Tag: farm workers

Lucky Dip – Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

No soda, no candy, no fries. This school year, cafeterias are serving up healthier food. But will the kids eat it? [Toronto Star]

And if they don’t want the healthy cafeteria food, have the little buggers make their own lunch. [National Post: The Appetizer]

Oh, your kids can’t cook, you say? Well why the hell not? Maybe it’s time (okay, not maybe, it really IS time) to bring back Home Ec. – for ALL students. [New York Times]

Chicken and biscuits have Wonder Twin powers. It’s a fact. Plus other awesome breakfast foods. [Bon Appetit]

The Brits are giving the term “gastropub” the boot. Which means it’s okay for us to do the same, right? I don’t mind the term all that much, I’m just sick and tired of it being used to describe every place with upscale comfort food, regardless of whether there’s a pub aspect there or not. [Globe and Mail]

Continue reading “Lucky Dip – Tuesday, September 6th, 2011”

Who Picked Your Produce

I’ve had this piece from Chow: The Grinder bookmarked for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been meaning to discuss it.

In a development that’s surprised exactly no one, fruits and vegetables are rotting in fields across the United States after a crackdown on illegal immigration.

It interests me because of the issues surrounding illegal immigration, but also in part because of the point of view many people involved in the local food movement take toward farmer’s markets, assuming that if the farmer is at market then nothing is being harvest back at the farm.
We seem to be of the belief that the farmer we buy the apple from is the same person who picked the apple. The truth is that almost all farmers, both here in Canada and in the US, rely completely on the use of seasonal or immigrant workers (both legal and illegal) to harvest their crops.

In the US south and California, those workers are mostly illegal immigrants from Mexico. Here in Canada, the pickers are (mostly) Jamaican and arrive in the country with specific work permits. The apple farms in Ontario’s Norfolk county rely heavily on Jamaican pickers, and the tobacco kills from these former tobacco farms have been renovated and turned into housing for seasonal workers.

In both countries, we owe our cheap food prices to the fact that there are people willing to work for minimum wage (or less) to do the back-breaking work that no one else is interested in doing.

Something to remember the next time you bite into an apple.