Category Archives: Death

Political Lands and Foods; Indigenous Communities in Brazil as Land Defenders

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Bananas, sugar cane, palm oil, soy– theses are just some of the foods tied to the deracination of indigenous communities from their ancestral lands. Land rights for indigenous peoples in Latin America have always been contentious as territories have been appropriated for use of farming, natural resource and extractive industries, and other uses not originally intended by their original populations. While companies like the United Fruit Company quickly and other multinational agricultural companies took over in places like Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, agricultural development projects in Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon ecoregions have quickly displaced indigenous populations in Brazil, leaving an estimated 13.8 percent of land as formally designated for these communities, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, and 31% as agricultural land (USAID).   

Image by the Rights and Resources Initiative: depicting the RRI’s Forest Tenure Database four land tenure categories. (click here to see enlarged image)

For me, this research makes clear the nexus between land rights and access for indigenous communities, and mismanaged foreign investment which has disrupted local livelihoods and economies. To think systemically about land rights is to understand the ways that vulnerable communities are negatively affected by land grabs (particularly by governments to address food insecurity), or indirectly through foreign direct investment (FDI). 

Land rights are directly tied to our course ideas of transparency, food justice, and sustainability. Through networks like the Rights and Resources Initiative, organizations, governments, and others are vying to increase transparency with access to land globally. Food justice is inherently tied to transparent access to land: when we don’t know where our food is coming from, it’s difficult to identify who’s rights are violated at different stages of cultivation, harvest, processing, and transportation of these foods. Many rights are violated in the simple acquisition of land before it is even developed for agriculture. 

In the case of Brazil, this rings true. Thirty-eight large companies now control much of Brazil’s agricultural land, including large companies like Cargill and Coamo, which have faced significant backlash for their deforestation practices which have primarily displaced indigenous people in the Center-West region. In March 2020, Indigenous leaders from the Yanomami tribe testified in front of the UN security council warning against the genocide of indigenous and uncontacted groups in the region.   

Yanomami indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa denounces deforestation and indigenous land invasion in Brazil, via Conectas Human Rights

Systems thinking connects this course to fundamental ideas of land and food justice. Unpacking what transparent and equitable food systems will look like in the future will require serious action to protect indigenous habitation of land in addressing egregious issues of climate change, food security, and sustainability within the food chain. 

 

The food system is not failing people, it is working how it was invented  

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Before I took Political Science 385, the relationship between the food system and racism was not an explicit connection I made. I was in a bubble of ignorance, clouded by my own privilege of being considered white passing, socioeconomically privileged, and cis-male. I asked myself, “how could the [United States] food system possibly be racist? – it’s food, right? It was not until I stepped back, flipped through a couple of history books, and put myself in a different vantage point that I connected the dots: the United States is built on oppression and systemic racism, the food system is just one of the many layers that it lurks.

Systemic racism can be traced back to the very creation of the United States. The brutal colonization of the indigenous population for their land, forced slave labor and unjust laws stripping people of color from land ownership are just the beginning of injustice that minorities have faced in our food system. The very backbone of our modern-day food system has been created by the very populations that are left behind.

Not only has the entire system been built on oppression, the very laws that are meant to protect people from harm has had a long history of dismantling Black and Brown empowerment. Before Jim Crow laws were enacted in the United States, African American’s owned 13 million acres of land in 1902, by the end of 1997 years of Jim Crow, they only owned 2 million acres. White land owners now pass on their externalities to people of color, while they reap the benefits of their new found land. Many working longer hours for lower wages than their white counter parts.

There is so much more happening behind the scenes than the average consumer might think. Buying something as simple as an avocado, a banana, or chocolate, it is easy to forget about the hundreds of miles, hours, and workers it took to get where it is now. The food system is not a farm to table concept like people may think, it is much more complex and inner connected.

One thing that I will always hold close to me from this class is that you cannot look at one part of the system and generalize about the whole. The history of oppression in agriculture cannot survive on its own, it is interdependent on a long and brutal history of colonization, institutionally racist laws, biased social norms, and labor.

The food system is not failing people, it is working how it was intended.

Work Cited:

Food Justice & Racism in the Food System

New Research Explores the Ongoing Impact of Racism on the U.S. Farming Landscape

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-15686731/cocoa-farms-in-ivory-coast-still-using-child-labour

Alien Land Laws in California (1913 & 1920)

Photos: https://communityfoodfunders.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/History-of-Racism-and-Resistance-in-the-Food-System-Visual-Timeline.pdf

Racism in the Food System

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I’m taking the liberty to focus on the food system and farm workers in Washington State. COVID-19 has served to peel back the layers of an incredibly unjust system. Farm workers, who are largely foreign and undocumented, have now been deemed ‘essential’ employees yet are not afforded basic safety measures. Currently, labor advocacy groups Familias Unidas por la Justicia and the United Farm Workers of America are filing a lawsuit against Washington State’s Health and Labor departments demanding regulated support for these farm workers who are too scared to speak for themselves because doing so could result in their H2-A visas being revoked and/or their information being given to ICE. Washington Health was reported issuing guidance that temporary worker housing facilities with a single room “should assign sick occupants to one side and occupants without symptoms to the opposite side.”

Speaking of housing, simply getting a roof over their heads is a challenge for many foreign farm workers. Not all farms are required to provide housing for their employees depending on the visas issued, and as Benton City has demonstrated, many local residents in farming areas push back hard against supplying farmworker housing. Residents of Benton City were recorded stating that they did not want Benton City to become like Mabton, a mostly Latino community. That was during complaints directed to the US Department of Justice in 2002. To this day residents are fighting against farm worker housing.

Perhaps one of the most telling cases of foreign farm worker discrimination was during the infamous 2018 Sumas Berry Farm case. The farm manager was quoted saying about the foreign farm workers: “They came here to suffer,” and that they were expected to work every day of the week “unless they were on their deathbed.” Despite H2-A visas not having a production quota in WA State, workers on this farm were expected to harvest two boxes of berries every hour or face deportation and paying their own way home. The conditions that brought on the allegations w

Sumas Berry Farm Protests

ere 12 hour shifts in hot, wildfire smokey conditions that led to severe heat stress, poor quality or portioned food, not enough water, expired visas that had yet to be renewed, and the death of a coworker, suspected from aforementioned conditions, which caused 70 employees to go on a one day strike and subsequently get fired. The farm was expected to pay a lawsuit settlement of $149,800, but a judge later cut that settlement cost in half.

These are just three examples of severe injustice and racism faced by foreign farm workers in the US food system, but it’s a systemic problem that infects every part of the country. Until we can strictly enforce basic human rights and regulations in the farming system, these injustices won’t stop. It’s one of the real costs of cheap food.

Migrant Workers Have Always Been Essential, So We Should Be Treating Them Like It

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In response to “‘Essential Workers’: Heroes or a Sacrifice to Capitalism?” by Ashley (@ash_marie)

The U.S. has historically relied on the labor of minority groups to provide this labor since the conception of the nation even in times of normalcy. From the use of slave-labor on plantations to the current use of Latinx labor, minorities have driven commercial agriculture for centuries. Yet many Americans hold the notion that these migrant workers are not essential workers but are actually stealing the jobs of American citizens.

The view that these essential workers are “stealing jobs” has been strongly held, even in recent years. We must question this and ask why it is that minority groups have been the main supply of agricultural labor in the U.S.. This question appeals to the larger system of immigration and class structures, and it is deeply intertwined with the history and politics of the U.S. and the countries that the migrants had immigrated from. It all boils down to this: employers seek the cheapest labor, and the cheapest labor can be provided by the most vulnerable populations. The essential work that these workers provide is low paid and the conditions are often unsafe. Even when the United Farm Workers launched the “Take My Job” campaign, a counter discursive act against the “stealing our jobs” mentality, incredibly low numbers of American citizens moved to take on these jobs due to the labor conditions that they present.

As we begin to recognizing these workers as essential during this pandemic, their conditions stay the same. They continue to receive low wages and their working conditions do not comply with the basic precautions of social distancing that are so vital in this pandemic. Instead of calling these workers “heroes”, a term which normalizes their deaths as an inevitability, we must improve the conditions of this essential labor.