too high when it gets over a dollar. My friends in Ghana would kill for a can of beans to feed their hungry kids. They are STARVING. Consider yourself lucky that you live in a system where one class of people are forced to live in grinding, hopeless, unbelievable poverty so that you can have those cheap vegetables that you look down on so much. When you see a migrant picker on the street you should get down on your knees and thank them. Seriously. You should be glad people from Mexico want to come to pick your damn crops. Dammit, I’m getting angry. So I will stop. Cesar Chavez was a saint and a hero. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/23/2189059/-In-Defense-of-the-People-who-Pick-Your-Crops Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/