TX Harvesters from advanced.farm

it’s a misty morning near Salinas, California and the advanced.farm TX harvester—a lightweight, driverless tractor covered in canvas—is picking strawberries. Like a dot-matrix printer moving along a page, the harvester’s robotic hands move back and forth along the beds, scanning for signs of red. When it identifies a ripe berry, it dives down, gently plucks it from the plant, and places it in a crate.

At the same time, a crew of about two dozen farmworkers is also harvesting strawberries just a few hundred feet away, on an adjacent farm. As an energetic song blasts from a parked vehicle, the men and women stoop to pick berries straight into plastic clamshells that they tile, side-by-side, into cardboard trays. Once their trays are full, the workers take them back to one of several sorting tables spread out along the access road (to allow for social distancing). It’s clear by the speed at which they’re walking—and in some cases even running—to drop off each box that these men and women are getting paid by the piece.

I’ve trudged through the muddy, irrigated fields to watch both forms of harvest with Kyle Cobb, advanced.farm’s youthful, clean-cut CEO. The company was the first to mechanically harvest strawberries for commercial sales last year, and had raised just under $10 million by June 2020, including a $7.5 million Series A round in 2019. After building a robot that cleaned solar panels, Cobb and his team dove into agriculture, where they hope to put an end to the notoriously grueling, repetitive work of harvesting strawberries.

If things go as planned, and advanced.farm is able to scale up over the next several years, Cobb says, “You’d see the same crew, but instead of it being this big, you’d see about half the size . . . and they wouldn’t be doing the traditional picking like this. They’d be doing a combination of sorting and packing in a very comfortable ergonomic set up.”

Today, instead of the fleet of three or four harvesters that are typically picking berries, the TX is in the field prototyping, gathering data to be used by the company’s team of engineers at their office three hours north, in Davis. Prototyping is slow, exacting work, and the machine is accompanied by field operations manager Jorge Cava, who carries a tablet and watches patiently as the harvester moves along the rows, learning thousands of iterations of berry, stem, and leaf. “We should get several hundred more hours testing on it,” said Cobb, before it goes back into the field.

Compared to the hustle taking place on the next farm over, it’s a pretty low-key scene—boring even, to the untrained eye. And yet, Cobb, Cava, and others working to automate the harvest have been in the midst of their own hustle over the last few years. Now, the pandemic has ratcheted up the pressure.

For farmers considering investing in the automation, Cobb tells me in the field, he sees the pandemic as one of several factors that will breaks the camel’s back. “It’s the rising cost [of labor], it’s the already-dwindling supply, the aging of the workforce, the hard work. Add in a health pandemic that further limits the supply and complicates your daily logistics, and automated harvest starts to sound really nice,” he said. Hazardous conditions caused by this year’s wildfires may also be a factor, although they haven’t stopped many crews from harvesting this fall.

It’s not just growers who may soon embrace the technology. In California, most of the counties with the highest rates of infections are in the Central Valley, the state’s most productive agricultural region, and home to hundreds of thousands of farmworkers. And as farmworker communities around the country battle a growing number of coronavirus outbreaks, illnesses, and deaths, the discussion of automation across the food production spectrum has grown in the public arena as well. If the people doing the work on farms are getting sick, the logic goes, why not just replace them with machines?

The transition for the companies isn’t going to be fast or easy: Cobb estimates that it will likely take five to 10 years before it’s really complete.

“We’re working as hard as we can,” he said, as he details the many challenges companies like his face in the process to get the machines out in the field, working as fast as human pickers. For a good part of the summer, for instance, the strawberry plant’s leaves grow so large that they essentially block the harvester’s vision from above. And strawberry breeders have so many other priorities, that it could be a while before they start breeding plants that make it easier for the harvesters to do their job.

Of course if advanced.farm—or one of the other companies in its lane—succeeds, the shift won’t be easy for farmworkers either, nor for farm-centric communities such as Salinas, Watsonville, and Oxnard.

The strawberry industry employs about 55,000 people in on-farm jobs on an estimated 38,000 acres in California—making it one of the state’s more labor-intensive crops. And if automation successfully cuts that number in half it could mean the loss of over 27,000 jobs in that slice of the produce sector alone.

Illustration by Justin Limoges.

A Ripe Moment for Automation on Farms

For Sébastien Boyer, the shift toward increased automation in farming is an inevitable one. Boyer is the CEO of Farmwise, a company that launched its first autonomous weeding robots in early 2019, and has grown quickly in the year and a half since then.

FarmWise went from having a small handful of weeding machines in 2019 to 20 of them in 2020. It also scaled out from a startup in a garage in San Francisco to a 700,000-square-foot shop and headquarters in Salinas. And Boyer says he has seen an increase in interest from farms in California and Arizona.

“We see a kind of short-term positive shock in the attractiveness of what we do. But we are also seeing increased discussion around automation,” Boyer told me in his thick French accent. “By and large, what I think is going to happen during the crisis is a faster push for things that makes the overall supply chain less reliant on the uncertainty of manual work being done in the fields.”

Advanced.farm’s Cobb echoed this sentiment. “There are always early adopters, and they have been ahead of this trend for all kinds of reasons,” he said. “But now that second wave of people, the mass adoption . . . I think they’re moving faster. They’ve changed their mindset faster than you otherwise would have expected.”

Emily Reisman is an assistant professor in the Department of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo and a recent transplant from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As part of a larger effort to document and study the agtech industry with a group of other researchers, including U.C. Santa Cruz’s Julie Guthman, she has been attending agtech events—which have moved on online but not slowed down—since before the pandemic began.

“I think it’s unlikely that COVID will dramatically accelerate the development timelines of these companies, especially for mechanical devices,” said Reisman. “But this moment might allow certain technologies to gain legitimacy and potentially additional financial backing, institutional support, or broader public acceptance.”

Reisman is also concerned that COVID is being used as a way to depoliticize technology that displaces workers. She has spent the last few years studying the almond industry, where automation already allows for near-instant harvest thanks to mechanical tree shakers that can remove an entire tree full of nuts in around a minute. On those farms, the number of people needed per acre is minuscule.

“I found that the crop’s high level of automation is part of what makes it so attractive to financiers looking at land as an investment. Low labor means low risk,” she said. “So, I think automation is attractive not only to farmers or technology companies, but also people who are interested in land as a financial asset.”

Rather than selling their equipment, both Farmwise and advanced.farm contract with farmers to pay for the machines’ services—which allows the companies to send fleets of weeders and harvesters around the area.

“I found that [almonds’] high level of automation is part of what makes it so attractive to financiers looking at land as an investment. Low labor means low risk.”

And with new overtime laws for farmworkers going into effect in 2022, Cobb says the investment in automation is “more of a hedge for future cost inflation rather than a significant cost reduction.”

Indeed, automated harvesting will potentially do away with the limitations of the workday. It’s not typically safe to employ people to work on farms at night—but machines like the TX harvester don’t care about light or temperature, nor do they have circadian rhythms; they can conceivably run for 24 hours if needed.

“It’s filling the gap in two ways. One is just by supplying machines that can pick instead of humans, and two, improving quality of work for the humans who are left so that more people are attracted to the line of work than are today,” said Cobb, who envisions a transformed industry unburdened by the kinds of repetitive, body-ruining work that is so common in today’s fields.

Better Jobs—and Fewer Jobs? 

When I spoke with Farmwise’s Boyer in April, right after the coronavirus hit, he told me his company was in a rare position to be hiring several people as they ramped up their customer base. “We’re paying significantly more than the average wage that fieldworkers make today. And that’s because we’re going to make every one of those workers drastically more productive than if we were asking them to do this work manually,” he said.

Jaime Eltit, Farmwise’s commercial operations manager, says the new, better-paying jobs created by companies like his are an important response to the farm world’s “shrinking and deteriorating labor force.”

“Probably the youngest people that you see out there right now are around my age,” said Eltit, who is in his 30s. “But the generation below them, those kids aren’t going out into the fields. This kind of work is hard; it’s not really desirable. And so there are going to be less people, but [a small number of] more skilled people doing the job of others.” And companies like Farmwise are “replacing the jobs at the bottom,” such as thinning lettuce, weeding, and harvesting, he adds.

In fact, nearly everyone I spoke to in the agtech industry preferred to focus on the “better jobs” aspect of the coming shift. When I asked Cobb about the fact that the future he and others envision could involve fewer jobs, he cautioned me to be careful about that phrase.

“Right now, one of the ways [farms] bring people to bridge the gap is through H-2A visas and immigration,” he said. “My hunch is that that’s always going to be a necessary part of the equation. But I think that we’re going to see less need for that type of solution. But I don’t think [automation] is going to take a bunch of domestic jobs.”

At Andrew and Williamson Fresh Produce, a large, multi-farm grower-shipper operation that works with advanced.farm, district manager Matt Conroy shares this sentiment. He points to automation as a way to fill what he says is a “10­–20 percent gap in the workforce,” but adds that “our goal is never going to be to get rid of people.”

“At the end of the day, certain jobs may fall to automation. The goal is not to have that happen. But there’s always an uncomfortable reality in there.”

A few years back, Andrew and Williamson developed the brand Good Farmsin partnership with Costco and the Equitable Food Initiative, a public-private partnership aimed at improving the lives of farmworkers. At its eight Good Farms locations, the company says it includes all its workers in planning meetings, employs them year-round, and provides benefits, among other things. And in an industry known for anonymous disregard at best, and wage theft and sexual harassment at worst, these efforts stand out.

And yet Conroy admits that, “at the end of the day, certain jobs may fall to automation. The goal is not to have that happen. But there’s always an uncomfortable reality in there. It’s like the photo booth people—that job went away when everybody went digital.”

Advanced.farm is the fourth robotics company Conroy has tried working with, and he likes that Cobb and his team are interested in grower feedback, rather than approaching automation purely as a technical problem. And he hopes some of Good Farms’ workers will be able to train to run the automated harvesters, a previously unheard of opportunity in a field that generally offers no opportunity to advance. “It’s about providing more skills to this person now and helping them be marketable in the future, so they can go outside of the scope of just picking from aisle to aisle,” Conroy told me.

Of course, while learning to operate the machine on the farm is one thing, really getting trained in the intricacies of the machinery would require that a worker and their family could relocate to Davis for several months—and he said finding that person could be difficult.

There has also been an effort to provide a pathway for the children of farmworkers to work in the agtech sector. In 2018, produce giant Taylor Farms invested in two centers, including one in Salinas, where existing workers can learn programming, engineering, and machine operation. And the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology—a Salinas agtech incubator—has a partnership with nearby Hartnell community college, where the children of farmworkers have been recruited since 2014 to train for computer science degrees. The idea is to provide a path toward a career in tech without having to leave their families behind.

That promise was one of the things that appealed to Eduardo*, a young man who went through the Hartnell program a few years back. After moving with his four siblings at age 10 from Oaxaca to the U.S. to join his parents, Eduardo (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) spent several years working the fields alongside his family—“cleaning lettuce, cutting onions, stuff like that.” He was good at math and got into the fast-tracked computer science program at Hartnell, but finding a job near his family hasn’t proved possible yet.

His first year out of school, Eduardo took an internship for a large ride-share company, learning it was in San Francisco just a few days before it started. Then, the internship turned into a full-time job, and he chose to stay on to learn what he could. He hoped to find work in agtech, but he wasn’t optimistic.

“A lot of my friends are jobless,” said Eduardo. “They’re still looking for a job a year or two after graduating.

When we spoke last fall, he was eating nearly all his meals in the company cafeteria, living in a surprisingly affordable room with other young tech workers an hour outside of the city, and sending money home to his family—a lifestyle entirely different from most of the other tech workers in San Francisco.

“It’s something that I can connect back to my parents,” he added about the prospect of working in agtech. “My dad doesn’t trust getting into a random person’s car. But if I build something for ag, he would trust it.”

Community Impact

Armando Elenes, a farmworker organizer and secretary treasurer of the United Farmworkers (UFW) is skeptical. “They’ve been talking about bringing robots into the field for over a decade,” he said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.” This year, protecting workers from the impacts of the pandemic—and expanding the union’s base, in part so that they have better access to healthcare—are much more pressing issues, said Elenes.

But Maria Cardenas disagrees. The executive director of Santa Cruz Community Ventures, and the founder of Undocufund Monterey Bay, was also neck-deep in her work to support undocumented farmworkers impacted by the pandemic when we spoke. She sees the move toward automation as inevitable, and potentially destructive. “Oh, it’s coming,” she told me. “I mean if you look at the millions that are being invested in things like identifying the right strawberry, those millions are not going to go to waste. It’s coming!”

In Salinas, as in other agricultural regions of California, Cardenas points to the fact that a whole generation of people have been working seasonal, high-skilled, low-wage jobs in the fields for two to three decades without benefits or any increases in pay. Most domestic farmworkers haven’t had access to much education in the last decade, and in recent years the existing population has been joined by a large number of migrants from Indigenous communities who speak neither Spanish nor English.

“Where do they go when these jobs are taken away? There are some young people, but a lot of them are getting close to retirement age, and they have no savings,” said Cardenas. “The employers in ag haven’t really invested in the workforce, and instead treat them as a piece of machinery in the fields.”

In that sense, it’s not surprising that a system that seeks to constantly replace its machinery with a more efficient model would be doing so with human workers as well. But Cardenas adds that most of the farmworkers she and her staff engage with are too mired in the work it takes to survive right now to track the progress of automation—let alone mount a response.

“[In Salinas,] they’re in households earning less than $50,000 a year living in a community that takes $94,000 to be okay. So, in many ways, their ability to work is subsidized by community programs and rental assistance,” she said. “And also by informal networks. The family takes care of the kids. You rotate. Or somebody is working in lettuce so they bring lettuce home and somebody is working berries and they bring berries home.”

Cardenas sees the value of a response from a union or a community organization, but she hasn’t seen one yet. And while the industry points to the opportunity for better jobs, she’s skeptical about the math, especially because a more efficient harvest won’t likely mean more money for the growers who pay the workers.

“All that does is lower your price per pound, with berries in particular. I don’t think a worker who is now running a machine is going to earn so much more . . . to make up for the lost household wages when three people are let go,” she said.

And yet, like many in the industry, Cardenas believes it’s likely that the pandemic will speed up the adoption of automation technology in the fields.

COVID has already made life difficult for farmworkers in many ways. “You have a political environment that makes it unsafe for workers to feel like they can get tested or get support. You have overcrowded conditions that makes it hard to isolate,” she said. “And poverty wages, which means that they can’t afford to not work—or access health care. All of that combined is a tsunami, quite frankly. And all of that combined in households that are already living in fear.”

Add the demand for produce outside the U.S. and consumer concerns about the stability of the food supply, and the drive to produce will likely take priority over other changes, she says.

“Even if the workers are sick, growers will still tend to want to produce. So, I don’t see the time allotted to change the industry,” Cardenas said. “But it will impact the agriculture communities where these workers are living. And the real strain will be felt by cities, which are facing tremendous deficits, and social safety net programs and nonprofits, which are also facing tremendous deficits.”

Getting Out in Front

Samir Doshi, a Race and Technology Fellow at Stanford University, is also concerned about the potential impacts of automation on Latinx immigrant communities in California and he’s engineering a plan to get out ahead of what could be an enormous wave of change.

Doshi did his doctoral research on developing regenerative economies for coal mining communities in Appalachia, and sees potential parallels with agriculture. When faced with questions around safety of miners, the companies turned to automation rather than creating safer jobs, says Doshi.

When faced with questions around safety of miners, mining companies turned to automation rather than creating safer jobs. 

“It did make mining much more efficient; it saved a number of costs. And you had mining happening at all times of the day. It basically extracted the value of that industry completely for the owners and operators. You saw a huge drop in employment, and for a lot of mining communities, whether it’s in Appalachia, New Mexico, or other areas, there was no alternative economic pathway for a lot of those communities,” said Doshi. “They didn’t get other jobs within the industry, which is what is being promised in agtech. And they did not move up the career ladder.”

Instead, the mining companies, which tended to be based outside the communities where the mining takes place, have all moved their own higher-level employees in to run the machines.

Doshi is concerned about this pattern being replicated within agriculture, where immigrant communities play a larger role. “The consequences aren’t just people being put out of jobs. It’s people being pushed out of their homes, their country, their communities,” he said. “It is definitely possible to have dramatically cascading effects on communities and regions for what automation does.”

He has been tracking the rise of agtech outside the U.S., where it’s being funded by many of the same large foundations that have brought genetic engineering to the developed world. Doshi believes that, globally, investment in agtech is “going to be as pervasive as biotechnology,” using a similar narrative of food security and efficiency.

Doshi has spent time studying healthcare, education, and other industries that have been radically changed by technology, and hopes to bring a range of stakeholders—from industry representative to academic institutions, foundations, investors, and grassroots community organizers—into a single conversation about how to take workers and communities into account while adopting tech solutions in agriculture. The ultimate goal is a set of principles, or a code of conduct that can help guide the industry.

Doshi is looking toward other efforts like UNICEF’s innovation principles and the Digital Impact Alliance, which has created principles for digital developmentthat helped shape investment in the space.

“I’m not trying to be predictive. We’re trying to be considerate and strategic about how to take care of our communities, how to take care of our food systems, and how do we look at sustainability and value across both of those domains over time,” said Doshi, who has also worked as a Senior Scientist at USAID, and for the San Mateo Food System Alliance and California Alliance for Family Farms (CAFF) in recent years. The goal, he says, isn’t to stop technology in its tracks, but to widen the conversation to include workers and smaller farmers who don’t benefit from the same kinds of tech.

“There are many technologies that can genuinely benefit small-scale, medium-scale family farms,” he said. “And if we can even the playing field in terms of the utility and efficacy and equity within these technologies and distribute the value that’s provided so that it’s not just large-scale investment into large scale applications that then [only] benefits industrial farming and agriculture.”

While the pandemic has slowed down Doshi’s process, he hopes to convene digital conversations about what it would take to develop a code of ethics in agtech—and get buy-in from investors and governments, using mechanisms like the Digital Impact Alliance, the World Economic Forum and other convening agencies and coalitions.

Farmworkers pick strawberries in 2019. (USDA photo by Lance Cheung)

A Monocrop of Movement 

It’s hard to talk about replacing workers with automation without looking squarely at the very real physical cost of farm labor.

Flavio Carnejo, a family physician who works with strawberry and raspberry pickers in central California’s Pajaro Valley, described it well in a TEDxFruitvale presentation in 2011, in which he lists the types of pain, swelling, and spasms that occur in the worker’s wrists, shoulders, and backs, as well as longer-term effects, like compression in the sciatic nerve, degenerative joint disease, and arthritis, that farmworkers endure years before most other people do.

“Strawberries are picked stooped over, and our bodies are just not designed to do that for so long. You don’t have to be a physical therapist to realize there’s going to be a tremendous amount of damage that’s going to happen to the physical body,” he said. “You touch the back of some farmworkers and they feel like they have rods running up their backs—even years later.”

But it’s not clear that replacing people on the land is the best—or only—way to avoid these problems. And it’s hard not to compare the environmental challenges that come up in agricultural monocrops with the monocrop of movement we see in today’s produce fields. While science points to a diversity of crops as fundamentally better for the environment—it means fewer pests, healthier soil, and cleaner water, for instance—it’s also clear that a diversity of tasks and movement has benefits the human body and brain.

“There’s a lack of acknowledgment that the repetitiveness of the motion, which causes physical injuries and then allows for robotic interventions, is really symptomatic of the plantation structure of current agricultural practices,” said Emily Reisman. “Everyone acknowledges that this model is problematic ecologically and socially. And yet somehow we have no choice but to use the plantation to overcome it.”

If the industry weren’t trying to replicate what has been done in factories and other industrial settings on farms, she adds, they may find themselves asking, “what would it take to make economically viable agricultural work that fosters more diversity, or is more intellectually and creatively fulfilling? What would it take to make farm work a pursuit that enriches every life it touches?”

“We know that so many people are desperate for some kind of physical connection to the Earth—not only for their own health, but their psychological well-being, and a sense of place and purpose,” she adds.

Meanwhile, Eduardo, the son of farmworkers, is holding out hope that he’ll get to help make Salinas a place where he and his peers in tech can pursue their own sense of purpose. And if automation becomes the norm on Central Valley farms, it won’t be all that different than the changes that drove his parents to the U.S. in the first place.

“Immigrants—we don’t do one thing,” he said. “Farm labor is obviously a huge thing we do. But there are a lot of immigrants that work in restaurants and lot of different parts of the world. And we might just have to adapt.”

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농가인구의 감소와 고령화가 급속히 진행되면서 국내 농업분야는 점차 극심한 인력난을 경험할 것으로 보인다. 낮은 임금과 열악한 근로환경으로 인해 내국인이 농업분야 취업을 기피하면서 국내 농업은 점차 외국인력에 대한 의존도가 높아지고 있다. 하지만 농업분야는 타 분야에 비해 낮은 임금과 힘든 육체적 노동으로 인해 외국인 근로자 역시 기피하는 분야이고, 계절적 요인으로 인해 업무량이 불규칙하고 일부 작물재배 업종은 계절별 인력수요 차이가 크다는 특징이 있다. 이 연구는 외국인의 국내 농업분야 취업현황과 근로환경, 농업경영인의 외국인력 활용실태와 외국인 고용에 따른 애로사항을 살펴보고, 현행 제도정비 방안을 제시한다. 경기도 4개 지역(고양, 안성, 이천, 포천) 외국인 근로자, 농업경영인, 관련 공무원과의 면접조사를 통해 농업현장을 살펴보고, 경기도 농업경영인 대상 설문조사 결과를 통해 외국인력 활용의 전반적인 실태를 파악한다.

이주농업노동자 Odilia Chavez(40) 씨와 이야기를 나누었다.

Lauren Smiley 씨가 스페인어를 통번역했다. 

I’m Odilia Chavez, a 40-year-old migrant farm worker based in Madera, California, the heart of the fertile Central Valley. I’m also a single mother of three: my 20-year-old eldest son came and joined me in 2004, crossing with a coyote. My son is now at the university, studying political science. The younger two were born here — American citizens.

I grew up in Santiago Yosondua, Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. I went to school through third grade, my dad was killed when I was 11, and we didn’t even have enough food to eat. So I went off to work at 12 in Mexico City as a live-in maid for a Spanish family. I’d go back each year to Oaxaca to visit my mom, and the migrants who’d come back from the United States would buy fancy cars and nice houses, while my mom still slept on a mat on the floor in our hut. A coyote told me he could take me to the United States for $1,800. So I went north in 1999, leaving my four-year-old son behind with my mother. I was 26.

We crossed through the desert into Arizona, hiding from the border patrol. I finally arrived in Madera in March of 1999, and I moved into a boarding house for migrant farmworkers.

I’d never worked in a field. It was really hard at first — working outdoors with the heat, the daily routine. But I’ve certainly learned. In a typical year, I prune grapevines starting in April, and pick cherries around Madera in May. I travel to Oregon in June to pick strawberries, blueberries and blackberries on a farm owned by Russians. I take my 14-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son with me while they’re on their summer break. They play with the other kids, and bring me water and food in the field. We’ll live in a boarding house with 25 rooms for some 100 people, and everyone lines up to use the bathrooms. My kids and I share a room for $270 a month.

I head back to Madera in August for my children to start school. We own our house now — paid off in April! I reached the American dream — ha — thanks to the help of the father of my youngest son, who died in 2007 after he returned to Mexico after a problem with immigration authorities and was killed while working as a policeman. In Madera, I pick grapes that will be made into raisins in September, usually rest in October. In November, I travel each day to Stanislaus County to work planting trees in a nursery until February.

On all the harvests, men and women work side-by-side doing the same job, and women work just as fast as the men. I’ve been harassed one time: when a boss who drove us out to the field every day wanted to hug me, and said he wouldn’t charge me the $8 a day for the ride if I’d go out with him. (Most of us don’t have driver’s licenses, so the contractors organize rides to work.) I left the job. In California, especially in Fresno and Madera counties, there’s an abundance of farm jobs. So you don’t have to do one you don’t like.

Odilia Chavez

Chavez harvesting raisin grapes near Madera California in 2011.

Harvesting cherries in Fresno County in 2010.

Carrying irrigation pipe lines near Hickman Ca. 2011.

I’ve seen on the news that some Congress members or American citizens say undocumented workers are taking their jobs. We’re not taking their jobs. In the 14 years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen an American working in the fields. I’ve never seen anyone work like Mexicans. In restaurants and construction, you’ll find Salvadorans and Guatemalans, but in the fields, it’s almost all Mexicans.

The work is hard — but many jobs are hard. The thing that bothers me more is the low pay. With cherries, you earn $7 for each box, and I’ll fill 30 boxes in a day — about $210 a day. For blueberries, I’ll do 25 containers for up to $5 each one — $125 a day. With grapes, you make 30 cents for each carton, and I can do 400 cartons a day – $120 a day. Tomatoes are the worst paid: I’ll pick 100 for 62 cents a bucket, or about $62 a day. I don’t do tomatoes much anymore. It’s heavy work, you have to bend over, run to turn in your baskets, and your back hurts. I say I like tomatoes — in a salad. Ha. With a lot of the crops, the bosses keep track of your haul by giving you a card, and punching it every time you turn in a basket.

I wish they would be more considerate of what we’re doing with the pay rate. They’re a little cheap: 31 cents for a carton of grapes. I would like another two or three cents a carton, because it’s really hard and heavy work. I’ve never worked a union contract job — a lot of them are in tomatoes or oranges — but if anyone doesn’t want to pay you, the United Farm Workers of America where I’m a volunteer, will help you get paid.

I’m very fast. In jobs where you’re doing delicate things, like pruning plants, they don’t want you rushing, so they pay you by the hour. But harvest jobs are usually paid by the quantity you pick. I prefer it that way — you have to run, but you can get home faster. We get there at 6:00 in the morning and, if I rush, I take a break at 1:00, drink and eat something, then work for another hour and head home. You pick the amount of hours you want to work, and you try not to take a lot of breaks so you can earn more. Some people will go until 5:00 in the afternoon and want to work and work, but I have my kids.

You come home really tired. I’ll come home, take a shower, put lotion on my hot feet, and be ready for the next day. I’m usually in bed by 9:00 to get up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to make and pack some tacos for the day. Also, undocumented workers don’t have any medical insurance — so the majority of us just buy over-the-counter pills for any problems. Luckily, I haven’t had many health issues yet.

Some contractors think they can abuse you because you’re undocumented. one time, a contractor who was an American citizen with Mexican parents called me a no-good illegal, and claimed he was going to call immigration on me. I said, “Send ‘em over, I’ll be waiting!” I left that job.

We all want immigration reform. First, I’d get a driver’s license, social security, and go see my mom in Mexico. (The last time I went was in 2008, and I had to cross the dessert again with a coyote to get back here — but it was the only option.) I would still work in the fields. I don’t know how to do anything else. A lot of workers haven’t gotten very far in school, and they can’t use a computer. What job are they going to do? We can’t get a better job. They were farmworkers in Mexico and we’re going to die as farmworkers. I do have a lot of pride in my work, though. It can be fun. We joke around.

I’m going to keep working as long as I can. My youngest son says he’s going to invent a robot to do the housework for me, and he’s going to earn a lot so we can buy our own ranch.

And yes, you can use my real name! Some undocumented people are scared, but I’ve never seen an immigration raid on a farm. (I hope they don’t start, either.) Agriculture is dependent on undocumented workers. We need the money from the farmers, and the farmers need our hands.

어느새 한국의 농업도 이주노동자가 없으면 운영되지 않을 상황에 처하게 되었다. 아직은 한국인 농업인이 많지만 조만간 한국인은 관리자만, 이주노동자가 실질적인 생산 업무를 담당할 날이 올 것 같다. 다녀보면 도시 근교일수록 그러한 경향이 빠르게 진행되어 있음을 확인할 수 있다.

미국의 경우에는 멕시코인들이 주로 농업노동에 종사하고 있다. 나프타로 국내의 농업은 무너지고, 돈을 벌기 위해 목숨을 걸고 국경을 넘어 미국에서 이런 육체노동에 종사하는 상황이 벌어진 것이다. 이들은 사회적 약자의 위치에 놓일 수밖에 없다. 그건 한국도 마찬가지다(이 글도 참조). 특히나 인권이나 노동법 등에 대한 개념이 희박한 한국에서는 현재 그 상황이 더 열악하다고 할 수 있다. 한국인 농민들도 빈번하게 농약중독에 시달리는 판에 이주노동자까지 챙겨줄 여유가 있을까?

점점 더 늘어날 이주농업노동자들을 좋은 환경에서 일할 수 있도록 하려면 농장주에게는 인권이라든지, 작업환경이나 노동조건 등에 대한 교육을 실시해야 하고, 노동자들에게는 자신의 권리가 무엇인지, 한국어 교실 같은 문화적인 부분에 대한 지원이 필요하겠다.

더 나은 환경에서 생산되는 농산물이 우리가 먹을 때에도, 그리고 자연환경에도 더 좋을 것임은 두말할 필요가 없을 것이다.

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Oxnard의 과일 따는 일꾼들. (사진: Alex Proimos/cc/flickr)

농업노동자와 그 지지자들이 이번주 워싱턴 DC에 와서 농산물을 수확하는 동안 농약에 노출되는 데에서 그들을 보호하라 요구하는 시위를 벌였다. 

공공청렴센터의 보고서에는 구체적인 목표가 나온다. 

미국 환경보호청 규칙의 노동자 보호기준은 약 250만 농업노동자를 대상으로 농약과 관련된 부상과 60만 농업 시설에서 농약을 다루는 사람의 위험을 줄이는 것을 의미했다. 

그러나 농약의 위험성이 더 잘 알려졌음에도, 환경보호청의 보호는 20년 동안 별로 새로워지지 않았다. 

“매년 2만 명의 농업노동자가 농약의 독성에 노출된다"고 농업노동자 정의의 직업과 환경 국장 Virginia Ruiz 씨는 말한다. “이러한 부상, 질병, 죽음은 농업노동자와 그 가족을 보호하는 필요한 조치를 통해 예방할 수 있다”고 그녀는 이어서 말한다. 

농업노동자 정의는 새로운 보고서 <노출과 무시: 어떻게 농약이 전국의 농업노동자를 위험에 빠뜨리는가(Exposed and Ignored: How Pesticides are Endangering Our Nation’s Farmworkers)>에서 이러한 위험의 일부를 분석한다. 거기서에는 농약 노출로 문제가 된 건강 문제를 나열한다. 

이번주 The Hill의 논평에서 농업노동자 정의의 대표 Bruce Goldstein 씨는 이렇게 적었다.

늘 작물과 함께 작업하는 특성상 일부 직업적 위험을 수반하게 된다. 그러나 농업노동자는 우리가 현재 제공하는 빈약한 보호조치보다 더 귀한 대접을 받을 가치가 있다. 노동자 보호기준을 간단히 수정하여 농장에서 더 자주 철저히 안전교육을 해서 노동자는 자신이 다루는 특정 농약에 관한 정보를 얻을 수 있어야 하고, 독성 농약을 취급하는 노동자의 의학적 관찰이 이루어져야 한다. 

또한 농약의 표시를 스페인어로 번역할 필요가 있으며, 농약을 항공살포하는 곳에서 농업노동자들의 지역사회를 보호하기 위해 학교와 거주지 근처에는 완충구역을 둬야 한다. 이러한 기본적 보호가 우리의 밥상에 날마다 음식을 올리기 위해 일하는 남성과 여성을 위해 거의 보증되지 않고 있다.

“사람들이 자신의 운동화가 아시아에서 아동노동으로 생산되면 걱정하는 것과 같다”고 미시간 주 농업노동자 법률서비스의 변호사 Tom Thornburg 씨는 말한다. “그들은 또한 자신이 먹는 블루베리가 농업노동자들을 중독시키는 환경에서 생산되는지 관심을 기울여야 한다.”

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/17-10

개인 농장은 이주농업노동자를 쥐어짜며 돈을 벌고, 

대기업 농장은 비정규직 농업노동자를 쥐어짜며 돈을 번다. 

누군가의 희생과 착취라는 점에서는 하나도 다를 바가 없어 보인다. 

대기업의 농업 진출 반대만이 아니라, 농업계 스스로도 정당한 노동환경을 만들자는 목소리가 나와야 하지 않을까 하는 생각이 드는 기사가 연달아 2개나 보여 함께 올린다. 

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두 캄보디아 여성은 왜 농장에서 도망쳤나

김사강 이주와인권연구소 연구위원  

동부팜화옹이 운영하고 있는 화옹 유리온실 단지의 전경이다.ⓒ민중의소리

대기업인 동부그룹의 자회사인 동부팜화옹이 운영하는 화옹유리온실단지는 농민들이 땀 흘리며 농작물을 수확하는 농장의 모습이 아닌 기계로 물건을 찍어내는 공장의 모습이었다.

아시아 최대 규모를 자랑하는 화옹 유리온실단지는 2009년 발표한 이명박 전 대통령의 ‘농어업 선진화 정책’에 의한 사업 중 하나다. 농어업 선진화 정책의 일환인 기업농 육성의 시범기업으로 선정된 동부그룹은 총 매립면적 약 1,879만평(6,212ha)의 화옹 간척지에 약 232만여평(768ha)의 대규모 농산물 생산 및 체험 단지인 에코팜랜드를 조성한다는 계획을 세우고 그 일부로 화옹 유리온실단지를 먼저 착공해 지난해 12월 완공했다.

대기업인 동부그룹이 대규모 유리온실 단지를 만들어 토마토를 생산하기 시작하자 농민들은 반발했다.

농민들은 막강한 자본력을 가진 대기업이 농산물 생산에 뛰어들면 가격경쟁력에서 불리한 일반 가족농가는 붕괴되고 나아가 식량안보까지 위협당할 것이라는 입장이다. 동부그룹의 농산물 생산을 반대하는 전국농민회총연맹(이하 전농), 전국토마토생산자연합회 등 농민단체들은 동부그룹 제품 불매운동을 벌이는 등 강력하게 저항했다.

이에 동부그룹은 지난 3월 26일 화옹 유리온실 사업을 중단한다는 성명서를 발표했다. 하지만 4개월 가까이 지난 뒤에도 화옹 유리온실은 전체의 절반인 1만5천평에서 토마토가 올해 첫 수확물을 내고 있었다.

논란이 된 화옹 유리온실단지는 서울에서 자동차로 1시간 반 정도 걸리는 화옹 간척지에 위치하고 있다. 화옹 간척지에서 유일하게 완성된 건조물인 화옹 유리온실은 보통 유리보다 투과율이 높다는 디아망(Diamant) 유리가 사용돼 하얗게 햇빛을 반사하고 있었다.

면적 4만5천평, 길이만 해도 712m에 달하는 축구장 두 개 크기의 화옹 유리온실단지는 카메라로 한 번에 담기도 어려울 정도로 엄청난 규모였다. 이곳에서 생산되는 토마토 수확량은 계획대로라면 1년에 평당 165kg, 전체 면적으로 따지면 연간 약 5천톤에 달한다. 우리나라에서 일본으로 수출되는 토마토가 연간 2천톤 안팎인 것을 생각하면 엄청난 규모다. 

유리온실 내부는 자동화된 공장과 다름없었다. 무인 운반차량이 토마토를 온실과 연결된 선별장으로 가지고 오면, 거대한 로봇 팔이 토마토를 선별기의 컨베이어 벨트 위에 쏟아 넣고 있었다. 그 이외의 수확이나 포장 같은 일은 사람이 하고 있지만 단순한 토마토를 따서 바구니에 넣는 단순한 작업뿐이었다. 유리온실에서 일하고 있는 농민들은 농민이라기보다 자동화 기계의 일부처럼 보였다.

“대기업의 농산물 생산 진출은 식량안보 위협을 불러올 것

화옹 유리온실단지 내부에서 무인 운반차량이 수확한 토마토를 실어가고 있다.ⓒ민중의소리

단지를 둘러본 농민들은 끝없이 이어진 유리온실에 놀라고 온실 내 설치된 무인 자동화 설비를 신기해 하면서도 우려를 감추지 못했다. 이날 유리온싱을 찾은 가톨릭 농민회 이상식 회장은 “이런 최고급 시설을 갖춘 대기업의 유리온실이 들어서면 가족농업이 붕괴되고 농민들은 농업 노동자로 전락할 것”이라며 “그리고 나서 초국적 농업 기업이 시장에서 낮은 가격으로 경쟁하면 손해를 보지 않으려는 대기업을 농업에 손을 뗄지도 모르고 결국 식량안보가 위험해 진다”고 걱정했다.

전농 위두환 사무총장도 “규모는 자료로 봐서 짐작하고 있었지만, 자동화 시설에 신경이 쓰였다”며 “자동화가 될수록 사람이 하는 일을 기계가 하는 것인데 여기서 일할 농민조차 줄어들지 않겠느냐”며 비판했다.

이들은 이날 유리온실 답사를 허용한 것이 동부팜한농이 농업생산을 포기했다는 점을 눈으로 보여주기 위한 것이 아니냐고 예상하기도 했다.

실제로 유리온실은 계속 가동되고 있었지만, 운영 유지만 하고 있는 듯 보였다. 동부팜화옹 직원은 약 3만평의 유리온실에 1만5천평만 경작하고 있으며, 여기서 생산한 농산물의 1/3은 일본으로 수출되고, 1/3은 푸드뱅크 등을 통해 소외 이웃에게 무상으로 제공, 나머지는 파쇄‧폐기처분 한다고 밝혔다.

하지만 폐기되는 토마토를 본 충남지역 토마토생산자협의회 이은혁 사무국장은 “1/3이 폐기되는 양치고는 너무 적은 것이 아니냐”며 “여기서 생산된 토마토가 국내시장에 흘러들어가지 않는 것을 직접 확인하지 못했으니 가능성을 배제할 수는 없다”고 의혹을 제기했다.

화옹 유리온실은 대기업 농산물 생산 진출의 시작일 뿐

현재 농식품부의 제안으로 화성시 농민단체가 영농조합법인을 설립해 화옹 유리온실단지를 동부팜화옹으로부터 인수하기 위한 실무협상을 진행하고 있다. 영농법인이 화옹 유리온실 지분 51%를 인수하여 경영권을 행사하고, 동부팜한농이 49%의 지분을 갖고 생산·유통을 맡아서 운영한다는 조건이다.

농식품부는 화옹 유리온실의 총 인수금액 500여억원의 51%인 275억원의 대부분을 농협에서 부담하고 각 농민단체가 5억씩을 출자하는 것을 제안한 것으로 알려져 있다.

화옹 유리온실단지 답사에 앞서 전농과 가톨릭농민회는 유리온실을 인수하려는 화성시 농민단체들과 짧은 간담회를 가졌다.

화성시 농민단체 중 하나인 HS영농조합법인 윤통일 대표는 “화성시 농민단체들이 온실단지를 인수해서 지역의 농민들과 상생할 수 있게 경영하려고 한다”며 “동부팜화옹은 지분을 하나도 안 들이기 원했지만, 기술과 운영 등의 어려움 때문에 우리가 기술을 익힐 때 까지 동부가 참여하도록 제안한 것”이라고 인수 추진 배경을 설명했다.

이에 위 총장은 “완전히 철수하겠다는 동부그룹을 화옹 유리온실의 운영의 계속할 수 있도록 농식품부가 바짓가랑이를 붙잡은 격”이라며 “또 기존 유리온실은 평당 70만원 정도의 비용이 드는데 화옹 단지는 평당 150만원 정도로 인수비용을 책정해 농민들의 돈을 동부그룹에 퍼주는 셈”이라며 우려했다.

이어 “화성시 농민단체가 화옹 유리온실을 인수하는 것을 막을 수는 없으나 동부그룹이 참여한다면 우리는 끝까지 반대할 것”이라며 “토마토 생산을 포기하겠다고 한 대기업을 이런 식으로 끌어들여 여지를 남겨둔다면 대기업의 농산물 생산을 막을 수 없다”고 경고했다.

간담회에 참가한 화성시 농민단체 중 일부는 전농이 “농어업 선진화 정책으로 이곳 화옹 간척지뿐 아니라 새만금‧고흥 간척지에도 각각 1천만평, 7백만평에 대기업의 농산물 생산 단지가 들어설 것”이라고 이야기하자 놀라는 눈치를 보이기도 했다. 

전농, 가톨릭농민회, 전국토마토생산자협의회 등은 향후 동부그룹이 농산물 생산에서 완전히 철수할 때까지 출하 저지 등의 활동을 할 계획이다.

7월16일 화옹 유리온실 답사를 한 전농 위두환 사무총장이 동부팜화옹 직원에게 폐기예정 토마토 처리에 대해 묻고 있다.ⓒ민중의소리

미국의 농업노동자 문제. 75%가 건강보험이 없고, 그들 가운데 90%가 외국인이며 젊은 기혼자에 스페인어(멕시코인이 대부분)를 한다고. 번 돈의 대부분은 고국에 송금... 한국 농업의 미래를 보는 듯하다. 문제는 한국에 와 있는 이주농업노동자들의 노동환경은 더욱더 열악하다는 점. 우리도 서둘러 그들에게 제도적인 안전망을 제공해야 할 것이다. 솔직히 이제 농업노동에 종사할 한국인이 누가 있는가? 이른바 더럽고, 힘들고, 저임금의 그 일을 말이다.

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New America Media, News Report, Viji Sundaram, Posted: Mar 21, 2013

영국도 농업 분야의 일자리는 이주노동자들로 채워지고 있다는 사실.

그런데 유럽연합에 가입된 국가에서 오는 이주노동자들은 피고용자 권리에 의해 보호를 받기에 더 편하고 나은 일자리로 이동을 하게 되고, 그 열악한 일자리에는 그렇게 보호를 받지 못하는 비유럽연합의 노동자들이 건너와서 채워야 한다고 한다. 그렇지 않으면... 농산물 가격이 상승하여 물가를 압박할 것이라고...

현재 한국에서도 비슷한 일이 일어나고 있다. 산업화된 국가에서는 어디나 공통적인 현상인가 보다.

이제 농업은 천역인가?

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농산업이 빠르면 내년이나 2015년부터 심각한 노동력 부족에 처할 수 있다.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/10056182/Food-prices-will-rise-unless-ministers-allow-non-EU-migrants-to-work-on-farms.html

페이스북에서 김이찬 님이 올리신 사진을 보았습니다.

보는 순간 손이 덜덜덜 떨렸습니다.

우려하던 일이 이미 농촌에서 벌어지고 있었습니다.

배추뿌리를 빨리 자르지 않는다는 이유로 두들겨 맞는 노동자. 
땅모양이 너무 평화롭고 아름다운 땅, 해남이다. 

월 300시간 노동에 1,100,000 원의 월급을 받고...
'근로계약을 하지 않는 자' 가 실제 고용주인 양 속이고 시켰고,
7개월간..., 100개가 넘는 지번의 밭에서 일했다. 

허리를 90도로 꺽어 배추밑둥을 칼로 잘라내며 수확하는데, 얼마 남지 않은 배추를 쪼그리고 앉아서 배추밑둥을 자른다고, 불법 고용한 자들이 발로 짓이기고 무릎으로 턱을 때렸다. 

그리고 두들겨 맞았는데, '때린 사람' 왈. - '그 자식이 여기서 일하기 싫어서 꾀병을 부리잖아요!' 한다. 

담당 고용센터 직원 왈, '우리는 수사권이 없어요. 사장이 싸인을 하지 않으면 다른 회사로 갈 수 없어요...' 

고용허가제는 노예제...

어떠한 종류의 폭력이라도 용납할 수 없습니다. 

이 한 장의 사진이 너무 많은 걸 담고 있습니다.

과도한 상업화에 의한 대규모 단작 방식의 농업,

그에 따른 고에너지, 고비용, 외부투입재 의존형 농법과 그로 야기되는 온실가스 및 환경오염 등의 문제, 

농촌공동화 등으로 인한 노동력 부족을 제3세계의 이주노동자로 충당하는 현실,

인권 유린은 물론 억압과 착취의 구조 등등...

이 모든 종류의 폭력에 화가 납니다.

"야, 이, 사람새끼야!"

During the month of November last year, the world watched farmworkers strikes, particularly those working in vinyards, in the Western Cape Province, in South Africa. They were protesting against exploitation and poor working and living conditions on farms, demanding an increase in minimum wages. In many cases, South African police responded to the demonstrations with violence and intolerance and showed no respect for laws. Many farmworkers and activists were arrested, including peasants of The Agrarian Reform for Food Sovereignty Campaign, a member of La Via Campesina.

After dubious negotiations that halted the strikes in December, the South African government has refused to make any change to the minimum wage and the situation has remained unchanged. Early this January farmworkers resumed the strikes and are being heavily repressed by police.

Since the strikes began, South African civil society organizations have denounced the fact that owners of the farms and the police were acting in close concertation to repress the striking workers; they benefited from a high level of impunity. It also appears obvious that the owners of the farms are continuing to pour racist and sexist insults on farmworkers.

The farmworkers strike in South Africa has to be seen as an African movement of the rural poor protesting against injustice and explotation. The agricultural sector in South Africa employs not only South African citizens. Many of the farmworkers working in bad conditions are migrant workers: men and women from neighboring countries such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. These farmworkers are sometimes the most affected by the owners of the farms, who take advantage of the fact that they are in many cases working illegally and without social protection. South African commercial farming is the most powerful on the continent; it flourishes at the expense of the oppression and exploitation of agricultural workers.

These strikes are also the result of government’s failure to implement land reform in South Africa. The 30 per cent of land distribution that was promised by 2015 is very far from being implemented. In fact, in 2013 it is now 100 years since a Land Act that dispossessed millions of people from the land and turned them into the super-exploited farmworkers and the South African proletariat, was constituted in 1913. These strikes are a cry of "Enough is enough!" of 100 years of rural slavery.

The African region of the International Peasant´s Movement, La Via Campesina, declares their support and solidarity with the farmworkers in South Africa and condemns all forms of violence perpetuated by the South African Police and government against all farmworkers and activists. We join the voice of South African civil society organizations and demand that the South Africa government take active steps to listen to and act on the call of the agricultural workers who are demanding a living wage and a life of dignity.

Globalize the Struggle, globalize the Hope!

Contacts for more information and solidarity