9781422276648

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Farmworker Work anywhere there are farms. Find work with ease. Be essential to the food supply.

words to understand agrochemicals: any of a variety of chemicals used to grow food, including pesticides and fertilizers.

consolidation: here, two or more companies combine into one. thresher: a machine that separates grain or seeds from a crop.

D o you ever look at the produce in your local supermarket and wonder where it comes from? Most of us take it for granted that fresh fruits and vegetables appear on our local store shelves year round as if by magic. But in fact, a tremendous amount of effort goes into planting, growing, picking, packing, and shipping every single ap- ple, spinach leaf, strawberry, and grape. Farmworkers spend all day in fields, their work changing with the seasons as they plant seeds, fertil- ize them, irrigate them, then help them grow by using agrochemicals to keep pests away. When the fruit or vegetable is ready to make the trip to your local supermarket, farmworkers harvest it and prepare it for transport on trucks and airplanes. The work is very hard, and the pay is low, but jobs are always available. With immigration and health care reform topping the political agenda in 2017, the essential role of undoc- umented immigrants in the national economy—many of whom work in farm labor—has entered mainstream discourse. t  Fruits and vegetables may be locally grown, like these for sale in a farmer’s market, or they may come from larger farms from the other side of the country. The one thing they have in common are the farmworkers who plant and maintain the crops every day.