Graphic of the Week

GRAPHIC: The people who pick America’s fruits and vegetables are getting older

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The average age of farmworkers born outside the U.S. steadily increased from 2008 to 2019, while the average age of U.S.-born workers has stayed about the same over the same period. 

Foreign-born farmworkers are on average 5 years older than their U.S.-born counterparts. 

An analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Research Service attributes the trend to a decline in younger immigrants entering the U.S. workforce. 

The age of the average immigrant farm worker was nearly 42 in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. Three quarters of hired farm workers were foreign-born as of 2016, and about one quarter are women, according to the USDA. 

After #MeToo, This Group Has Nearly Erased Sexual Harassment in Farm Fields

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Nely Rodríguez stands in front of 43 farmworkers and supervisors who sit side by side at picnic tables wearing various protective workwear—hats, ski masks, bandanas, socks as sleeves.

Rodríguez, a member and worker-leader of the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), points to a drawing of a female farmworker bent over picking tomatoes while a male supervisor stands over her saying, “¡Mamacita, qué rico te vez!” or “Hot momma, you look so sexy!”

Coronavirus

‘Either I Risk It All Or Nothing At All’: Migrant Workers’ Need To Work Outweighs COVID-19 Concerns

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Since June, there have been 21 COVID-19 cases linked to the hotel where an entire crew of migrant workers are living, according to the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, which tracks COVID-19 cases across Champaign County. The hotel is tied for third largest outbreak in the county, based on internal statewide public health data from July through September obtained by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

Agribusiness

These farmworkers were forced to labor on empty stomachs

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During an incident in Kennett, Missouri, in summer 2018, H-2A workers labored through high temperatures while denied breakfast and with little access to water. Their legal status was supposed to protect them.

Under Trump, Wisconsin dairies struggle to keep immigrant workers

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DURAND, Wis. — Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Jiménez and her husband, Manuel, 36, used to do the grocery shopping together. They would take the kids and make a day of it. But, lately, Manuel goes alone. Read on in this new report from Wisconsin Public Radio.

Labor

Missouri couple paves way for American Dream

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Gabriel and Sara Ruiz, husband and wife, were neighbors who fell in love and moved from Michoacán, Mexico, to California in the early 1990s to work on farms with hopes of realizing the American Dream. They brought with them their two children, Gabriel Jr. and Maria.