#farmworkers
Shift Farm Safety into High Gear
In the United States, the third week of September marks the start of National Farm Safety and Health Week (NFSHW). Begun by Presidential Proclamation in 1944, NFSHW acknowledges the dangers associated with agriculture work, and highlights safety precautions and trainings that can reduce workplace accidents and deaths.
Each year, the National Education Center for Ag Safety (NECAS) provides farmers with programs and materials to promote farmer safety and health. This year’s theme is “Shift Farm Safety into High Gear” and today’s focus is on tractor safety and rural roadway safety.
In April 1945, William Anglim, Chief of Operations for the Office of Labor’s Mexican National Worker Program (Bracero Program), wrote that 54% of the 200 deaths reported during 1942, 1943, 1944, and early 1945 were “caused by all accidents, representing 108 workers, many of whom could have been saved by a better understanding and adoption of simple principles of accident prevention.”
Both Arizona and California have strong farming histories, and many records in the National Archives at Riverside relate to those histories. In honor of the farmworkers risking injury each day, we’ve pulled together a few highlights from our materials.
Click here for more information on National Farm Safety and Health Week.
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Casa en el campo
I am fully at home in the field.
Dirty, crawling on my knees, practicing the ancient simplicity of harvesting food from plants. I am most alive when I am near the soil, hands working diligently to make the perfect bunch, chatting in Spanish with the migrant farmworkers who have become my close friends.
My face stays shaded by the brim of my hat. A flannel shirt protects my arms from the beating sun on a 98 degree day in Oregon summer (at least 105 inside the greenhouse tunnels). Sweat and dust glisten on my skin. Calloused hands blackened by many hours of picking tomatoes from their trellised vines. A big ole’ goofy smile on my face. Nos reimos mucho.
Thoughts still float in the back of my head: Perhaps I romanticize and glorify a life that mis compañeras likely did not choose. Is it my privilege that leads me to desire an occupation which most of society looks down upon with pity? Why do I feel so intensely drawn to a lifestyle which my friends and coworkers cannot escape (yet I can move freely in and out of)?
Why does the land call me so loudly & clearly? It is telling me that I need to change these deeply engrained agricultural systems and labor practices of food production in this modern world. Harvesting alongside some of the hardest working people in America (who are among the most oppressed) has taught me so much about farming, society, language, culture, and life.
—
Taking the long way home from the farm, nostalgia approaches quietly along the curved country roads. In the core of my stomach, I can already feel the way I’ll miss this season. I get the feeling that I’ve finally found my little pocket of the world with the sweetest, most wonderful friends & community I could have asked for. This season has been absolutely life changing. I am growing unendingly, flowering profusely with new insights and passions.
Mi cabeza is lleno de la granja. I remember the smokey grey hanging low and thick in wildfire July; we all duck into a greenhouse to make bouquet-like manojos de albahaca. We start a game to practice our respective new languages. I ask Margo: “¿Cómo se dice cebolla en inglés?” She giggles and thinks for a moment before proclaiming “Onion!” We all smile and continue the unique cultural exchange of women of so many backgrounds.
These conversations dance in my mind. Basil lingers on my hands.
Ah, sweet memories and new farming experiences to come!
Casa en el campo
I am fully at home in the field.
Dirty, crawling on my knees, practicing the ancient simplicity of harvesting food from plants. I am most alive when I am near the soil, hands working diligently to make the perfect bunch, chatting in Spanish with the migrant farmworkers who have become my close friends.
My face stays shaded by the brim of my hat. A flannel shirt protects my arms from the beating sun on a 98 degree day in Oregon summer (at least 105 inside the greenhouse tunnels). Sweat and dust glisten on my skin. Calloused hands blackened by many hours of picking tomatoes from their trellised vines. A big ole’ goofy smile on my face. Nos reimos mucho.
Thoughts still float in the back of my head: Perhaps I romanticize and glorify a life that mis compañeras likely did not choose. Is it my privilege that leads me to desire an occupation which most of society looks down upon with pity? Why do I feel so intensely drawn to a lifestyle which my friends and coworkers cannot escape (yet I can move freely in and out of)?
Why does the land call me so loudly & clearly? It is telling me that I need to change these deeply engrained agricultural systems and labor practices of food production in this modern world. Harvesting alongside some of the hardest working people in America (who are among the most oppressed) has taught me so much about farming, society, language, culture, and life.
—
Taking the long way home from the farm, nostalgia approaches quietly along the curved country roads. In the core of my stomach, I can already feel the way I’ll miss this season. I get the feeling that I’ve finally found my little pocket of the world with the sweetest, most wonderful friends & community I could have asked for. This season has been absolutely life changing. I am growing unendingly, flowering profusely with new insights and passions.
Mi cabeza is lleno de la granja. I remember the smokey grey hanging low and thick in wildfire July; we all duck into a greenhouse to make bouquet-like manojos de albahaca. We start a game to practice our respective new languages. I ask Margo: “¿Cómo se dice cebolla en inglés?” She giggles and thinks for a moment before proclaiming “Onion!” We all smile and continue the unique cultural exchange of women of so many backgrounds.
These conversations dance in my mind. Basil lingers on my hands.
Tractorcade,All Things Considered, 02/05/1979
In February 1979, All Things Considered visited the National Mall to record a spectacle known as Tractorcade. A convoy of farmers from the American Agriculture Movement drove their tractors thousands of miles in winter conditions from places like Texas, Ohio and Colorado, to rally in support of farmworkers’ rights to earn a living wage.
“The way we…bring our point across…is by bringing the tractor. The tractor is out of place in Washington, D.C.”
- A member of the 1979 tractor convoy
The digital preservation of this audio has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Researcher Laura Garbes contributed to this post.
Image: Bill Wilson / 1979. Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post.
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