Tag: illegal farm workers

Lucky Dip – Friday, June 24th, 2011

In the version of this column that used to run on TasteTO, I’d often take local bloggers to task for running inaccurate reviews, pointing out that they could affect the restaurant’s business with a review that was not supported by research and fact. Now a blogger in Taiwan is facing fines and jail for exactly that issue. Watch what you write, folks. [Globe and Mail]

Who paid for the study? It’s a refrain heard in nutrition circles regularly, especially when the research appears to be in favour of processed foods that we know to be bad for us. It turns out, some scientists are happy to take a cheque from a corporation to fudge some numbers in their favour. [ABC]

Best idea ever – a packaging-free grocery store. That’s right, one massive bulk section where customers bring their own or buy compostable containers to get stuff home. [Good Food]

Continue reading “Lucky Dip – Friday, June 24th, 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.