Jake - Farmworker Food Inecurity

Hired agricultural labor and small farmers often can't afford food, and in the US the "hired agricultural labor" is largely Mexicans. There has been a decline in real wages among these hired farm workers. Seasonal workers who often aren't even permanent residents of the U.S. - let alone citizens - have low bargaining power and do not see wage growth. A large part of this is that people are unaware of the existence and size of these people, so they once again have little room to negotiate for themselves. Even if they wouldn't be bargaining for more pay, just the fact that their employers know they can pay poorer wages without as much backlash leads to lower or no wage growth. What would the unacknowledged, undocumented Mexican who you could get deported from the country say if you said you wouldn't be increasing their pay? Nothing, they'd just have to deal with it.

Hunger, a term they specifically chose since they believe "food insecurity" can serve as a sort of euphemism that discredits the severity and humanity of the problem, is in fact very much present in these hired labor populations, with low income being the best predictor of food insecurity. Undocumented workers were also more likely to be hungry than those documented, although the exact data on documented vs undocumented is sketchy (asking people who could be deported if they answer yes makes many people lie and say no instead). Being undocumented also means you cannot receive social program benefits, so the people in most need of aid aren't able to get it here. I will say that extending food stamps to undocumented workers is not a solution, just a band-aid fix. I say this knowing it would very well be a politicized issue, and fighting over extending social welfare to non-Americans isn't as productive as trying to address the reason these people are starving in the first place.

Moving away from the situation of hired laborers, this article also says food sovereignty movements focused on small scale farmers over the hired labor and global peasant class. I believe a large part of this is that Americans, who make up a large part of the discussion we as Americans would see, picture farmers as being the "American Gothic" small farmers and not as the agricultural conglomerate or peasants. We don't view our own country as having peasants. Sure, America had slaves in the past, but peasants were in the medieval era in the Old World, not in Illinois. I'd wager more Americans know what "rizz" means that "Serfdom" does, and I bring this up to illustrate that the American public sphere has a poor understanding of what it means to be a peasant and how big of an issue it is even to this day. This all being said, I believe the idea of food sovereignty would change to focus on peasants when brought up in the context of a region that still has a large peasant class. My conclusion - the only advice I have from looking at the criticism about the small farmer food sovereignty narrative - is that if Americans with influence are looking to help the global situation, they should look into the presence of peasantry globally before trying to change the world assuming the social order in Bolivia mimics that of Montana.

The final topic I would bring up is just how much is going against these predominantly Mexican laborers. First, we have the politicization and othering of hired labor. The current administration has made undocumented and illegal migrants in this country one of the star political issues, to the point that people in the rural Northeastern United States who never would've given it thought now feel as though it is the most dire issue they are facing. I'm not going to discuss the politics behind this, but I bring this up to highlight that these workers have been brought into the public sphere not for the poor conditions they work in, but as a domestic security issue. That is not good news for them and only really serves to make their lives worse. Next, NAFTA let the American market, with its mass subsidies and overproduced crops lowering the price on goods like corn, dominate the Mexican market and run many Mexican farmers out of business. The same people now coming up to the United States to work as a seasonal farmer may well have been farmers in Mexico who lost their jobs because of post-NAFTA farmers rendering these Mexican farmers uncompetitive. Finally, Mexico has had a somewhat remittance reliant economy for a while. This means that the growth is not happening in Mexico, but rather the u United States. In simple terms, the region poor enough to have workers leave the country to go elsewhere to find jobs is seeing less growth since those workers are leaving.  I wouldn't call it a feedback loop, but it is a hindrance that slows Mexico's growth and continues the system leaving so many people hungry. All being said, the reality we are living in does not bode well for these seasonal, often undocumented, agricultural workers in the United States, and their problems of going hungry don't seem to be getting much better any time soon.