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Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain w/ Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern & Teresa M. Mares
2 Plays3 minutes ago
The reach and impact of our food systems – that is, the complex, interconnected, and globalized web of institutions, resources, and processes that bring food from the farm, to the table, and into the waste stream – is universal: every single one of us has either worked in ourselves, or known people who work growing, raising, producing, processing, packing, transporting, preparing, or serving the food we all eat.
In the food we consume, we become connected to the conditions, the labor, and the people of the food system that produces it. Fully 1 in 10 American workers, over 17 million people, work in paid frontline food system jobs. And millions more work at home to plan, shop, prepare, and in many households, grow the food their children and families eat.
There are massive implications for schools as well, as they participate in the food system directly to bring literally billions of meals to children each year, and as labor in the food system impacts the families, children, and communities our schools serve.
My guests today are Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares, associate professors and co-authors of Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain, available from University of California Press in September. Their book captures the grim realities faced by food workers alongside the opportunities for solidarity at every point in the system while amplifying the successes and challenges faced by movements to make food work, good work.
“As long as people are suffering to get food to our plates,” they write, “we need to center food workers in any vision for a just food system.”
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Transcript
The Unseen Value of Essential Work
00:00:00
Speaker
So I think the idea is, is that, you know, it's not just food work, but it's also childcare, right? That there's, there's this essential work that happens. Reproductive labor is, is a way that we often describe it, but that that work, you know, rearing children, creating children, making sure everything that's done, that that, that is vital. And that if that's compensated, if that's recognized, there would be a bit more of an equal playing field, i think.
Host Introduction and Engagement
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Human Restoration Project Podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are John O'Brien, Jennifer Mann, and Julia Valenti.
00:00:45
Speaker
Thank you so much for your ongoing support. We're proud to have hosted hundreds of hours of incredible ad-free conversations over the years. If you haven't yet, consider liking and leaving a review in your podcast app to help us reach more listeners.
00:00:59
Speaker
And of course, you can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, and connect with us everywhere on social media.
Exploitation in Food Systems
00:01:11
Speaker
The reach and impact of our food systems, that is the complex, interconnected and globalized web of institutions, resources and processes that bring food from the farm to the table and into the waste stream is universal.
00:01:25
Speaker
Every single one of us has either worked in ourselves or known people who work growing, raising, producing, processing, packing, transporting, preparing or serving the food we all eat.
00:01:38
Speaker
In the food we consume, we become connected to the conditions, the labor, and the people of the food system that produces it. Fully 1 in 10 American workers, over 17 million people, work in paid frontline food system jobs.
00:01:53
Speaker
And millions more work at home to plan, shop, prepare, and in many households, grow the food their children and families eat. Our access to cheap food comes at a cost.
00:02:06
Speaker
It's not enough to individualize solutions by eating organic, avoiding processed food, or growing your own. And if the reach of our food system is universal, so too are policies, practices, and work conditions that disproportionately exploit marginalized and vulnerable groups.
00:02:23
Speaker
Migrant farm workers who are excluded from the protection of federal labor laws. Children as young as 13 cleaning band saws and head splitters on the kill floor of an Iowa meat processing plant.
00:02:35
Speaker
food delivery drivers without cars in New York City who suffered the highest rates of work-related deaths, higher even than construction workers. Or tipped food service workers making $2.13 an hour, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers, which has not changed in 34 years, and who face sexual harassment and racist insults daily.
00:02:57
Speaker
Or our institutional food service workers in school cafeterias, 94% of whom are women who reported to work during the COVID pandemic to make school lunches for kids who were learning at home.
Meet the Authors: Laura Ann Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares
00:03:11
Speaker
So there are massive implications for schools as well, as they participate in the food system directly to bring literally billions of meals to children each year. And as the labor in food systems impacts the families, children, and communities our schools serve.
00:03:28
Speaker
My guests today are Laura Ann Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares, associate professors and co-authors of Will Work for Food? Labor Across the Food Chain, available from University of California Press.
00:03:42
Speaker
Their book captures the grim realities faced by food workers alongside the opportunities for solidarity at every point in the system, while amplifying the successes and challenges faced by movements to make food work good work.
00:03:57
Speaker
As long as people are suffering to get food to our plates, they write, we need to center food workers in any vision for a just food system. Laura Ann and Teresa, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:04:10
Speaker
It's really nice to be here and also really exciting to see that the first physical copy of this book on on camera. So my name is Teresa Marys and I'm an anthropologist, um associate professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont and also affiliated faculty with the Food Systems Graduate Program here.
00:04:28
Speaker
and I'm a cultural anthropologist. I've done work on food and immigration for the past 20 years or so and have increasingly started focusing on labor and the food system for about the last decade.
00:04:41
Speaker
And I'm Laura Ann Minkoff-Zern. I'm ah calling from Syracuse, New York, where I'm an associate professor of geography and have been a professor of food studies for the past 10 years in our small food studies program that's recently been going away. So I'm moving to geography full time. um I'm trained in geography, so I'm a human geographer and I've done work with farm workers for the past two decades in California, across the country through to New York where I live today.
00:05:11
Speaker
And in the past you know four years with Teresa have brought in into looking at the food system um and labor across the food system more broadly. What I found remarkable about the book is just how comprehensive it is in the in the scope. As I mentioned in the introduction, it walks the path of labor and food systems from farm to table to waste while making all of it incredibly accessible and urgent.
00:05:34
Speaker
And what it covers, I found... infuriating, shocking, distressing, and optimistic all at the same time. So I wonder what for you is the story that brings together each of these different parts of the system?
Teaching Food Justice Beyond Farming
00:05:45
Speaker
And you spoke to it a bit in your introductions, but what are those experiences and and interests that led you both to partner in investigation of this this breadth?
00:05:55
Speaker
Thanks for that question um and for reading the book. um But i think you know for both Teresa and i partially we come to this as educators ourselves, as professors and teachers in both of our programs where we kind of look at food systems and work with food system students.
00:06:13
Speaker
we found that they're really interested in food justice. They didn't always incorporate labor into that analysis. And if they did, it was really kind of focused on the farm. Like so many people think food labor is just on the farm. So we both were already teaching courses on labor across the food system at our respective universities and realizing, you know, not only ah are there not a lot of people teaching about this as labor as a food systems issue, like you're saying from the field through the waste stream,
00:06:40
Speaker
um But there wasn't really a text or a book that was helping us conceive of these sectors as connected. So, you know, being able to create our own text for teaching, but also something that would do that for advocates, for academics and and bringing together our expertise in food systems thinking and our you know particular you know ethnographic work that we've both done um with workers in the food system.
00:07:05
Speaker
you know In addition to that, one of the fun conversations that we've had throughout the book and something that we realized kind of later on is how much of our understanding of the food system, of course, is informed by the research that we've done. And Laura and and I have kind of circulated each other for many, many years before we even met for the first time. but While we were writing this, we both also realized that drawing upon our own work in the food system was a really important piece of this.
00:07:33
Speaker
I have spent many, many years working in the food system from the time that my parents owned an ice cream store to you know putting my way through graduate school as a barista in Seattle. Laura Ann has been a server in the past. And so those experiences and being able to relate that um set of experiences with our students also really informed a lot of our thinking here.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, I found that methodology really interesting and impactful. the The ethnographic blend of those personal stories and narratives alongside the the research statistics to really drive the point home that there are human beings behind the statistics about unionization and numbers and percentages.
00:08:17
Speaker
And those experiences are very real. And I wonder, just given the scope of the book, there are so many stories and so many statistics.
Recognizing Gendered Labor at Home
00:08:25
Speaker
Were there ones that stood out to either of you in your research and then the writing that still stick with you today as it heads to publication?
00:08:32
Speaker
I think for me, it was less about specific stories, but it was about the the need to look at both paid work and unpaid work. You know, the work that happens outside of the home, you know, in restaurants and as well as the work inside the home that's often really gendered. So I think this idea of, you know, looking at both forms of labor and how both forms are really invisible, um underpaid or unpaid, and really essential, was really informative to me. I kind of went down a rabbit hole around the wages for housework movement and thinking about how that might be a source of inspiration for some of our organizing work today. But it wasn't really so much a specific story, but about that that connection point between those two kinds of work.
00:09:18
Speaker
I agree with Teresa that it came down to us kind of finding these these places in the research where we individually focused. and and really for me, sectors I was learning about depth for the first time while researching this
Retail Concentration's Impact on Food System
00:09:31
Speaker
book. So we did each chapter, we try and have a cohesive voice, but really each chapter one of us took the lead on for the most part.
00:09:38
Speaker
um And I took the lead on the retail chapter, which was not my field of expertise. And I think learning for me about historic, but then historic but then today very much increased concentration in the retail market and how that's impacted workers and consumers both um was really a powerful narrative for thinking about the food system as a whole.
00:10:01
Speaker
um i think we think about concentration of a lot of other sectors like, you know, we think of mega farms and CAFOs and we think of you know chain restaurants.
00:10:12
Speaker
But oftentimes the retail concentration I think is not as obvious because we we see so many chains and don't realize that they're owned by so few companies and that that's really intensified, particularly since the nineteen ninety s um And what we've seen is just, you know, control over our retail food consumption, but also then how that's pushed on workers to follow, you know, not only um in the workplace, like really streamlined working conditions, but the lack of ability to organize and unionize in a historically unionized sector. So I think
00:10:47
Speaker
the change in retail has been really dramatic in the past several decades. And it's something that I don't think we know enough about or we're not talking about in some of the other you know so some of the other sectors.
The Wages for Housework Movement
00:11:00
Speaker
and there are certainly some of the more headline-making movements that, you know, I've heard about Starbucks unionizing and ah Amazon unionization efforts. The Fight for 15, I recall, was popular, or I guess was making headlines ah maybe a decade ago. I feel like it's kind of fallen out of the headlines now, despite it still being a tremendous issue.
00:11:19
Speaker
And one thing that I found throughout reading the book is that it, like, confirmed a lot of the hunches that I had about these extreme disparities and the disproportionalities that we have about work in the food system. But I want to follow up, Teresa, with a movement that you had mentioned in your last response about wages for housework, which I think is not on a lot of people's radar. It's not a headline grabbing fight in the same way that, you know, the big corporations that Laura Ann is speaking to.
00:11:47
Speaker
For listeners who may not be familiar with wages for housework, can you introduce that and and talk about its movement and its goals? Yeah. So I think it's, you know, it's a movement that we saw kind of stemming out of second wave feminism and a movement of largely white feminists who were, you know, looking for economic opportunities outside of the home and really seeing work as this really empowering form of economic opportunity. Whereas, you know, for so many women of color who didn't have a choice to stay home, right? But we're forced to work either for other families or outside the home.
00:12:22
Speaker
So I think this idea of wages for housework, you know, it was inspired by that second wave of feminism and argued given how essential that work is to the maintenance of society and, you know, creating more workers and creating more opportunities, you know, for social advancement, that that work should be paid.
00:12:42
Speaker
And how exactly that would happen and who would pay that, I think, is, you know, a big, important set of logistical questions. But I think the idea of that movement was that that work is valuable, it's essential, it's meaningful, and it should be compensated in some form. You know, I think we see iterations of that in these arguments for a universal basic income or, you know, something that would be um more regularized. But, you know, where that movement was really gaining traction was outside of the United States, not so much within the United States, in environments that had different kinds of social supports.
00:13:17
Speaker
So it would be a lot more radical, I think, for us than it would in in other political economic arrangements. But I do think that the the argument that it makes, which is that the gendered work that happens within the home, you know, should be valued and it should be you know, socially recognized. Of course, organizing um work within the home and workers within the home is a very different prospect than organizing Starbucks workers or, you know, people who are a bit more easily ah centralized, I guess.
00:13:49
Speaker
I feel like I could do a whole episode just about um the wages for housework because I think it is such an underrepresented field in ah certainly my exposure to like labor studies.
00:14:02
Speaker
I am very curious, though. We don't have to get into the political viability of any potential solutions, but in that coalition, are there what are like the the chief ideas of how this could proceed, um whether those are international solutions in different contexts or what those could look like in the United States?
Valuing Reproductive Labor
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, so i think the idea is is that, you know, it's not just food work, but it's also childcare, right? That there's there is this essential work that happens. Reproductive labor is is a way that we often describe it, but that that work, you know, rearing children, creating children, making sure everything that's done, that that that is vital and that if that's compensated, if that's recognized, there would be a bit more of an equal playing field, I think.
00:14:49
Speaker
Perhaps plugging into then the notion that you had just mentioned and that you go into a lot of depth in that chapter, in particular in the book about a productive versus reproductive work.
00:15:00
Speaker
As a white guy in his late 30s, I think of David Graeber and what he says about, you know, the the mug or the cup is only produced once, but it's washed, you know, hundreds of times. And how we value that labor and that work really ah makes a big difference.
00:15:16
Speaker
Maybe this is a good time to plug schools into
COVID's Impact on School Food Systems
00:15:19
Speaker
the food system. um As I had been talking to you before we hit record, we had Jennifer Gattis on back in 2019 to talk about her book, The Labor of Lunch, Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in America's Public Schools.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that is all over Will Work for Food, your book there too. And I'll link everything in the show notes for people to find too. And a lot of people don't know this, but reform food systems is also a core value of our mission at Human Restoration Project because it intersects so much with parents, caregivers, children, schools, community, all of it. And I found it that intersectional analysis of school workers really fascinating, plugging it into that productive and reproductive um labor paradigm.
00:16:02
Speaker
Could you tell us what you found when you examined school food work in this, let's call it the quote unquote post-COVID era? Yeah, I mean, when we saw that question, we were going to say, you know, Jennifer Gattis is really the expert on this topic, because I don't think we can even touch the type of in-depth work that she's done on this.
00:16:21
Speaker
But I think to your point, the strength of our work is like, we bring it into conversation with other sectors of the food system. And in particular, in this, you know, post-COVID era, not, I don't think it's shocking to say what we've seen is care work has increased.
00:16:36
Speaker
We started this book as a COVID project. So, you know, i think some context for how we were thinking about this is when ethnographic work shut down, we couldn't go talk to people in the field.
00:16:47
Speaker
Teresa and i who were both, you know, home with our kids out of school, we're like, we should write a book. And so while managing like our own, you know, care work responsibilities, we sat down to start thinking about this. And all of a sudden there was an explosion of awareness around care work, it seemed. And we were actually quite hopeful, I think, in starting the book.
00:17:07
Speaker
People are talking about this, you know, supply, um you know, the food chain and supply chain. People were talking about care work that parents were doing at home because it was on Zoom. It was happening in front of us. People were seeing the ways that teachers were actually feeding kids and that all of a sudden when school shut down,
00:17:23
Speaker
that, you know school lunch program shut down and school breakfast, and then you had teachers going in just to feed kids, right, and then teaching on Zoom. So I think it all became very visible for a short period of time. And, you know, the the tone of this book actually shifted over the four or five years that we've had, you know, in this kind of post-COVID world.
00:17:44
Speaker
You know, and sadly, I'd say there was a lot of disappointment for many people organizing around these issues, both for gender equity, for care work, for you know unionization, for wages, where there was an awareness, right? Things like hero pay going up, um but then a real letdown, right? In terms of what were the long-term impacts of this, um except for maybe some very small groups of of privileged people.
00:18:08
Speaker
you know So i don't I don't think, and again, you know talking to people in the schools, which we're not in doing this work, But I think that emotional labor has really increased, especially as, you know, and this is a little bit off topic, but like mental health issues in the schools. But this relates to the care work people do in the cafeterias. Right. And and it all overlaps with how to make kids feel safe or how to keep kids healthy, you know, and and that work has increased without wages increasing. Right. And we're we're currently in a moment of seeing nutrition programs being cut potentially extremely dramatically.
00:18:45
Speaker
So I don't think we can say there's been ah material impact of that that newfound appreciation, which is not great news, right? It's a longer term battle. And you know awareness is is a good step, but we need to keep keep organizing around these issues.
Improving Labor Standards in Food Chains
00:19:02
Speaker
um And then I'd add kind of you know one positive thing that I think you know we that we've seen in our work is that there are some strategies, you know things like good food purchasing policies, which is it's ah set of kind of programs that have been enacted.
00:19:18
Speaker
um across the country, starting in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles School District and growing power among not just schools, but um you know state institutions. So city governments and hospitals and places that get you know state funding or city funding to agree to kind of certain labor standards across their food chain.
00:19:42
Speaker
And in that way, you know, we've actually seen where school food workers have, you know, been in solidarity with um the Teamsters union, the the truckers that are bringing food to their school um and saying, right, if you're not holding there you their union contract accountable, like we're going to do something about it too. So I think while that work has increased, we've seen some awareness of kind of where solidarities can be had across the food chain. And and some of that has started in schools.
00:20:11
Speaker
Getting back to that COVID piece that, you know as Laura Ann has explained, you know this project was written over countless Zoom sessions. like I've seen Laura Ann more than my family in some ways um as we're working on this book. And and the way that research you know has been impacted by COVID is really interesting. Other topic. but you know, I think that the ways that this book has, you know, been rewritten um over the past few years that we started it, you know, when these conversations of essential work were really, were really loud and, you know, saw this, again, kind of a hopeful moment where organizing and, you know, the the increase in unionization was kind of at ah at a peak, you know, and then tracing that um into sort of the
00:21:00
Speaker
the failed promise, I guess, of some of that, that peak in organizing has been an interesting kind of parallel process to the writing. And, you know, as we've been rewriting and as we've been responding to reviewers' comments and, you know, even in the final version, it's it's kind of an unfolding story and any book, you know, has a longer story than we have time to tell it. But,
00:21:20
Speaker
Certainly, I think, you know, as we look at the current federal landscape, as we look at the ways that immigration issues are unfolding in some really ugly and violent ways, um you know, all of this is connected and in many ways with our food system and and the institutions that are feeding us.
00:21:42
Speaker
I'm so glad you followed up on that because I was going to ask, you know, it it seemed like that language of essential worker entered the vernacular and then left just as quickly.
00:21:54
Speaker
ah And so I was wondering if there was any, you know, lasting um change as a result of it. and It sounds Laura Ann is mentioning awareness and perhaps some union um wins in some sectors, but it sort of seems just like a lot of things with COVID when we thought we were, when we were over it and and done and have washed our hands of it, both the memory and the, you know, all of its consequences, we kind of seem to have forgotten the lessons learned um from our push to essentialize a sector of the labor force. And now they become unessential once again.
00:22:30
Speaker
Well, and I think that term essentials are really it's kind of multiple meanings. Right. And that there there were ways that essential drew attention and drew visibility. But, you know, I always am kind of struck by the it was some refrain during the pandemic that, you know, we're not essential workers, we're sacrificial workers. And because workers were so essential to the food supply,
00:22:52
Speaker
You know, as we talk about in the book and, you know, a lot of other research has documented that, you know, COVID and all of the dangers that it presented for one's health, that was disproportionately borne by food workers. And so, you know, when we had these orders to keep meatpacking facilities running as part of the nation's critical infrastructure, right, that that being essential also meant that you were exposed to the virus and were not protected as those of us who were really fortunate to be able to work from home were.
00:23:22
Speaker
I also, going through the book, couldn't help but think of like a recent emphasis in in our work with schools on college and career readiness. The state of Ohio, for example, has renamed their Department of Education to include and the workforce, which is a remarkable blending of these two things to make...
00:23:41
Speaker
what was sort of implicit before, really explicit in the mission of education. And to speak to what you just mentioned, Teresa, about the meat processing plants, we're an Iowa-based nonprofit.
00:23:52
Speaker
Iowa meat packing and processing comes up a lot in your book and not in very positive ways, um especially as it relates to um Iowa rolling back some child labor laws and its treatment of workers.
00:24:06
Speaker
Are there any broader implications then for food systems and food labor for school systems and the project of public education. I think of the kids working in factories and fields, families.
00:24:19
Speaker
How else do you see the connectivity there to missions and systems? So we've talked a little bit about the good food purchasing programs and you know what we've seen in some of the a LA County schools as as a model for other institutional buyers. And I think that you know, the food system responds to large scale purchasing, right? If we look at um the successes of campaigns like um the Fair Food Program of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
00:24:48
Speaker
um If we look at the you know my more localized response, or more localized example of the Milk with Dignity Program and Ben & Jerry's as a large buyer of milk, I think that because schools are large purchasers, right we buy a lot of things from schools in bulk and with contracts and with continuity and with predictability,
00:25:11
Speaker
I think that that's a really important leverage point that we might you know think about more specifically. And I think that we see in the in the case of Jennifer Gaddis' work, this is highlighted that because schools purchase, right they can they can put conditions on companies about the products that they're buying and We've seen, you know, here in Vermont, we've seen ah really concentrated effort on local purchasing in our state. In general, it's a tiny state. We don't have a ton of people to feed. So, you know, maybe it's a good place to start. But, you know, if we have these um requirements for, you know, food needs to be local or it needs to be locally sourced or locally processed, I think the next step is that it's produced through dignified means. Right. And I think that there's ways that schools can be really active players in
00:26:01
Speaker
improving labor standards by putting those kinds of conditions on, you know, of course that and a natural next argument will be like, well, that's going to be more expensive. Right. And yes, it could be, but we can also think about how, you know, that brings with it really important benefits for, you know, broader, broader social standing of people who then may have more money to spend. Right. I think that there's some really important economic systems questions that,
00:26:30
Speaker
that are begged by that kind of purchasing movement. you know In addition to the Good Food Purchasing Program, which is basically a nonprofit that organizes these types of contracts across the country. So they started in l LA, but they're also present in Pittsburgh, I believe in Boston, in Chicago.
00:26:49
Speaker
you know, within schools and other institutions. And they've been really successful because they include, i believe it's five different kind of prongs, including things like sustainability that are more common in a food chain kind of agreement.
00:27:04
Speaker
But then they say labor has to be included. And in some other research I've done outside the book, we talked to the people that organized these these programs and you know saying, yeah, labor is where we get the most pushback on these contracts. But we say, if you want to be part of the good food purchasing program, labor is has to be included. And so if you want to put that stamp on you know saying your city does good food purchasing, you know you have to look at the labor chain and it creates...
00:27:31
Speaker
you know, kind of ah certain level of transparency, like Teresa was saying, like the coalition of Immokalee workers model. And I think similar to our book to say, you have to look at all these elements and it's a food chain analysis, right? It can't just be farm workers. It also has to be processors. It also has to be truckers.
00:27:49
Speaker
And yes, we care about the service workers in the schools as well, right? That you can't leave anyone out. I think there's a lot of potential in that. And then the other programs I'd highlight are the real food,
00:28:00
Speaker
challenge it that happens. I think that's largely at you know at the university level, um but that's an opportunity for students that want to get active in these types of purchasing. you know again like Teresa said, kind of recognizing the power of institutional buying as compared to like our individual purchasing power, which is pretty minimal.
00:28:19
Speaker
But especially in you know a small city like I am, like Syracuse, where the university is one of the largest institutions in entire region, um And the university has a lot of power. And so when students go up to administrators and say, we want to be part of the real food challenge and that they can advertise that to incoming students, that their university is agreeing to these different types of standards for food, that there's there's a lot more power in that than, you know, individually trying to figure out how to afford, you know, fair trade certified items that are pretty minimal in option anyways.
00:28:53
Speaker
I love that there are some concrete actions that like school leaders, K through university, can take to try to leverage their institutional ah you know power that they have over these. I mean, they're spending big dollar amounts, huge consumers of all of that. So to be able to kind of throw their weight behind ah ethical labor standards, ethical production is excellent. so So I'll i'll just ah highlight that for any school leaders listening, the good food purchasing and the real food challenge, the latter of which also just sounds like a great opportunity for students to get involved and organized. It could be a good issues organizing thing for um students on campus as well.
00:29:31
Speaker
Sort of the last educational part, and it really deals with that issue of solidarity that I was thinking about in this conversation. mean, you're both professors, your educators working in systems of higher education.
00:29:43
Speaker
and while education is vastly different work, you know, qualitatively than what you're writing about in the book, in the food system, I couldn't help but find those analogies to the labor of education. Again, K through college through the lens of those neoliberal forces you described privatization, de-skilling McDonaldization seems to have have hit every institution.
00:30:09
Speaker
It's similarly gendered, I think, and racialized in a lot of different contexts as, you know, predominantly male administrators oversee a largely female teaching workforce, schools where there's, you know, a largely white staff um of overseeing a largely non-white student body. And a challenge that I found when I was a local ah teacher union president for some time was building coalitions amongst, you know, these big a huge range of professions and backgrounds and things from ah parents who might be, you know, executives to other peoples whose families were striking John Deere workers down the street.
00:30:47
Speaker
So I wonder, is there an opportunity for coalition building and solidarity between teachers, schools, communities, and families in the recognition of these common systemic problems? or what I sort of grapple with is like, does that diminish, you know, the real,
00:31:03
Speaker
and different and disparate outcomes on vulnerable and marginalized groups to say like, hey, we as educators are hurt by this too. Oh my gosh, there's so many questions in there. um And I think they're really important ones. I think, you know, you've given us an idea for our next book, looking at labor within schools specifically. Um,
00:31:23
Speaker
That would be a really fun project. I think that, you know, the this is where systems thinking comes in, right? And i I'm part of a food systems program. And, you know, thinking about these leverage points that we have, you know, ranging from these, you know, independent individual consumption choices, which you know, have meaning, but don't necessarily have long term or broad impact, you know, all the way to more systems changes, right, that, that may actually ask us to think fundamentally differently about what education should do, what food systems should do, right? I think that that's where you see these potential connections and the role that schools can play, you know, and all of the different individuals and stakeholders that are involved in schools,
00:32:12
Speaker
you know I think food is one entry point for thinking about that. And I think that food opens up a lot of questions. But I think you're exactly right. These these system changes, right? Deregulation and neoliberalization. These have really big impacts on all kinds of systems and understanding how that works and understanding what can undo it or throw a wrench into it, I think is really is really exciting.
00:32:38
Speaker
for me as ah as a person who thinks about that. But it's, you know, this coalition building is, it necessarily has to be attuned to what um the community looks like, right? and And the conditions on the ground and the histories and the legacies that are there. And so I think schools are really powerful place to start.
00:33:00
Speaker
But I think you're pointing to something really important that necessarily you're going to have competing interests um and how are you acknowledge those competing interests, but then understand that common ground, I think is really, it's part it's the challenge that I see.
00:33:15
Speaker
Well, that was a great answer from Teresa, but I guess I'd add on something small, don't know if it's small, but something we talk about in the book, and I think this is relevant to schools as much as anywhere else, but you know workers are consumers and consumers are workers.
00:33:30
Speaker
And you know something that we make the argument for, in particular in the food system, we hear so much about consumers, right? I mean, even when I say food studies, people think I'm gonna tell them what to eat, right? That's people identify as a consumer in the food system.
00:33:45
Speaker
Something we saw when we started teaching classes on food and labor is we'd say, you know, both Teresa and I had the experience of saying, who here has ever worked in the food system? And people might not raise their hand. And then you might say, did anyone have a summer job scooping ice cream? Has anyone volunteered at you know, a gleaning project? Like you start giving them examples.
00:34:06
Speaker
And then almost everyone in the room, at least in my experience, is like, oh, I have worked in the food system, but they they don't identify as a food worker. And I think one way to build those solidarities is, you know, for me and my teaching by the end of the semester, I hope that everyone realizes that, you know, most of them have worked in the food system. They I have them do things like, you know, they they shadow or go and do an ethnographic kind of experience with the food worker. And that can be on campus.
00:34:30
Speaker
That's oftentimes what they do because it's easier. um So they go and, you know maybe work um with a work study student. um or observe a work study student in the school lunchroom, right?
00:34:42
Speaker
Or they go alongside someone doing the Food Recovery Network, you know, volunteer work in the waste system. And they realize that they are really not very, even if they don't currently have a job in the food system, they're not very far removed right from those people.
00:34:56
Speaker
Easy to think, okay, you know, the immigrant farm worker that I've never seen has nothing in common with me. But I think most students are not very far removed from someone in the food system.
00:35:08
Speaker
Not to say we don't have farm workers and and kids children of farm workers in our food systems too. But um i think helping people find that commonality um and seeing also the vast number of people that work in the food system.
00:35:20
Speaker
So really, I think an argument of the book is helping us see the ways that people working across different sectors are really all food workers, right? And if we see people in different sectors as food workers, as as one kind of large food system sector,
00:35:35
Speaker
um Not only do we have kind of the massive numbers like Joanne Lowe, who was the founder of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, alliance has made that argument, um but we also have a ah broader net for kind of thinking about solidarity.
00:35:47
Speaker
um So I think there's a lot of positives in having a food systems analysis for for organizing too. I appreciate both of you maybe stepping out of your comfort zone to comments on the education connections in that, ah just because, of course, that's in trying to blend the two perspectives here, you know, between the educational and the the labor with the ah pedagogical and the systems focus.
Humanizing Farm Labor Through Social Media
00:36:13
Speaker
I appreciate you both um going on that experiment with me here.
00:36:17
Speaker
Maybe to bring it back to the labor happening in farm fields, particularly in California, I follow the United Farm Workers on social media, and I so appreciate how they have really done an intentional effort to humanize and showcase the often hidden labor that happens there.
00:36:36
Speaker
um I just pulled up their their page. Here's a post from three days ago. Raul, you know, a pseudonym, shares, I've been an irrigator for five years. This day I began at 5 a.m. and worked for 10 hours.
00:36:48
Speaker
We connected 2,500 pipes to irrigate lettuce plants. We cleaned the ground, removed stones and plastic in order to connect the irrigation pipes. Hashtag we feed you. Another post reads affectionate nicknames are commonly used in all work teams.
00:37:03
Speaker
This bucket, I think it reads Pero, belongs to an onion harvesting worker who is paid a piece rate per bucket to harvest onions. The onions you'll slice for your July 4th barbecue. Hashtag we feed you.
00:37:16
Speaker
But their most recent campaign is one that's darker and more striking. It reads, they feed us, Border Patrol is hunting them, donate to help fight back. And I was struck in the last month or so of you know those images of Border Patrol and ICE raids on ah these California farm fields.
00:37:36
Speaker
And I'm wondering, too, if you felt that in the context of your book, between hitting submit on that final draft and its publication, are there any major or interesting developments that you'd add if you had the opportunity would, you know, the recent immigration ah ramping up play a more salient role in it, for example?
00:37:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think that that's, that's kind of this piece that like we could, we could write a whole other book starting now about what's happening with immigration policies and nutrition policies and all of the things that in my mind are,
00:38:14
Speaker
are so backward in their approach and motivation and intended outcomes that, you know, here in Vermont, we have seen some of the first rates on dairy farms, um you know, up in the northern part of our state and with the current administration's kind of unpredictable, like, no, we're not going to go for farm workers. And yes, we are going to go for farm workers. And no, we're not going for restaurant workers. And, you know, all of this is creating this intense climate of fear that is deeply unjust and is, it's a human rights issue. It's not just an economic issue, right? We're looking at very violent, dehumanizing things happening.
00:38:54
Speaker
And there are, of course, these systems outcomes. You know, we're looking at a future where the predictability of our food supply is very precarious. We're looking at, you know, farmer livelihoods becoming more precarious because of the the attacks on labor and the attacks on food workers. So yeah, I think that one of the things that we're currently up against is I think all of the things that we write about in this book are, you know, worker rights and climate issues and gender issues and immigration. All of these things are in a very, a very scary place of my opinion.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think Teresa summed it up pretty well. You know, I think i you we were looking at your question of like, is there anything from the draft to the final publication? I think it's just an ongoing story. I don't think there's some pithy soundbite that we can put out right now, except to say that, you know, things are not going in the right direction. And I think you see from exactly this flip-flopping on who are we really, um who is immigration enforcing really going to impact?
00:40:05
Speaker
Nobody really knows. you know, and I think this is actually not a new story. It's just really intensified in its overtness. But the reality is that politicians understand that immigrants feed us, right? That they've always been essential workers or sacrificial workers.
00:40:21
Speaker
That's not a new story. And, you know, if we, if if there was truly ah politics in this country of some type of immigration system that was going to be enforced across the board, right? Whether Whatever you think about that, we've never seen that because we are so dependent upon immigrants for our food's work, right? From And it's not just farm workers, but it's in the Iowa beef packing. It's in transportation. It's in, you know, dishwashing. It's in waste work. It's in all the hard jobs, right, that are underpaid and undervalued. And so this kind of saying one thing and doing another, there's nothing new about that. They're just, I think the current administration is just getting caught, right, in that narrative. And I think, you know, where is that going to go
00:41:09
Speaker
To Teresa's point, and I think we've been saying this for a while, it's about creating a culture of fear. I think that, In reality, people in power know we need those workers. um So I don't think they're just going to get rid of all the farm workers or all the people working in restaurants because of the the fallout from that. But they're trying to right now say both things.
00:41:30
Speaker
And that really does is just hurt workers um in a way that's inconscionable. And, you know, it makes people feel afraid to both go to work but really afraid to do anything. So it's neither do I think that all of a sudden they're going to deport all the farm workers, nor do I think that they're going that we're going to somehow accept them um you know working in in our communities and living in our communities anytime soon. So it's really, yeah, we just have to keep aware and and alert and organizing around these issues and
00:42:04
Speaker
and growing grow awareness around the importance of immigrants, not just to the labor that they do, but what they contribute to our communities beyond their work.
00:42:16
Speaker
I mean, I would hope that conscientious readers will be able to make those analogies, ah you know, from the systems that you're setting up here to current events. And I would just, again, shine a big light on the fact that people, for example, I think of the Postville raid in Iowa um almost 20 years ago now that impacted, I think, I think 400 some ah workers at at the a meatpacking plant in Postville were arrested, and that's a small town. um ah ah A lot of the ah families there were immigrants. And so the the impact that raids and and arrests and deportations and things have on communities and then have through schools too can't be overstated. All of these issues that happen um out in farm fields and the processing plant, the transportation dock, you know,
00:43:05
Speaker
in the school cafeteria as it relates to these food systems and labor eventually impacts the kids and families that come in and that we serve too. um And i hope then listeners will be able to make the analogy to their schools and education systems too.
00:43:19
Speaker
Well, thank you both so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for inviting us and for taking the time to ask such great questions.
00:43:29
Speaker
Thank you again and for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:43:40
Speaker
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