Blowback

Shortly after the group of Mexican “guestworkers” arrived at a Tennessee tomato farm, they realized that their job was killing them, literally. In addition to being crowded into filthy trailers with no source of clean water, they and their living quarters were regularly showered with poison. Despite requirements for protective equipment, they had to go into the fields while exposed to pesticides. Risking abuse and retaliation for challenging their boss, some tried to use cellphones to record the spraying. In the end, they got their evidence, but then got fired.

The workers' struggle, which led to a lawsuit filed earlier this year, illustrates all the paradoxes of America's natural bounty. No form of labor is more ingrained in humanity than farm work, but the people who grow our food are being eaten alive every day by the toxins of modern industrial farming. Though consumers are more anxious than ever these days about the effects of pesticides on the food we eat, they seldom consider the health hazards facing the workers who feed our consumption. Yet the further you get up the production chain, the greater the danger.
~ from Pesticides and Farm Labor Yield a Bitter Harvest by Michelle Chen ~

With the spate of state legislatures passing laws aimed at stemming the flow of illegal immigrants into their states -- particularly farmworkers -- they are creating the framework for a major hit against their own agricultural output. There is a realistic chance that a significant amount of crops will rot in the fields and unpicked crops mean less money for farmers.

As we know, one of the supposed motivators for this kind of legislation is that illegal immigrants are stealing "American" jobs. This, of course, is pure malarkey due to the information Chen highlights above. Few red-blooded Americans -- no matter how desperate they are -- would agree to work in such toxic conditions! Many would run home to mommy at the first whiff of this carcinogenic soup of high-powered pesticides.

This certainly is not to suggest that the indiscriminate application of these poisons should be permitted in the first place. Their continued usage not only poisons farmworkers and the food we eat, but it is despoiling the environment as well. Consequently, this kind of legislation is going to have a blowback that its advocates never dreamed of.

If the legislation remains in place -- which I think is doubtful in the long-term -- then the farming industry will be forced to change the way they operate. The farming lobby is very powerful and they will resist any type of mandated change along this line. However, the more they resist, the more farmers will find it difficult to land enough able-bodied workers to harvest the bounty.

Consumers will not be left out of this equation either. Fewer crops harvested means decreased supply. When supply is low and demand is high -- we Americans are very demanding -- prices go up. High food prices will represent yet another hit on our fragile economy and may well deepen the ongoing recession on Main Street.

Eventually, the corporate elite will figure all this out. It is at that point that I expect to see much of this legislation rolled back. At that juncture, things can return to "normal." Illegal immigrants will again pick our crops for low wages...and be poisoned as our way of saying, "Thank you for your services!"