The Human Cost of Cheap Food

Chances are that if you’ve eaten a domestic tomato this winter, you’ve eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a modern-day slave.

In Immokalee—an immigrant community an hour down the road from the ultra-posh enclave of Naples, Florida—farm laborers work at a torrid pace to supply the United States with roughly 90 percent of its domestic tomato supply each winter.

As the logistics of industrial food systems often require, exploitation is a key ingredient in feeding our desire for out-of-season produce. Workers are paid only 45 cents for every 32-pound basket of tomatoes they pick, which almost ensures a cycle of endemic poverty.

It’s especially troubling when you realize those who are responsible for getting our food from field to plate often aren’t even able to feed themselves. Yet the commercial food industry that benefits from cheap tomatoes has long been opposed to increasing workers’ pay.

A measure proposed by the workers’ rights group Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to pay growers one cent more per basket was met with such resistance that one fast-food executive used his middle-school daughter’s online username to spread rumors about the CIW’s leaders pocketing donations.

(It should be noted that in recent years, a handful of supermarkets and fast-food chains have agreed to pay increases for Immokalee workers. But not without a fight.)

Living conditions in the Immokalee community are dismal at best, and Stuffed and Starved author Raj Patel likens the conditions to an apartheid-era township in South Africa, only worse.

Although this is an isolated example of human exploitation, it is by no means uncommon. As Carlos Marentes (founder and director of the Border Agricultural Workers Project) describes it, our food system is an economic model rooted in exploitation of farm workers.

In order to ensure our food is slavery-free, we must not only become more aware of where our food comes from but also value what we eat more. When we value our food less, we value those who produce it less and so on right down the distribution line.

In the United States, we spend less than 10 percent of our disposable income on food. In comparison, many people living in countries in Asia, Africa and South America spend over 40 percent of their disposable income on food.

The sign of a developed nation should not be an overly-abundant supply of cheap food produced with slave labor, but rather, a steady supply of highly nutritional food grown by environmentally conscious farmers with an admirable human rights record. This is probably a bit idealistic. However, it doesn’t mean it’s not something we should strive for in our every day food choices.

(Photo credit: sylvar on Flickr)