La Vía Campesina / Coalition of Immokalee Workers

La Via Campesina and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

This video is to give my oh-so-numbered readers a brief overview of La Via Campesina. I have talked about the CIW previously, as well.

The first similarity I see between the efforts of these two groups is that they are both challenging the bigger picture. The CIW isn’t challenging the farm owners in Florida, and La Via Campesina isn’t challenging the countries—or companies—that are exporting food to their countries. Let me back up and clarify one thing quickly. Countries do no export; companies, firms, and corporations export their goods and the countries only facilitate those transactions. Ok, good. The CIW has been protesting against the big players in the tomato market, companies like McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell, not the farmers. La Via Campesina is protesting against the WTO to break down trade agreements that allow for easy import and export relationships. They feel that those agreements are flooding poorer countries with cheap food, which in turn puts their local farmers out of business because they cannot compete. 

Obviously the fact that they are both protesting is a similarity, but what comes of those protests is how they are similar in terms of disruption. They are both bringing awareness to an otherwise blind or ignorant public. In the clip, one protester mentioned intellectual property rights and the right to seeds of crops. Monsanto. There are always people out against Monsanto. There are always people out against big agriculture, so when the general public hears about such protests, they often shrug it off and go about their lives. If the CIW took on the local farm owners, news wouldn’t spread around the nation as it did because they challenged world-wide fast food chains. When people challenge the WTO, people take note. They may see it on the news, hear what the people are upset about and still forget about it at the next commercial break, but I think more people as a whole pay a little more attention. They do so because the WTO can affect every single person in the world. The general public—world wide—are often taken back by global protests, and protests that challenge the status quo on a global level.Take for instance the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999.

These two groups are putting their poverty and personal injustices on the front doorsteps of the people in the “countries in the north” as they are referred to in the video clip. The CIW is making Americans (mostly) think twice before they buy a cheap greasy burger from Burger King or McDonalds. La Via Campesina is making those countries think twice (OK maybe a time and a tenth) about whether or not to export as much or to engage in certain trade agreements, and making the citizens aware of what they are facing.

That leads perfectly into the final question. How are consumers involved? Consumers in the north are picky and want instant gratification. What they want, they get. And if they don’t want something, the corporations are left with one option with the surplus: export. But it isn’t that the consumers are just denying goods, but they are also demanding outside goods: Imports. Corporations (remember, not countries) don’t always want money for goods. Goods for goods means they can sell imported stuff back to the consumers in their original country. So there is why these trade agreements exist. Consumers—not producers—in the southern countries see the availability of cheap goods and take advantage of them. Granted, we cannot blame this all on the consumer. I have talked about the illusion of choice before, and that plays a big role here, too. People have become nearly dependant on cheap imported goods because they have been made available to them by big corporations who have market power over the consumer. So this begs the question, what do we do? Stop demanding imports? Specialization has made that impossible at this point. Some countries are better at producing certain things than others. Trade is done to make two or more parties mutually better off, so we would have to take a huge step backwards. The same can be said for the CIW struggle. The need and use of fast and convenient food has been ingrained into the northern countries to the point where we cannot simply choose not to eat fast food. In this case, however, there are “choices” of which chains to eat at and which to avoid based on their tomato purchasing decisions.

I’m dancing around answering this question because I cannot think of any single, united thing that consumers can do to help—or influence in general—the struggle of La Via Campesina, so I will pose that to you.

The CIW and La Via Campesina are two organizations that are struggling against the bigger players in their situations to reverse injustices imposed upon them. There are definite differences between them, but it is their similarities that are captivating. I guess a start to answering my own question is to say that consumers can act by paying attention and seeing how these issues relate to them personally; spread that awareness of the situation and see what happens. 

 

 

Chicken... Chicken... Goose!

Animal welfare is a whole other topic
but housing such as this greatly reduces
the overall carbon footprint of chicken
production in the United States.

The chicken industry has examples of many different themes we have talked about in class rolled into one system. To begin with, most chickens are raised on one farm from birth to maturity, and if not, they are only moved once after they hatch. Consistency matters in chicken production and farmers who own the chickens through the entire process are better able to raise their chickens most consistently year in and year out. From the farm they go to slaughter then to supermarkets or restaurants. It’s a simple system, really, given the fact that few companies own the majority of the production. The University of Missouri did a study of the concentration of agricultural markets and came up with what are known as Concentration Ratios (CR4). The 4 refers to the four largest firms in a market. If the 4 largest firms represent over 40% of the entire market share, it is considered to be a concentrated market. The broiler industry had a CR4 of 58.5% in 2007, meaning the four largest companies—Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms—control 58.5% of the broiler production in the United States. It should also be noted that the two largest firms control 47% of the market alone. The CR4 statistics are a perfect way to look at bottleneck corporations, and the fact that two companies control nearly half the entire production is the root of some of the major issues in the rest of the system. 

The pie chart at the right visually paints the picture and has data from 2008. I don't know what figures the University of Missouri used, but the data in the pie chart is based off of "ready to cook production" and shows 10 companies control 75% and 3 roughly 50%.

Add caption

Those companies contract production with actual farmers who are already producing in the system, and in some cases, they virtually own the farmers. Some farmers are indebted to the corporations hundreds of thousands of dollars, but because the corporations need the chickens, they allow the farmers to stay in operation. Recently, one processing company got bought out by an international company who discontinued the processing of chickens. Over 200 farmers lost their livelihoods because they were in such deep debt to the original company that when they sold out and the processing and ownership in the chicken industry went away, they could no longer produce. Luckily for current chicken producers, there is legislation right now that would require any such firm to pay or cover 80% of debt owed by the farmers. Discussion about whether or not this law will pass or not is very uncertain.

Now this concentration in the chicken industry is not just at the production level. These companies are fully integrated into the system from owning the chickens at the farm and the feed, to owning the slaughtering facilities, packaging, distributing, and in some cases even the direct sale of the meat. This only compounds the issue of being a bottleneck corporation and allows them to exert greater pressures up—to whatever extent they can—and down the production chain, making choice even more of an illusion.

After they are of a mature weight, the chickens are sent to slaughter. It is here that people assume injustices and working conditions are poor for people. Let me begin to address that issue by saying that in order for a company to sell meat in a case—ie. Safeway’s meat case in the back, fresh or frozen—the slaughter and processing facility must be federally inspected by the USDA. And this is not an inspector who makes his or her rounds around the nation and is only at each plant briefly; no, there are USDA inspectors at the plants every single day that the plants are operating. Also, in the 90’s there was a push and legislation passed that enforced and improved ergonomics for workers, which includes walkways being slip-free, standing areas with rubber mats, as well as machinery guidelines for guards and protective devices for the operators. The graph at the left shows how the rate of MSD's have decreased since the early 90's and remain on the decline. The working conditions may not be what everyone would consider perfect, but there are extensive rules and guidelines that meat processors must follow to protect and ensure the safety of their workers. The regulations regarding ergonomics also regulated how long workers can stand without breaks and how long their breaks must be per day.

It is products like this that demand has
increased for

Meat cutting is a skill-requiring job and training is extremely important in this part of agriculture. Even in the poultry industry there has been an increased demand for precut and “fast” food, meaning the skill required for cutting meat is only increasing. Processors and operators of these facilities know that having a quality product to meet these demands helps their profit margins, so they are increasing their training with their employees, which increases worker safety as well. 

I understand that the blog prompt asked me to discuss injustices in the system of chicken (or rice or banana) production, but through the class, we have, in a way, been talking about the “untold stories” of things in America, past and present. To me, the untold story is not the potential injustices of people working in processing facilities, it is the truth of the situation inside a slaughter plant that is the real untold story that often gets told in a very negative and condescending light. While many other blogs may address some of those issues if they also chose chicken, I felt that I needed to discuss other issues that counter injustices or mistreatments that may have previously been a part of meat processing in America.

Shopping as the "other"

(Not in Pullman's Safeway)

Recently I visited the Pullman Safeway. I had a list in my hand, and I was shopping as a college student who was stable financially, but not by any means wealthy. When I started to evaluate the store from that perspective, I realized a lot of things were aimed at me. But that goes to figure; a college town store aiming products to sell to college kids. I saw beer in a huge display with football promotions first thing through the doors. College students plus football on the weekends equals beer consumption. On the ends of the aisles was cheap, convenient and easily prepared food. Part time job salary minus books minus beer money equals very little for anything other than ‘Easy Mac’ and ‘Top Ramen.’ Along with the ‘Easy Mac’ on the ends of the aisles, there were also chips and salsa, crackers and coffee. Granted, not everything needed in one’s life, but just about everything for a good weekend of watching football and partying. 

It almost seemed to be that the store wanted to make shopping quick and easy for college students, make the simple things to make easy to see and—seemingly—always on sale. Other necessities were right where they always are—the outside edge. Bread milk and eggs are always easy to find. The image at the right pretty well sums it all up. A generic floor plan for a grocery store, and where "real" food may or may not be found.

When I went back even more recently, I had a list in my hand. I considered this list to be like a restricted diet, that I needed to find specific things, and substitutes would have to be considered very carefully. I found that my time in the store increased, and that, minus the products on the walls of the store, everything I needed was within the aisles. I was hunting for certain things rather than wandering up and down the rows and deciding what I thought I could cook or use or eat that night. I can see that if my list had actual diet restrictions rather than just product restrictions, my challenges would have been greater. In the main view of the aisles the cheap food is easily seen, but the organic products are often lower and towards the ends of the aisles. 

The average shopper will see the mainstream products the most; products which, behind the label, have mostly the same processor and producer. This relates to the idea we have been discussing, the illusion of choice. How can we consider multiple brands of chips choice when the same company owns all the brands? Few companies buy from a huge number of farmers, and turn those commodities into a wide range of predetermined products marketed to specific consumer groups. But it has turned into a situation where now, as consumers, we are accustomed to seeing those products on our store shelves, so when they aren’t there, what do we do? We demand them, we hunt for them, and in some cases, pay way too much money for them (not so much in the highly processed and cheap foods, however). All that does is trickle back upstream to those bottleneck corporations and tells them that we want those products on the shelves. So they keep supplying them. 

All these foods contain corn.

Consumer shaping—is what I am calling it—is the best way to describe how consumers are connected to the food chain. We are shaped by the system to demand, use, and even need certain goods, and therefore raw commodities, ie. corn. Our choices have been shaped by the middle men between the farmer and us. The products supplied to us have worked into our daily lives to a point where we go straight to the same box or bag every time in the store without thinking about it. We have been molded by the choices in the grocery store, and our lives have been both facilitated that, and been impacted by that. 

Oxbow is a CSA right here in WA that has taken off in the past 8 years.

The great thing, now is that there is a big push back from this system. Organic, local, sustainable. This movement will never be able to take over the entire food system, but for those who can participate and benefit from it, it is a much welcomed change and release from the control of giant corporations. We will always need cheap food, and we will always need corn, soy, wheat, beef, and many other products to feed people around the world. But the recent movements around the US show that people want to be more aware of their food and where it comes from. “Eaten today? Hug a farmer.”

Consumer Freedom?

So I actually wrote the blog about Greenpeace and other activist groups before I read and began the 5^th blog prompt. The topics are fairly similar, but this one will be a little more focused and guided compared to my previous venting episode. This blog is discussing some things said in a video about the Center for Consumer Freedom—virtually, a counter organization to PETA, HSUS, etc. The two minute clip said a few things that I did in my previous blog about these groups—for example, the hypocrisy of HSUS’s commercials—but I will try to direct this one in a different manner.

For those not in the class, we are currently reading a book entitled Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel that discusses some of the issues within our food system. One major issue we have talked about is the idea of choice, or lack thereof, for the consumer and how there are ‘hour glass’ structures in markets that are confined in the middle by certain corporations who are capable of limiting the choice consumers have.

These “bottleneck corporations” are able to control the market above and below them because there are many producers (above) and consumers (below) them, but only a few of the companies in the middle. They can put specific requirements on the raw products coming into their operation and then put out and sell a different, specific product. They have power over both the consumer and the producer because, in a way, they can virtually say, “if you don’t like it, take your business somewhere else.” But because there are only a few corporations in the middle who can buy the inputs and sell the products, it is hard for both consumers and producers to do anything but meet the requirements. This is how the idea of consumers having no choice comes about. These companies can sell whatever they feel like, that will also sell.

But once upon a day, a consumer had to deny a variety of apples, forcing farmers to stop growing that variety. From there, the increase in consumer demand for apples (or any food product period) forced the limited options of crops grown now. Granted, those middle-man corporations now control what farmers sell, originally it was consumer’s demands and preferences that started the restriction in varieties and types of crops grown. In that sense, consumption very much can control a market. If consumers completely stop buying a product, those bottleneck corporations will eventually be forced to stop producing it and give the consumers what they want. Regardless of the fact that it rarely happens, consumers have that power if they want to exercise it.

But of course these companies do not only operate in a single country; they are massive, multinational companies. So if the consumers were to exercise their power of shaping a market, it would have to be an international effort. This brings into the issue another major factor, the politics of internationalism. I think this is where Raj Patel would stress the idea of true consumer freedom, more so than the short clip even does. The idea of consumer freedom really breaks down the typical politics of trade and food products. In the book, he discusses many international issues, from war, to food aid, and how food has been used politically to control other countries. True consumer freedom would throw that out the window, and allow consumers to eat what they want, not just what their governments are given in trade or as support. Like in the example of South Korea, students had to be taught how to eat bread because culturally they were not used to grain in the form of bread at all. Because the country, politically, started trading wheat, bread is now a much bigger part of their diet. And it is not only imports, but also because partially to the Green Revolution, Korea’s own production has increased dramatically as well. These international policies and trade agreements have reduced impacted consumer’s freedom of choice, for better as well as for worse.

This video clip wants people to understand the truth of their food and wants consumers to be free to make decisions for themselves. Patel, however, argues that our decisions are somewhat made for us before we even get to the store. Where you live is a huge factor, and that can be dependent on social class and race both. If you live in what is known as a food desert, you can be very limited on what is available at the store. Sometimes, it is just not feasible to truck high value goods to certain areas of the country if the population concentration is very limited. If only a small number of products are going to be sold, it takes extra transportation and higher costs to get specialty goods in less than bulk quantities. On top of that, if you cannot afford certain goods regardless of where you live, your choices are also limited. Not only are your options limited of products to buy, but also where you can buy them. If you know you can afford something better, but you are in a food desert, or just far from that product, you probably won’t spend the money on fuel and time to travel to get that good; you will settle for what is available and affordable. Unfortunately, there are still large food deserts in the country. The first map shows the areas where different amounts of the population live without a car and further than one mile to a grocery store. On a somewhat unrelated, but interesting side note, compare that to the second map that compares areas where there are more bars than grocery stores. Again this can point to not only location, but to race and social class as underlying issues.

Consumer freedom may be a noble goal, Patel would argue that at this point, it is nearly impossible to accomplish. There are too many factors impacting what consumers have available to them for them to be “free” to choose the food they want. I appreciate the efforts mentioned from the Center of Consumer Freedom, but ultimate freedom for the consumer, I would agree, will be very difficult to achieve.

Greenpeace destroys wheat crop

The illusion of choice.

Recently in class we have been discussing the illusion of “choice” as consumers when it comes to our food. The finger has been pointed only at big corporate agriculture and the process of our food between the farmer and the grocery store; how the middle men in between are controlling what is being produced below them in line, as well as what is being sold ahead of them in the chain. While I won’t deny that there is truth to the argument, I realized today in class when we watched a horrendous video similar to that above, that corporate agriculture is incredibly far from the only entity working to control our choice in the stores. My first reaction was literally, “What the hell?!” I was livid. Activists do this kind of garbage all the time. But the bigger issue is that these organizations who claim to have consumers’ best interest in mind obviously do not. Organizations such as Greenpeace, PETA, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), just to name a few, are political activist groups that have their own agendas to push and only give the impression they are working to better our lives as consumers. While I’m on my soap box, out of any donation to HSUS, a whopping 0% goes to any animal shelter or local humane society in the United States. Talk about propaganda! Airing those commercials with famous people and cute dogs and cats, claiming they help them!

Off my soap box (as much as I can…) for now and back to the idea of choice for a moment. We claim as consumers we are limited in our choices of what we can eat, but aren’t these group’s limiting them even more? PETA and HSUS both are trying to end animal agriculture for good. Not make it better, not improve the system, but end it. Period. So not only will we have to choose corn in everything else we buy, we will then be forced to become vegetarians. Now that’s a lack of choice. It won’t ever happen, but I’ll amuse my nonmeat consuming peers for a moment and hypothetically go down that road just, just briefly. At that point, there could be no fingers pointed at corporate agriculture for the lack of choice. At that point, those groups will have become even more powerful than those companies and will control everything we eat even more so than any single group does now.

Snap, back to reality, as I bite into my American grown hamburger. I suppose my main point here is that we cannot overlook the goals of these groups when we discuss the “illusion of choice.” They each have different goals, but ultimately, they want to limit the options of food for consumption we have available to us. Let the consumers decide if they want to eat GM wheat. In the video clip, the Greenpeace member says that they were trying to get CSIRO to be upfront and honest about the research they are doing. How can they do research to give factual information to the public about GMO’s if their plots are destroyed? These groups complain about a lack of long term research and trials of these new technologies, but then turn around and destroy the research plots and stations. Am I the only one who sees the contradiction here? There’s no way to do research on these crops and calm the fears of consumers if these groups—who are “looking out for consumers”—run around and ruin the research in progress.

Choice, to some extent, may in fact be an illusion to consumers. But the idea that big bad corporate agriculture is the guilty party is a stretch. In fact, consumers need to look in the mirror when they complain about lack of choice. But that’s a-whole-nother can of worms to be opened later.

South Central Farmers' Struggle for Justice

This video is a trailer for a documentary called The Garden, but it shows perfectly not only the disruption the farmers caused, but also how they utilized even more tactics than discussed in this blog during these peoples' struggle for justice. Watch it now, or when you get through the blog, or even just watch it and not read the blog, but it is a great clip for this.

In 1994, 14 acres of South Central Los Angeles was purchased and converted into a community garden, or “urban farm,” which at the time was considered one of the largest in the nation. The some, 350 families that cultivated the land called themselves the “South Central Farmers” and were mostly Latin American Immigrants. Long story short, in 2006, one of the original land owners sued the city of Los Angeles and got the land back. He posted and notified the farmers that they had a specific day to be off the property. The farmers and their families fought back, trying to say the repurchase of the land was handled incorrectly. Not only did they fight legally, but they also fought by protesting, holding vigils, and continuing to grow their crops on the land.

Ultimately, the ground was turned back to the previous owner and the farmers were evicted off of the ground. Ironically, they land to this day has sat idle and nothing has been done on it except to doze under the estimated 150 different plant species that used to grow on the 14 acres (Picture above). The city later devoted just less than 8 acres for the farmers to relocate onto and only 3 acres have been actually made available to them to cultivate.

But looking back on their movement and struggle to try and keep the land, it is easy to see that they utilized many different tactics that they had available to them. One of the biggest things they had was their organization. The South Central Farmers were a self governed organization with positions and voting and leaders. Having this organizational structure to the group allowed them to keep their eye on the prize, if you will, and have all their members working toward their single, ultimate goal. They had people who were not the group’s actual leaders but who were very capable speakers who, during the struggle, stepped up and acted as the main voice for the farmers. Having not only talented people, but also having two main voices allowed the group to be consistent with what they say, and sound professional and prepared rather than having numerous people speaking at once that could be saying different things.

The organization also relied on their ability to connect to outside people and gain support from celebrities and people with a lot of influence. Leonardo DiCaprio, Danny Glover, Willie Nelson, and Ralph Nader are just some of the many well-known people who supported the groups struggle. To the left is a picture of Daryl Hannah who actually chained herself to a walnut tree in protest of the eviction. Not only did the farmers have numerous celebrities and people of power, but they also had a lot of themselves. They had power in numbers and they showed it when they protested and had their night time candle-lit vigils. The farmers all came out in support of their cause and made a huge showing in the area around the garden. Not only did they show their numbers there, but as the case went through the courts, a strong majority of the farmers also appeared outside the court rooms and legal buildings where the hearings and trials were taking place.

With their protests and vigils they brought awareness to the situation. They changed the status quo of people’s thoughts of south central Los Angeles, and shed light on a situation most people left “out of sight and out of mind.” As this came about, people had to take note; their movie stars and political leaders were engaged in some issue that they all of a sudden started to follow as well. This disrupted the norm of the time for that area, and for anybody who followed. And beyond disrupting the mindset of people, they also caused actual disruption throughout their struggle. They challenged the idea of eviction from the beginning; many farmers climbed the fence and continued to farm and take crops off the land. They ignored the posted signs and chains and locks, and even when authorities came, they did everything they could to stay farming the land. Then when the demolition crew finally arrived, as mentioned before, people were in the trees, sitting in the garden with their tools, and lining the fence. They also surrounded the garden on the street and police had to create a line in order to keep the farmers and protesters away from the destruction.

I had heard of this situation before now from another CES class, but we looked more at the situation itself and what was happening, and less of the movement and how it worked. I think the entire situation left a bigger impact than we may consider. Most people probably have not heard of the South Central Farmers, but they may have heard about Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), farmers markets, or possibly even community gardens—Pullman has two. The unfortunate situation in LA, I think, has caused a ripple throughout the local agricultural movement itself. I think that people who start, or are involved in such gardens or markets are definitely aware of what happened and have taken strides of preventative care, if you will, to protect them from the same thing. I also think that they realize that the SCF organization had an actual business structure with positions and policies, and that these things can also help the existing organizations function in a way that will help them if a similar situation arises.

Regardless of people like the land owner in this story and other people who are actually against agriculture (because I won’t say that the land owner here is), people will always farm the land. People will always look to better their community. And at times, those two will merge together as one.

Farm Workers

In the book Roots of Justice by Larry R. Salomon discusses multiple movements throughout history and how organization of the people involved happened. When deciding what group or movement to focus this blog on, I chose the Filipino Farm workers because I felt like I could relate best to them. I hope being able to relate to this group will allow me to better understand their side of the issue and focus on why and how their movement was or wasn’t successful.

Without spending too much time discussing the idea of ‘success’ in movements, I think for argument’s sake, we can say that, for the most part, the Filipino farm laborers’ movement was successful. They faced serious adversity, and change was far from quick. But at the end of the day (figuratively speaking), they got “better than the union’s original demands” (Salomon, 2003, pg 18).

But why were they successful, and how did they accomplish what they wanted to? First off, why did they feel the need to try and make change? The Filipino workers were being shorted wages, poor working conditions, and were thought to be best suited for the “stoop” jobs because of their short build. Long story short, they demanded better pay, better work conditions, and equal rights as their white bosses and land owners—to end the discrimination against them. The movements in California started years after similar movements arose in Hawai’i and that gave these movements one of their biggest advantages; experience. Many farm workers had migrated to the main land looking for more work after they had partaken in the work stoppages and strikes in Hawai’i. When they were faced with similarly poor conditions on the main land, and after seeing success on the islands of strikes, etc, there was only one sensible thing to do.

Another part of the success of the Filipinos in California was that they were led by Larry Itliong and other very capable leaders. Some of these men had participated in the movements in Hawai’i and they were able to use those experiences to organize the people and lead them through the struggle. They struggled against white mobs and local police who would attack the picket lines and people involved in the movement. But what the Filipino’s did in response was a huge tactic in their favor. They stood up to the mobs. They decided that they had to become militant in order to not get pushed around and show that they were very serious about their demands and strikes.

It took multiple tries at organizing the labor force before they were able to create the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. This was yet another advantage in the movement’s repertoire of tactics. The union grew large and quickly. A strike or work stoppage with all the union’s members caused a huge disruption and halted crop production and the growers were unable to successfully replace the workers and still make profits on their land. Salomon says that during the largest strike, lettuce growers lost up to $100,000 per day. Having the huge power in numbers, even in the face of attacks against them, they were able to put a lot of pressure on the land owners and growers. Because the Filipinos were truthfully good at working in the fields, the growers had to meet (and exceed) their demands for working conditions, pay, and equal rights as Americans.  

Eventually the movement joined forces with Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association, which strengthened the entire movement for all races and their struggle against racism and the rich white land owners. When the two merged, a new union was formed; The United Farm Workers of America. This union still remains today, and is still very active in working for better working conditions and fair pay for its members.  But besides the remaining union, this movement left an impact and ideals that can still be applied today. In agriculture now, migrant labor is a huge part of the labor force in fresh food production; tree fruit, vegetables, grapes, etc. In Washington, that labor is Mexican migrant workers. I think that movements like these have forced land owners and growers to pay fair wages to those migrant workers. These foods are usually grown in specific regions, so the workforce is centralized and close, making it easier to organize if they felt a need to. Granted, some people still do take advantage of them and pay them much lower wages, but that is changing. Credit should be given to the Filipino movement in that now growers are aware of what organized labor can do, and rather than try and suppress them and prevent them from organizing, most farmers treat them fair so that they have no reason to organize.

In certain parts of this state, migrant labor makes up not only the majority of the labor force, but also of the population. I would guess that in those areas, this—and other—agricultural movements have been taught and discussed much more than in Eastern Washington where I grew up. I had never heard about this particular movement before now, but I think looking back on the struggles and everything involved, it is clear to see that an impact has been left in agriculture today.