Aug 04 2011
The Harvest/La Cosecha Profiles Child Migrant Farmworkers
Most Americans don’t think about the origins of the produce that stocks our supermarket shelves. From tomatoes to strawberries, and everything in between, the fruits and vegetables we eat are almost certainly picked by severely under-paid farm workers mostly from Latin America, who constantly move from one town to the next, harvesting produce. Even if we have a vague notion of who picks our food, the fact that there are young children on farms rarely appears on our radar. Yet, more than 400,000 children, who are American citizens, work the fields picking fruits and vegetables. A new documentary called The Harvest (La Cosecha) profiling three young people explores the harsh reality of their lives. Twelve year old Zulema Lopez, 14 year old Perla Sanchez, and 16 year old Victor Huapilla, share their stories in intimate detail as they migrate with their families from one job to the next, changing schools, missing school days, and wondering if their dreams of a better life will ever materialize. Farm work is brutal, with temperatures soaring as high as 107 degrees, constant bending, and hauling heavy bins of food, and exposure to toxic chemicals. When it is available, the work pays little and families often go hungry and suffer from myriad health problems. The Harvest, executive produced by actor Eva Longoria, and directed by U Roberto Romano, shines a much-needed light on the labor conditions facing America’s most vulnerable youth. Along with Cinema Libre Studios, the film is presented by Shine Global, an organization dedicated to ending the abuse and exploitation of children through films. The Harvest opens at the Laemmle theaters this Friday August 5th.
GUESTS: Susan Laury is one of the Executive Producers of the film, The Harvest, and co-founder of Shine Global, Albie Hecht is the Co-Founder of Shine Global, and Chairman of its Board of Directors
The Harvest opens on Friday August 5th at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills, 9036 Wilshire Blvd.
Find out more about the film at www.theharvestfilm.com and www.shineglobal.org
Watch a trailer of the film here:
2 Responses to “The Harvest/La Cosecha Profiles Child Migrant Farmworkers”
And still no progress for immigration reform since 1986. Everyone who eats owes a migrant farm worker. As a farmer, I encourage you to call and write your legislators to put stop to the hypocrisy and institutionalized socio-economic malady that is our current immigration policy. Note: Like most farmers I do not employ minors, pay well above minimum wage and pay all payroll taxes and do not allow workers to enter pesticide-treated fields before label restrictions have expired.
Eva Longoria, star of Desperate Housewives, has recently taking on the cause of helping migrant children. She has gone to Capitol Hill to advocate new regulations raising the minimum age of farm workers and is in the midst of creating a film that exposes the “dangerous and harsh” conditions faced by migrant children in America. It’s great that Ms. Longoria and others are taking on a project that exposes the plight of the American farm worker. From the age of 5 until the age of 19, I worked the fields of California and Oregon alongside my parents. I harvested peaches, olives, walnuts, almonds, cherries, prunes, and performed numerous other related tasks, often from sunrise to sunset. So I speak with some personal experience when I offer Ms. Longoria a word of caution: Improving the lives of migrant children isn’t as simple as keeping them out of the fields.
While forcing children to stay home while their parents work the fields may make for great headlines, the end result will be fewer opportunities and increased risks for those Ms. Longoria is trying to protect.. It is important to remember that most farm workers make less than $8/hour. There is no excess cash to pay for regular day-care or alternatives for their children. As a result, children who can’t work will stay home alone. In the best case, this will result in considerable business for xBoxLive, but more commonly, it will leave children more idle hours away from the oversight of their parents. Even if affordable child care options are available, most of the farm working families I know travel to multiple locations for the harvest, which will mean that mothers and fathers will be separated from their children for extended periods of time (will this be good for building family values?). Like it or not, child workers are often a material source of family income; if the children do not work, the parents will only be further impoverished. The theory that employers will pay higher wages to compensate for the loss of income is a fantasy.
I will say that adults that I know who grew up like me working 12 hour days, under 100 degree temperatures, and amidst “dangerous conditions”, have leveraged that work ethic to be successful in America. Yes, we missed a lot of regular school days and did not have optimal learning conditions; but this enabled us to learn other life skills, including the ability to self-teach and the often-missed lesson that the harder one works, the more one will achieve. I was able to transform my abilities to harvest buckets of cherries into an MBA from Harvard Business School and a partnership in an investment firm – I am not a smart guy, but the ability to work hard over extended periods of time, and fight for success against long odds came in handy in all sorts of scenarios.
Migrant children do need help. The deck is stacked against them. But the way forward is not to take them out of the fields and leave them at home alone. They need educational support like that provided by the Office of Migrant Education, which provides resources to sons and daughters of migrant farm workers during the K-12 years. Migrant children also need to be empowered to convert their extraordinary work ethic to help themselves out of the fields and, like other immigrants to this country, achieve the American dream of having a more stable and prosperous life than that of their parents. I am doing my part through a non-profit foundation I co-founded called The Rising Farmworker Dream Fund (RFDF), which is improving the lives of migrant students by promoting financial literacy, entrepreneurship, management, and other related business careers.
If it were not for the child labor laws that allowed my parents to take me to work at an early age, my American dream would not be a reality. Ms. Longoria: be careful what you wish for.