Research & Reading List: Farm Workers to Farm Owners

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Season 1, Episode 116: Farm Workers to Farm Owners

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Description: Where do racial justice and food justice meet? Perhaps at the point where long time farmworkers are able to buy their own land. In the United States today, 83 percent of farmworkers are Latinx but Latinx people own only three percent of the farms. Latinx farmers bring a wealth of knowledge to the US food system in terms of fresh produce, healthy techniques and a cooperative management style born out of years working as laborers—but they face unique challenges accessing the resources and aid they need to buy their land. As a generation of white family farmers ages out of the business of farming, a rising cohort of Latinx workers stands ready to take up the slack. In this episode, Laura receives a virtual tour of one organic farm from its intrepid owners and speaks with Dr. Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern about her book “The New American Farmer.” She also hears from veteran farm labor organizer Dolores Huerta about how helping Latinx farmers thrive would be good for eaters and the planet.

Guests:

• Francisco Farias, Owner, Farias Farms

• Juan Farias, Owner, Farias Farms

• Dr. Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, Author, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability

• Rigoberto Bucio, Owner, Bucio Organic Farm

• Dolores Huerta, Co-founder of United Farm Workers of America and Director of the Dolores Huerta Foundation

Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:

• Farming While Black

• Food Justice

• From Farm to Coop to Table, Food Justice in Urban Agriculture

• Don’t Feed the Racist Patriarchy!: Chateau Hough + Hip Chick Farms

• Standing Their Ground: African American Farmers vs. the USDA

• Hip Chick Farms: Growing a Business

Related Articles and Resources:

• “Everyone Is Tired of Always Staying Silent”: Inside a Worker Rebellion in the Central Valley by Michael Grabell, Bernice Yeung, Mother Jones

• Thousands of Essential Workers Are at Risk of Deportation by Maurizio Guerrero, In These Times

• Transforming Agriculture Requires All Players and All Farmers by Jennifer Moore, PHD, Farmland.org

• Farming for the Planet: How Farmers, Consumers, and Corporations Embrace It by American Farmland Trust, Mother Jones

• In California’s Wine Country, Undocumented Grape Pickers Forced To Work In Fire Evacuation Zones by Alleen Brown, The Intercept

• Amid wildfires, US farmworkers labor with few protections by Monica Campbell, PRI

Featured ‘Music in the Middle’ of the Podcast:

“Raise the Vibration” by Kleva Keys featuring Diamond Dancer from the “10 Years of Klevakeys” anniversary collection, released on House Keys Records, Hear and Read More