Farmworkers have been enslaved in states besides Florida: in fact, a farmer in my county (Ventura) was convicted of enslaving numerous farmworkers for years, and at the time it was said that this was probably an underreported crime.

Thanks for covering this issue. I would be very interested to see how much more it would really cost consumers to pay farmworkers decent wages for produce of different types, organic or otherwise.

It's good to read this today, especially after struggling through the reams of pointless screed and denial that threaten to make the NYTimes dot earth comments worthless. A mark in the win column. (Or choose your sports metaphor.)

Looking forward to reports on biogas/organic fertilizer and robotic organic farming, if any.  Hehey.

Robots make better slaves.  People need better paying, more productive jobs.  Like building, operating, and maintaining robots.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

This is excellent:

<<
He noted that organic standards make no stipulations about how growers treat workers. For him, he added, organic means nothing if workers are systematically mistreated.
>>

Yes, and not for him alone.

Similarly, if not yet with the same recognized moral impact, "organic" as a label on animal products tells the consumer nothing about how animals are (mis)treated, save perhaps a minimal bit about what they are fed.  Worse, other labels positively suggest humane treatment of animals, when in fact they mean nothing of the kind.

Why is it that Americans are so reluctant to ask about the circumstances in which their food is produced?  Why do we require a monumental spectacular labor equivalent to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," every few years, to prick our consciences?

The mistreatment of farmworkers is of course a part of the current highly charged discourse on immigration.  Since very many farmworkers are undocumented immigrants ("illegal aliens"), any demand for fair treatment of them becomes part of how we are to assess our treatment of all such immigrants.

In CNN's debate in Myrtle Beach, SC, last Monday, Joe Johns asked Barack Obama an intriguing little question about his policy statement on health care reform: Should guaranteed health care include illegal immigrants.  Unfortunately Obama said, simply, "No," and so missed a terrific opportunity to present what a truly civilized and humane society ought to value and to do.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

I wonder, Canis, if one of the reasons people in this country want to stay in denial about where our food comes from and how it's raised and produced is because most folks are so far removed from it. If it wasn't for the grocery stores people would starve. So to seriously question it means we may have to take some responsibility, not only for our choices but also for, perhaps, some of its production, whether through CSAs or community gardens or backyard gardens, whatever. Also, there's the fear of rising prices in a time when everything is getting more expensive. Most people these days are losing ground financially. What is needed is some imagination and creativity with regard to how our food is produced and where, and the nature of our relationships with the growers/producers of our food (and in turn their relationships with the land, the crops, the animals, etc.) We have to be willing to seriously take on changing what has been the status quo until now. On this and on many other issues.

   Thanks Tom for reporting on this.  A subject near and dear to my own heart.

   In addition to the problems mentioned with undocumented workers, we should pay attention to the problems workers have under so-called "guest" programs.  Most of these have no to little to weak programs to protect the rights of workers.  If we do have guest workers (I am against it), we must at a minimum protect their rights.

   We should also note increasing trends of using prison labor in farms (small, but scary).  Images of workers in chains picking cotton appear in my mind.

   And we should never forget our poor native workers.  Contrary to what is becoming an American myth, there are still native workers who are migrants.  I have met and worked with them (and taught their children as they briefly sojourned in schools).  The low profile of rural poverty means that most Americans know even less about it than urban poverty (though that hardly seems possible).

   Tom is absolutely correct when he suggests that we not see this as just a problem of individual farmers, but a systemic problem in the way we produce our food.  The vast majority of farmers don't like the system, but have no ideas as to how to change it.

    One idea is for the national government to get back into the business of building low income housing, but this time build some housing for temporary workers (migrants) in rural areas as well as housing in urban areas.  A rural-urban political coalition around this idea could make it a powerful force in politics.

patrick in Beijing