Three-fourths of hired farm workers are immigrants, mostly from Mexico.13 About half of all U.S. hired farm workers are unauthorized immigrants.14 Although immigrant farm workers have higher incomes in the United States than at home, they don’t always escape poverty as they had hoped.15 Hired farm work is among the lowest-paid work in the country.16 In 2006, the median earnings of these workers—$350 per week—were lower than those of security guards, janitors, maids, and construction workers. Only dishwashers were found to have a lower weekly median income.17 (See Figure 3.2)
Although the poverty rate of farm worker families has decreased over the past 15 years, it is still more than twice that of wage and salary employees as a group, and it’s higher than that of any other general occupation.18 A study commissioned by the Pennsylvania State Assembly found that 70 percent of the state’s migrant farm workers live in poverty.19 A 2008 survey in Washington state demonstrated the impact of poverty: 6 percent of farm workers reported being homeless—living in their cars or sheds.20 In California, farm communities “have among the highest rates of poverty and unemployment in the state.”21 A study of Latino farm workers in North Carolina found that their level of food insecurity was four times higher than the general U.S. population. Nearly half—47 percent—of the Latino farm worker households in the study were food insecure; this proportion rose to 56 percent among households with children.22 Another study found that 45 percent of all rural Latino families in Iowa were food insecure.23
A second cause of food insecurity—in addition to low wages—is the seasonal nature of some farm work. Families’ average annual earnings decrease when laborers cannot find work throughout the year. In fact, farm workers’ earnings average out to only about $11,000 a year.
Unauthorized legal status, low wages, and inconsistent, sometimes unpredictable work schedules add up to a precarious economic state.24 In central Florida, where hurricanes and freezes can wipe out crops overnight, food insecurity is a perennial threat. In 2010, for example, a series of freezes destroyed the pepper, strawberry, and tomato crops that farm workers are needed for. “People are working a couple hours a day in some communities,” said Bert Perry, a community organizer for the National Farm Worker Ministry in Florida.
Escalated immigration-law enforcement has injected fear into an already difficult economic situation. “There [in Mexico] we lived poor, but we lived peacefully,” said a Mexican farm worker in Florida. “Here we live poor, but also in desperation.” Fear sometimes deters farm workers from accessing nutrition and other federal programs they qualify for. In spite of their high poverty rates, 57 percent of all hired farm workers—a group that includes authorized as well as unauthorized workers—report receiving no public support.25 Unauthorized farm workers, in particular, often rely on private organizations as their main source of support in emergencies.26
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