A Privileged Taste of Migrant Farmer Life
Several years ago, I was living on an organic tomato farming collective outside of Santa Cruz. I had been invited to house sit for a couple of years (with my then husband and our son) while one of the landowners temporarily moved to DC. I left my home and work in Southeast Alaska to live and raise my then four-year old son on this idyllic farm with a view of the ocean, and minutes to the beach. This land collective started out in the early 90s, a motley crew including a Vietnam vet-turned-farmer, an accountant, a biologist, a hospice worker, a couple of teachers, and even a farmer or two.
When the organic tomato business started to take off, they shifted from hiring labor comprised of transient bong-toting hippies, to a skilled, efficient, and “higher yield” Mexican crew. When we arrived from Alaska, I needed work. I had some farming and labor experience, so they hired me to sell tomatoes and flowers at the Santa Cruz Farmers Market. At $13 an hour, I soon needed more work, so I inquired about work with the barn crew, sorting and packing tomatoes.
The crew consisted mostly of an extended family group that returned every year to several farms in the area. Many spent most of the year in Mexico, on their own farms. Their work on the tomato farm fluctuated. Depending on the weather, blight, and the market, they might drive the long and treacherous dirt road only to and be sent home. If there was crop damage, the whole crew was laid off indefinitely. Unsurprisingly, they were not provided health care nor retirement. The mostly White, advanced degree-holding farm owners professed to appreciate and take good care of the crew, paying above the going rate. One of the two farm managers however, often accused the crew of stealing boxes of tomatoes and working too slowly. Interestingly, the crew is not hired for public, social, hip farmer’s market work, and the farm did not hire non-Mexican labor for harvesting and sorting. Although the collective, made up of brilliant, compassionate, deep thinking people, spent countless hours resolving conflicts in their consensus-based meetings, making “world peace on a small scale”, sharing road maintenance, farm equipment, and helping raise each other’s kids, the feudal financial and social divide showed clearly embedded structures of Whiteness: choice, privilege, and the farm as a lifestyle accessory. Indeed vestigial white supremacy in the form of this segregated plantation system permeates every aspect of this visionary tomato farm. The White farm owners are the public face of the farmer’s market, the “thinkers” behind the “ground breaking” water-conserving “dry farmed tomatoes”, advocating for organic methods in Washington DC, and educating the kids in their community. The Brown people were relegated to the fields, the barn, the invisible, the given, with no opportunity to break through the glass ceiling, and rise within the system.
I don’t speak Spanish. I was acutely aware of this deficit when I started to work with the crew. I was aware of my status as an outsider, alongside my “insider” privilege as one of the White people living “the farm dream”. The landowners mostly worked “off farm”, rarely alongside the crew in the fields or barn. This crew was in effect making it possible for the landowners to live out their fantasy of living on a working farm on coastal California, without the hardest parts of farm work. While working together in the barn, it was immediately clear to me that the crew worked SO FAST, and with incredible accuracy. They could maintain this pace while giving each other shit, laughing, and listening to a political talk show that I could not understand. In contrast, my work felt slow and I spoke Spanish at a 3-year old level. They were incredibly patient with me as I picked up their sorting strategies. I would sometimes default to making myself “the fool,” to share a laugh over my lame Spanish, and struggled through more substantive conversations, trying to get a sense of their life in Mexico. At first, I was awkwardly treated with the deference given to the farm owners. Over time this relaxed, and they teased me more. I overheard conversations complaining and joking about the main farm manager, a form of protest I appreciated. I remember hearing that one of the elders of the crew, who had worked on the farm the longest, had requested a small patch of sunny earth on which to grow some melons. He was repeatedly turned down by the owners. There was plenty of space for the elder, who had returned to work on the farm for over a decade, to grow some melons. Far from stealing boxes and working slowly, it was evident to me that this farm would not stay afloat without this committed and highly skilled crew.
I had an insider view of the mistreatment and discrimination, in contrast to their incredible work. When the workday was over, I walked up the hill back to my idyllic farm life. I rejoined the domain of farm owners, sharing a bottle of red overlooking the ocean. On days I did not work in the barn, I occasionally set up a chair in the barn and offered hand, shoulder, and arm massage, since this was my trade. No one on the farm suspected me of stealing tomatoes or working too slowly. There was a voyeuristic dimension at play here, that of the anthropologist sampling and experiencing the exotic suffering of the “farm worker life”. I got a comfortable “taste” of the lived experience of the people at the frontlines of our food supply chain, made invisible by the “Whole Foods” marketing of wholesome mostly White-owned farms. I was also able to taste this life, solely for the purpose of enriching my own realities. I was consuming another culture, “eating the other” as bell hooks (1992) assertsonly to feed myself and my experiences. This experience did not directly lead me to taking any tangible action to diminish this power differential on the tomato farm. I was a bystander. I had insight into the ways racism propped up the farm dream, and how routine microaggressions reinforce the power structures that allow some folks to own and run a farm on the coast of California, and others to largely run those farms, at drastically lower wages with nominal advancement and no security. Yet I felt like I was too much of a passerby on the farm to really take action. I didn’t know enough about the inner workings of the farm. I made excuses for not speaking or more directly resisting the racist structure of this mostly White collective.
I am grateful to have had this experience and I will never look at the beautiful boxes of fruit and vegetables at the supermarket the same. I have a more visceral understanding of the lived experience of this crew on this farm. It is beyond the book club, beyond the abstract, beyond the romantic progressive affiliation with all Black/ Brown/worker/immigrant struggles. It feels personal, nuanced, and real. On the other hand, I used their marginalized positionality for my personal growth and learning. I was able to drop into “barn work” for a while until I chose to do something else. I got to live the idyllic farm life with my young son, picking tomatoes, frolicking in the flowers, eating fresh food, with a view of the ocean and the beach only moments away. Because I also had an “insider view” of the challenges the farm owners faced of making the collective work, I shied away from clearly confronting the persistent racist underpinnings of the farm structure, nor did I meaningfully challenge implicit racism of the main farm manager. I am realizing how often I make excuses to stay hidden, to remain the observer, in effect “eating the Other” without confronting the ways that I benefit from and perpetuate racist systems throughout my life. I am working to challenge this habitual cowardice in myself and excavate the layers of privilege embedded in this hiding. Furthermore, it is time to move this awareness forward, to more deeply heal the legacy of dominant structures playing out through me, to come out of hiding. It is more than time to help create pathways for marginalized groups to have the same power, freedom, and possibilities I have enjoyed. I feel like this pertains to every aspect of my life. It is time to hold myself accountable for the things I care so deeply about, as well as for the injustices I don’t recognize, and my role in the perpetuation of systems of oppression. More specifically, it is time to show up for the farm laborers and their families in my community; to advocate openly for their right to be here, work safely and at a livable wage, stay together, and to be able to own and farm their own land here in the US, or have access to other ways to earn a living. I find inspiration in the words of Cesar Chavez:
"When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belongs to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice.”
References
hooks, b. (1992). Eating the other. In Black looks: Race and representation (pp. 366-388). Boston, MA: South End Press.
Currently pursuing a Master’s in Psychology:Spirituality, Mind, and Body at Teachers College, Columbia University, Megan aims to research and develop effective body-based mental health interventions to mitigate anxiety and depression in adolescents. Megan has been holding space for people in their bodies through massage therapy and yoga for 16 years. Living many years off-the-grid in Alaska and California, she worked closely with bears, salmon, desert tortoises, and humans through her work as a field biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and USGS, and has advocated for Alaska Native self-determination and community health through work with Qawalangin and Yupik communities. She currently lives, gardens, and roams the forests of Bellingham, Washington with her teenage son and their dog Lupine.
