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Earthquake in Mexico and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico Affect FWAF Community Members

Hurricane Irma swept through Florida in early September, covering almost the entire state and leaving damage and destruction to various degrees throughout south, central and north Florida, including the Florida Keys.  Local, state and federal agencies and relief organizations have been working at top capacity ever since the hurricane made landfall in the state, and churches, aid and civic organizations, and individuals wanting to help have been collecting donations and volunteering for disaster relief and response efforts.  

The Farmworker Association of Florida staff have barely been able to come up for air, as we both receive and distribute donations and supplies; assist those impacted by the storm with accessing services; provide assistance and referrals; assess damage to families’ homes and belongings and their housing needs; and glean information daily about the long-term impact to the state’s agricultural production from the untimely onslaught of the storm.  Staff members are compiling information to be able to report on the specific impacts to those in their areas.  

In Homestead, for example, tropical fruit plantations lost a season’s crop as avocados and other tree fruits lay on the ground, stripped from the trees by the hurricane force winds, and okra plants were ‘burned up’ by the storm, both of which will have longer term impacts on farmworkers’ jobs. 

In Pierson, the “Fern Capital of the World,” and an area of majority Hispanic farmworkers who work and make their living in the fern industry, a significant percentage of the fern crop was decimated at what would be peak season going into the holiday harvest time. (Volusia County news article) 

In Immokalee, an estimated over 50 trailers, housing mostly local farmworkers, were seriously damaged or destroyed, leaving families destitute and homeless, some with young children to care for and with uncertainty for their future. (Naples News Article) 

The Fellsmere community was not able to drink local tap water for close to two weeks, and in Apopka, some homes were without power for almost two weeks, meaning loss of food due to no refrigeration and forcing community members to spend money to eat out and to buy gas to get supplies.  

But, as power and water are restored and emergency supplies are distributed, the real issues will be down the road, over the next few months as families struggle to get back on their feet.  Between 70-90% of the state’s citrus crop was destroyed, meaning the loss of jobs for hundreds of farmworkers. (Citrus Industry article).   Damage to nurseries, greenhouses, ferneries, and even some vegetable crops, leaves the future of jobs for farmworkers for the coming season – and even future years – in question.  

For those wanting to know how they can best help FWAF help farmworkers in Florida, the organization has set up a special fund for donations to help farmworkers pay rent and utility bills in the aftermath of the storm and the hard hit taken by Florida agriculture.  The funds will go to the areas and families with the most need, and it will be on-going until things can stabilize for farmworkers in the state.  Anyone wanting to make a donation can do so by logging on to PayPal or by sending a check to the Farmworker Association of Florida, 1264 Apopka Blvd., Apopka, FL 32703 and designated for Hurricane Irma Relief Fund.  

Throughout all our efforts in Florida, we are also grieving for the loss of life and security in our sister countries of Mexico and Puerto Rico.  As much as we welcome contributions to help farmworkers in Florida, for those who are able to, we also support and encourage donations to help relief efforts to help those hardest hit by these devastating disasters.

In conclusion, we celebrate the resiliency of the human spirit, even as we forge ahead in strength, and with humanity and solidarity.

The recent pardon, by President Trump, of former Maricopa County, Arizona Sherriff Joe Arpaio is an affront to the separation of powers exercised by our judiciary and to the Latino community in the United States. Sherriff Arpaio began his campaign of racial profiling Latino immigrants in 2007, using harsh tactics and threats that amounted to a violation of civil and human rights. These abuses ended only when the voters had their say and Arpaio lost his reelection bid last November. Above all, this Presidential pardon is another example of the contempt this administration has for minorities’ human rights. Mr. Arpaio has a long list of violations, including that of unlawfully detaining individuals of minority ethnic background, that were finally addressed by a court ruling, which he subsequently violated and was ruled in contempt of court. This pardon is just another indication of this administration’s willingness to protect acts of racism, in spite of the examples of criminal acts that were perpetrated two weeks ago against counter protestors, by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia. FWAF vigorously condemns this unjustifiable pardon and is confident that, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., the arc of history will “bend toward justice.”

El reciente perdón por el Presidente Trump del ex-alguacil del condado de Maricopa en Arizona, Joe Arpaio, es una afrenta a la separación de poderes ejercidos por nuestro judiciario y a la comunidad latina en los Estados Unidos. El Alguacil Arpaio empezó su campaña de perfilación racial a los inmigrantes latinos en el 2007, usando tácticas duras y amenazas que equivalieron a una violación de derechos civiles y humanos. Estos abusos terminaron sólo cuando los votantes usaron su voz y Arpaio perdió su competencia de reelección el noviembre pasado. Por encima de todo, este perdón presidencial es otro ejemplo del desprecio que esta administración tiene por los derechos humanos de las minorías. El Sr. Arpaio tiene una larga lista de violaciones, incluyendo la de ilegalmente detener a individuos de ascendencia de etnia minoritaria, que finalmente fueron abordados por un fallo jurídico, el cual él subsecuentemente violó y fue encontrado como desacato al tribunal. Este perdón es sólo otra indicación de la disposición de esta administración de proteger actos de racismo, a pesar de los ejemplos de actos criminales que se perpetraron hace dos semanas hacia contra-manifestantes, por grupos supremacistas blancos en Charlottesville, Virginia. La FWAF vigorosamente condena este perdón injustificable y tiene la certeza que, en las palabras de Martin Luther King, Jr., el arco de la historia se “doblará hacia el lado de la justicia.”

Risking deportation, Washington state farmworkers protest dangerous conditions in the fields.

DAVID BACON

AUGUST 9, 2017

By Ted Goldberg
JULY 6, 2017

Advocates for farmworkers on both coasts and labor experts are expressing concern about the two dozen agricultural employees who were hospitalized last month in Salinas and Watsonville in a span of one week after fungicides and insecticides apparently drifted on to the fields where they were working.

Six raspberry pickers working near State Route 152 got sick and were rushed to Watsonville Community Hospital on June 29. A week earlier 18 celery workers were taken to the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System’s emergency room after some of them became ill.

Those cases came less than two months after more than 50 farmworkers were reportedly exposed to a pesticide drift southwest of Bakersfield that made some of them sick.

“Farmworkers in so many ways have become invisible. They put our food on the table, yet their well-being is often below the radar,” said UC Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken, who specializes in labor issues. “To have these kinds of incidents, where they are affected by potentially carcinogenic chemicals in the field, is disturbing.”

More than 1,000 people in California were sickened by pesticide exposure in 2014, the most recent year for which the Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) has such data. That year there were 51 confirmed cases in Santa Cruz County and 39 in Monterey County.

While it’s not uncommon for individual agricultural employees to become ill from chemical exposure, the recent cases involving larger numbers of workers alarmed advocates.

“Anytime a group of people are poisoned, that’s a concern,” said Margaret Reeves, senior scientist at the Oakland-based Pesticide Action Network.

The chemicals that may have gotten workers sick in the Watsonville case were Pristine Fungicide, Rally 40WSP, DiPel-DF and Widespread Max.

Some of those chemicals can interfere with reproductive and endocrine systems and can irritate skin and eyes, according to Reeves.

“Pesticides travel far from where they’re applied in concentrations that can cause people to get sick or even, over a long time, chronically ill permanently,” said Mark Weller, co-director of Californians for Pesticide Reform. “The same kind of thing could have happened near a school.”

“It’s very sad,” said Jeannie Economos, an activist at the Farmworker Association of Florida. “Some of these pesticides can cause long-term health consequences.”

The incidents in Watsonville and Salinas are under investigation by the agricultural commissioners in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

In California, the state’s division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) does not investigate incidents in which farmworkers get sick from chemical releases.

A spokesman for the Department of Pesticide Regulation emphasizes that it’s protocol for county agricultural commissioners, not state regulators, to lead investigations into such cases.

In the Watsonville incident, Santa Cruz County agricultural commissioner Juan Hidalgo, who’s leading that county’s probe, is refusing to release the name of the company under investigation.

Hidalgo said Wednesday that his office is conducting interviews into the incident.

“We hope to conclude interviews late next week, at which point I would be able to release the name of the operation under investigation,” he said.

That lack of disclosure outraged activists and experts.

“That is a key piece of information that one would expect to be able to have access to,” said Reeves of the Pesticide Action Network.

“I was surprised that an investigative agency was not providing the name of the firm,” UC’s Shaiken said. “Transparency is essential in any investigation of this type. Knowing the identity of the company is important.”

“It shows that the growers are on the defensive,” said Economos at the Farmworker Association of Florida.

In Monterey County the agricultural commissioner early on identified Tanimura & Antle as the company it’s investigating in connection with the incident that hospitalized 18 celery workers on June 22.

A spokeswoman for the company said this week that the firm is eager to see the results of the investigation.

“The health and safety of our workers is our primary concern,” said Samantha Cabaluna.

She noted that while 18 workers were hospitalized, not all of them showed symptoms of exposure.

The California Farm Bureau Federation, an industry group that represents farmers and ranchers in almost every county of the state, says it supports “prompt, consistent penalties for incidents in which pesticides are misused in ways that cause public or environmental injury,” according to the organization’s spokesman, Dave Kranz.

“Our organization also supports continuing education of pest control advisers and applicators in the safe and effective use of pesticides. Applicators and field employees currently undergo training on an annual basis,” Kranz said.

Courtesy of KQED and Ted Goldberg: Original post can be found here.

Twenty years of work by farmworker organizations and farmworker advocates around the country, including the Farmworker Association of Florida, are under attack by the new administration at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the recent Executive Order to “reduce regulatory burden.”  Successes for farmworker health and safety achieved under the Obama Administration are being undermined, putting farmworkers at increased risk of exposure to known toxic chemical pesticides.  We will not quietly accept these roll-backs, when we know the devastating consequences that exposure to pesticides has on farmworkers and their families.  

WPS – Twenty years of work under threat and needless delay! In 2015, twenty years after the first regulatory reforms to give farmworkers specific rights to protection from pesticide exposure, the Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS) was updated and greatly improved by the EPA to include important new protective provisions, including mandated annual trainings with expanded content and a minimum age of 18 for handling agricultural pesticides.  Sadly, putting the urging of industry and state agricultural agencies over science and public health, EPA issued a memo on May 22nd approving a delay of the new, more protective WPS provisions, even though there had been an exhaustive public comment period in 2015, and EPA officials themselves had previously acknowledged the need for and importance of these new regulations.   The impact of this cannot be overstated.  Every day, farmworkers risk their health to grow and harvest the food the rest of us eat.  They deserve the regulations that can help protect their and their children’s health, not a rollback of two decades of work.  Regulations are not a “regulatory burden” but a way to keep farmworkers safe.

CPA – Forty years too long; no need for further delays!  The Certified Pesticide Applicator (CPA) rule has not been updated in close to 40 years.  Yet, in a process started under the previous administration, the regulations that govern the training and certification of pesticide applicators of Restricted Use (the most toxic) Pesticides or RUPs went through the formal comment and review process, resulting in a new rule adopted in January 2017.  The new rule would standardize training and certification across different states, and ensure a more well-informed and trained pesticide applicator workforce. This would translate into better protections for farmworkers, rural and residential communities, our water and our environment.   In an unprecedented move, the EPA reversed course, announced three delays to the implementation of the new rule, with this last announcement delaying the rule for over one year.  The public had a mere five days! to make comment on the delay.  The rule has a 3-year phase in period to allow all states the time to comply, making any delay entirely unnecessary. For more information read.

PRIA – A program rollback undermines collaboration.  The Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA) is a program, begun in 2003, that forged collaboration between industry, farmworkers and advocates to direct industry fees to fund programs that protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure.  That collaboration between unlikely partners is now under threat of collapse, thanks to moves by the new Administration to slash the budget of the EPA Office of Pesticide Programs.  Funds to oversee, implement and enforce the other regulations that protect farmworkers could be drastically cut, leaving the responsibility to the states, many of which do not have sufficient resources to implement these programs.  This threatens the health and well-being of farmworkers, in addition to our public health system, our food and our environment.   The U.S. Senate must reauthorize PRIA for the sake of everyone in the nation.

Chlorpyrifos – The science is clear; chlorpyrifos harms children! Though it was banned for residential use in 2001 because of its known neurodevelopmental effects on children, chlorpyrifos has still been permitted for use in agriculture, where farmworkers and their children have been exposed for decades and even generations to this toxic pesticide.  The science is clear – chlorpyrifos, commonly known as Dursban and Lorsban – can cause learning disabilities, ADHD, motor skills deficits among other things in children exposed in utero and/or to residues of the pesticide.  At long last, EPA in 2016 agreed that the science was overwhelming and agreed to ban all food uses of the pesticide.  While this decision was focused on protecting the public from consumption of the chemical on fruits and vegetables, farmworkers harvesting the produce would have been beneficiaries of the new rule.  In a move that contradicts the mountain of scientific evidence of its dangers, the new EPA Administrator has reversed course, ignoring the science and public outcry, electing instead to continue the contamination of our food, and the threats to farmworker and farmworker children’s health. For more information on Chlorpyifos read this and this.

In the face of these four outrages, the Farmworker Association of Florida will push back against these decisions that are harmful to the men and women and families who feed our nation. 

 
We will be calling on all our supporters to stand with us and many, many others to send a strong message that these decisions are totally unacceptable to the American public.  We can do it!  Yes, we can!  Sí, Se Puede!