Migrant Workers: Still Harvest of Shame?

  • Most migrant labor camps provide housing only for single men, but the Zellers farm in Hartville, OH allows entire families to migrate and, for those of age, to work together in the fields. (Photo by Gary Harwood )

It might sound obvious, but America needs to grow and harvest food. The problem is
that many Americans don’t want to work on farms anymore. That’s why some farm
owners recruit workers from Mexico and other places. During the growing season,
nearly 300 workers and their children live in migrant camps around the K. W. Zellers
family farm in rural northeast Ohio. Julie Grant spent some time at the Zellers’ farm this
fall and has this story:

Transcript

It might sound obvious, but America needs to grow and harvest food. The problem is
that many Americans don’t want to work on farms anymore. That’s why some farm
owners recruit workers from Mexico and other places. During the growing season,
nearly 300 workers and their children live in migrant camps around the K. W. Zellers
family farm in rural northeast Ohio. Julie Grant spent some time at the Zellers’ farm this
fall and has this story:


For many Americans, just tending a small garden can be too much labor. But the
Mexican workers on the Zellers Farm in Hartville, Ohio are moving quickly down rows
of lettuce hundreds of yards long.


One man crouches down and cuts four heads of romaine. He’s leaning over the plants all
day long. It’s backbreaking work, but he moves spryly to the next row, and the next, and
the next. He’ll only make about 3 cents per head, so he wants to cut as many heads as
quickly as possible. Another worker follows him, loading the lettuce into boxes, then
lifting the 30 to 40 pound boxes and throwing them on to a flatbed truck, one after
another.


Farm owner Jeff Zellers says most people who live around here don’t want to do this:


“No. We can probably hire ten people and one of them will last more than a week, who
will stay here work, and work through it.”


Out in another field, a different crew is working in the harshest heat of the day. They get
a little protection from straw hats and some are wearing rubber pants. They need to protect
their legs from the hot, black, mucky soil. The temperature of the dirt can get up to 110
degrees.


Two generations of the Soto family of Mexico work together thinning lettuce. They
work down the long rows using a hoe, or crouching down and pulling out weeds by hand.
25-year-old Ivan Soto has become an expert, after thinning lettuce at the Zellers farm for
the past nine years:


“We don’t do other jobs, only one job.”


Ivan Soto pretty much taught himself English. He’s gone through the process to become
a US citizen. Now his wife has joined him and his family on the lettuce-thinning crew.
Other crews specialize in growing cilantro, parsley, and radishes. Zellers says the farm
depends on this expertise:


“We have to deliver
product on a daily basis that is as good or better then our competitors. And if we do not
have a trained labor force to do that, we’re not going to long term be in business.”


The Zellers farm pays less then some others because it has set up temporary homes
around the perimeter of the farm. Most of the homes look like small trailers. But they
come furnished and the farm pays most of the workers’ living expenses. Most migrant
farm workers make 11 to 14 thousand dollars a year. Ivan Soto says it’s hard, boring
work, but they make a good enough living that when they return to Mexico they can
afford to rest for awhile.


That’s a big reason their family, including his wife and young son, his parents, four
siblings, an aunt and uncle, have traveled from their home outside Mexico City to this
small northeast Ohio town for going on a decade now:


“When we are here, we say, well, we are now in our second home, because over there is our first home this is our home because here in Ohio is our second home for us.”


While most farms provide migrant housing only for single men,
Jeff Zellers allows entire families to migrate and work together in the fields. He hopes
his own children understand all the labor it takes to provide a meal:


“When we return thanks before we eat dinner, we pray for the people that prepared and produced the food. If my childen do nothing else but understand that their food did not show up in the grocery store because that’s where it was, it just came off an assembly line, I would want them to do that.”


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Migrant Workers: Reaping Education

  • The migrant children spend a lot of time with their families. In their culture, life revolves around family and community events. (Photo by Gary Harwood )

Lots of farm workers in the U.S. are migrants from Mexico and other southern places.
Many farm owners say they couldn’t be profitable growing food without these migrants.
But the workers are growing something of their own: children. The children are often uprooted. Julie Grant reports on the challenges of educating children whose lives are dictated by the growing season:

Transcript

Lots of farm workers in the U.S. are migrants from Mexico and other southern places.
Many farm owners say they couldn’t be profitable growing food without these migrants.
But the workers are growing something of their own: children. The children are often
uprooted. Julie Grant reports on the challenges of educating children whose lives are
dictated by the growing season:


In this farm town another house or trailer empties nearly every night. The growing season
is over and migrant workers are leaving, headed to Florida, Texas, Mexico, or someplace
else. That means their children will be pulled out of school. Cyndee Farrell is principal
of the elementary school:


“They’ll just not show up. Sometimes we get word, ‘Oh, we’re leaving tomorrow.’ Other
times, if the weather changes over the weekend or whatever happens and they just decide,
oh, we’re going to leave, they pack up and go. They know they can count on us being here when
they return, and we make it work.”


The migrant children leave as most students are just settling in to the semester.


For some migrants, it’s the only schooling they’ll get until they return to Ohio in April or
May, just a few weeks before the end of the school year.


Lisa Hull teaches reading to 4th and 5th graders. She says the migrants add a whole new
culture to this rural school. They laugh a lot and almost always seem happy.


But she says they don’t treat the classroom like the American kids:


“They don’t value education as well as i would say a normal, typical American would.
They have a different lifestyle. They’re easy going. We’re into all the possessions and
stuff, whereas they don’t really care if they have anything.”


The migrant children spend a lot of time with their families. The families are close and
they stay close. In their culture, life revolves around family and community events. One
person’s birthday is usually reason enough for an entire migrant neighborhood to
celebrate.


(Sound of knocking on door)


“Where is everybody?”


It’s Friday night and neighbor Pat Moore drops in on the Soto Family. They’ve just come
in from weeding lettuce in the fields. They’ve been migrating to rural Ohio from outside
Mexico City for more than a decade. The three ‘boys’ are all grown now and have
become U.S. citizens. They all graduated from Mexican high schools. 21 year-old
Alberto Soto also wanted a diploma from an American high school, so he stayed in this
town of Hartville on his own one winter:


“That year, I saw the snow for my first time. Here, it was too cold.”


The whole family is gathered in the living room: all three brothers, two younger sisters.
The mother and father don’t speak English, but they sit and listen, as Alberto Soto
explains why he stayed in Ohio that year:


“To finish my high school, I was in 12th grade. So I think that was important for me.
To get my diploma so I can get a better job, so they can pay me more. An easy job. Not
too hard like in the fields.”


Soto says he cried when his family left. He was lonely. But even after staying that
winter, he still hadn’t learned enough to graduate. He quit school and he’s been working
in the fields with his family since then. His 19 year-old brother Marco Soto has also
become an expert at weeding lettuce. Marco says it’s hard, boring work and he wants to
do something else:


“I think everything is going to be the same every year. And you are not going to learn something to do something because here, is almost the same. Like what you do everyday is going to be the same, like if you want to stay here for the rest of your life, it’s gonna be the same thing and you are not going to learn anything.”


Educators say most migrants need more schooling to improve their lives, but foreign-
born Hispanic students have the highest dropout rate in the U.S. The migrant
neighborhoods in the Hartville area are looking dark these days, but they’ll spring back to
life when the growing season begins again. The public school teachers say they’ll do
their best to keep working with the students who return.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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