Environmental Racism in Food Prodution

  By Emma Vowels

            The image shown above was one I found while surfing the internet recently. I simply found it too interesting to pass up. In the United States, few people understand where their underappreciated food comes from, and what communities are responsible for bringing it to their table. The image above sums up this interesting phenomenon, depicting a white middle or upper class family thanking god for their food, when in reality they should be thanking the minority workforce who make up the majority of food production, and often pay for their jobs in disparate environmental health hazards.

            The reality that most Americans are unaware of, or would refuse to admit, is that the majority of all our domestic food production is done by minority workers, many of which who are not even legal U.S. citizens. About 70% of all U.S. agricultural workers were born outside the United States. Of these foreign-born workers, about 94% were born in Mexico. Even more shockingly, estimates claim that at least 50% of agricultural farm workers have not been authorized to work in the United States. Therefore, despite the fact that food may be produced here in the United States, the majority of it is produced for the tables of middle class Americans by illegal minority workers.

            In addition to not only having an extremely physically demanding job, these workers are often subjected to disproportionate environmental health hazards. Most minority workers live in the area where they work, so they are subjected to toxins in the environment from large-scale agriculture and livestock farming. In areas of heavy agriculture, groundwater is often polluted with pesticides, animal waste and fertilizer by-products. According to research done in California by UC Berkley, communities with the worst water quality are 65% Latino and 50% below the poverty line. In similar areas with livestock factory farms, toxic run off from the farms add pathogens, antibiotics, viruses, and other chemicals into the environment. There are is also a great deal of air pollution in factory farm areas. While the entire communities near these pollutant-producing industries suffer from environmental impacts, minority workers and their families suffer the most. With little other work available for minorities, especially those who may be unauthorized to work in the United States, our food industry keeps minorities in a vicious cycle of environmental racism. So next time you consider thanking god for the food on your plate, you might want to thank the workers instead.

 Statistics from: http://www.doleta.gov/agworker/report/ch1.cfm

Reference from: http://www.foodispower.org/environmental_racism.htm

Image from: http://weknowmemes.com/2012/01/thanks-jesus-for-this-food-de-nada/