Farm Workers Weather Storms of Immigration and Indifference

Dade City, Fla. (ELCA) -- As daylight dawns on the horizon, farm workers -- dressed in mudded blue jeans, frayed long-sleeved shirts and bandannas wrapped around their heads underneath straw hats or baseball caps -- gather at the edge of a huge strawberry field. Bent forward at the waist, women, men and sometimes children begin to pick the fruit with both hands and place them in wooden crates or flats.
The scene resembles a way of life from long ago, but this is today in Dade City, Fla., where thousands of migrant and seasonal farm workers, predominantly Mexican, harvest ripening crops. Some migrant farm workers travel hundreds of miles every fall to harvest crops on farms that hire labor. Seasonal farm workers cultivate and harvest crops in one area all year.
"I hated the dirt underneath and around my fingernails not because I was too good to pick, but because I knew there was no other choice," said Margarita Romo, a former farm worker. "A farm worker's life is very hard," she said.
For some people, fruits and vegetables conjure images of healthy eating and the consumption of fresh, juicy and natural snacks. What doesn't surface are the despairing work and life conditions of those who harvest them.
"Farm workers [make up] the largest population of homeless people. We are among the poorest workers in the United States and no one cares," said Romo. "Farm workers, especially women, are some of the most invisible people in the country, yet they make up about 50 percent of the farm labor work force."
"Workers are routinely exposed to harmful pesticides and are paid extremely low wages some earn as little as $1.50 for a flat of early strawberries," Romo said.
The wage rate for picking a flat or bucket of [vegetables and fruit] in some places is the same now as it was 12 years ago, she said. For example, a farm worker today is paid somewhere between $5.00 and $7.00 for each tub of oranges turned in during a work day, which is the same as in 1979, Romo said.
The reality today is that a migrant or seasonal farm worker often does not know what the wage-rate will be for every flat turned in until he or she arrives at the field that morning, Romo contends. "The faster you pick, the more you can earn. And, there is no guarantee for work beyond the day-to-day," she said.
Romo lives in Dade City among farm workers. Her parents were farm workers, but Romo avoided a future of the difficult life when her father became a gardener in Texas. "That was hard work, too," Romo said.
Years later, Romo married and moved away from the farm and gardening community. In 1971 she returned to the farming community by providing language translation services for ministers, farm workers and social service agencies. That year she founded Farmworkers Self-Help in Dade City, an organization supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Farmworkers Self-Help, Inc.
"One day a woman came to me and said, 'I am tired of crew chiefs and the way they scream at us to pick faster and work harder. I want to fight back.' So, I told her to bring together as many people as she could find that felt the same way. She brought 45 people together, we started English classes and formed a club. That's really where Farmworkers Self- Help began. Soon after, we incorporated our group," Romo said.
Today, Romo directs Farmworkers Self-Help, which is designed to serve farm workers who come to the area to harvest strawberries, tomatoes, squash, egg plant, oranges, a variety other citrus fruits and more. The organization now owns a group of small buildings along Lock Street in Dade City.
"We teach farm workers about the harmful effects of pesticides, how to dress and to care for one's body after working fields full of pesticides. We also try to show people how to become better harvesters, such as how not to damage plants and get more out of them. We have health care classes for women and a church for children," Romo said.
Farmworkers Self-Help services include a free medical clinic, day care, thrift store, a food pantry, job training, courses on immigration and pesticide protection, and health care courses for women in a "spiritual setting." The 2000-2001 ELCA Domestic Hunger Grant Program awarded $10,000 to support AWING (Agricultural Women Involved in New Goals), a Farmworker Self-Help program designed to help women create better lives for themselves through education and leadership development.

Women Farm Workers
"Farm working women have been the most oppressed people," Romo said. "They are the ones that have to care for the entire family in addition to working the fields. They work just as hard as the men and yet they really don't have a voice," Romo said.
"As a Mexican ex-farm worker, I work to strengthen families and show men that women are more valuable when they're educated and know how to care for their bodies. Some men tend to be macho and domineering, and women don't have a lot of power. So we find ways to bring forth that power in healing, pro-family ways, so that it doesn't divide and destroy," she said.
"Who will do this kind of work for people? It must be the church. The church must continue to enter farm working camps and see what is happening -- the conditions in which farm workers live," Romo said.

ELCA Message on Immigration and Farm Work
"Lutherans have provided a strong tradition of pastoral care and ministry for migrant farm workers," according to Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service -- a ministry of the ELCA, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
According to an ELCA message on immigration, the ELCA and LIRS minister among "the most vulnerable of the newcomers through congregations." The ministry "offers pastoral and legal counsel to individuals who have entered the United States without legal status, aids people with the citizenship process, and helps newcomers learn to live in a new country." The message was approved by the ELCA Church Council in 1998.
Work on a farm is contingent on agreements developed between landowners or "growers" and crew chiefs, who are independent, self- employed individuals working on behalf of migrant farmers, Romo said.
"A typical crew chief might say to a grower, 'We'll pick the entire [field] for a certain amount of dollars.' So, the grower gets the work needed to be done, and the crew chief will pay the farm worker what the chief wants them to have, which is often not fair," she said.
"There is no pension or retirement plan for farm workers," Romo said. Most live in work camps, which are grim places to live, "because they don't have a choice. Some have large families and can't afford to live on streets that you would live on," she said.
Tucked away from the central part of Dade City, farm workers live in tiny concrete camps, most of which are grouped together and surrounded by a wire fence. Most are simple concrete structures. Unlike the main part of Dade City, roads around the camps are unpaved, made up of dark orange gravel and dirt.
"Farm workers are sort of isolated and put in a box, and that's where they have to stay," Romo said. "But farm workers are beginning to wake up like a flower that starts to unfold," she said.
"Farm workers have a right to know what pesticides are being used on the crops they harvest," she said. "We also have a right to receive adequate pay, education and health care. We have a right to be taken to a hospital and receive treatment," Romo said.
"Before Farmworkers Self-Help, many undocumented farm workers in Dade City were denied health care because they were not legal residents. Farmworkers Self-Help helped to change that in Dade City," Romo said.

"Undocumented" Farm Workers
Most of the farm workers i