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. 

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.

Labor

Couple finds a home, work in Missouri fields

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Newlyweds Alvaro Porras Loza and Maricruz Martinez Hernandez moved in early June from the Kansas City area to work the farm fields of New Haven, a town that hugs the banks of the Missouri River and stationed about an hour west of St. Louis.

Labor

Still Harvesting Shame

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An investigation by In These Times and The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting reveals how today's migrant farmworkers are still living in deplorable housing reminiscent of "Harvest of Shame."