Where Does My Food Come From?

What am I going to have for lunch? It is a simple question. One I ask myself every day. Rarely do I ask myself how blessed am I? There is little doubt that I will have lunch and even less thought is devoted to how this wonderful bounty reaches the supermarkets where most of us purchase the food we eat. The recent food safety scares have forced many Americans to consider some of the conditions under which food is produced throughout the world because it has had a negative impact on us. There is still little consideration of the negative impact our consumption and demand for cheap abundant foods at all times of the year on the environment and the laborers in other countries.

The Fair Food Across Borders Campaign is trying to raise awareness about the human rights abuses suffered by migrant agricultural workers in Mexican agribusiness camps." They want us all to be asking "Where does my food come from?"

For a look at where our food comes from you can watch Paying the Price: Migrant Workers in the Toxic Fields of Sinaloa. Here is a link to the video

Facts about farmworkers in agribusiness camps in Northern Mexico:

* There are estimated to be over one million migrant farmworkers in Mexico. The majority come from Southern Mexican states like Oaxaca and Guerrero. They are forced to leave their communities because they have no other way to support their families.

* Workers are recruited by contractors in their communities of origin and often transported under very dangerous conditions.

* Many of these workers are indigenous and speak languages such as Mixteco, Nàhuatl, Zapoteco, and Tlapaneco.

* There are hundreds of trans-national agribusiness camps in Northern Mexico, in states like Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California. They grow a large variety of produce from tomatoes to watermelon. The vast majority of the crops harvested are for export to the U.S. and Canada.

* During the 2007-2008 harvest season, more than 790,000 tons of fruits and vegetables were exported from Sinaloa - the vast majority of these crops came to the U.S. The main crop is tomatoes, followed by bell peppers and cucumbers.

* For six to eight months, migrant families live in small, crowded shacks made of sheet metal and wood, often with no access to clean water or other basic services.

* Most migrant farmworkers are surviving under precarious working conditions, receiving very low wages and no labor protections.

* Child labor is widespread in the camps. About 20% of the labor force are children under14 years of age. About 374,000 children between the ages of 6 and 14 work in fields harvested for export.

* Pay by piece-rate dominates, which forces workers to work as much as 12 hours per day.

* Health problems that these workers face include malnutrition and chronic-degenerative illnesses because of their constant exposure to dangerous pesticides.

* There are many documented cases of children and adults losing limbs and lives to work-related accidents and illnesses in the fields.

* This internal migration has not improved the marginalization and extreme poverty in which these families live. They often return home with barely enough money saved to get them through till they return again to the camps six months later.