The Darker Side of Organics

If you missed it, last week's issue of The Nation was the food issue, much to my delight. Well, perhaps delight isn't the best word, as much of the coverage was pretty depressing. Take, for instance, the story by Felicia Mello about the conditions inside a baby carrot processing/packaging plant:

Once the carrots pass through an opening in the side of the main building, they enter a world that seems miles away from the fields and orchards outside. Dozens of machines fill the chilly air with a deafening noise. Employees wade through pools of water several inches deep on the plant's rubber floor. There are carrots everywhere-- scattered on the floor, piled inside carts and vats, in heaps at the base of the metal equipment.

At the grading tables, the new arrivals float by teams of Latinas in masks and hairnets who separate the good ones from those with imperfections. Supervisors stand by to time bathroom breaks of no more than seven minutes and to scold the women if they speak or look up from their work.

Here, surrounded by the rhythmic thwack-thwacking of the machines, Beatriz Gonzalez stands for eight hours a day and sorts. Wearing rubber gloves and down ski pants to keep her warm, she deftly reaches into the orange tide, plucking out defective specimens and tossing them into a center tub. Years of performing this repetitive motion have swollen her forearms and left her with arthritis in her knuckles. When she started working in the [Grimmway] Arvin plant, she earned the state minimum wage of $6.75 an hour. Four years later, she makes $7.30.

A petite woman with fluffy bangs and rounded features, Gonzalez studied law in her native Mexico but left school for the United States in search of wealth. "Now," she says sadly, "I have neither money nor education."

Kind of puts you off baby carrots, doesn't it? I haven't been able to buy a bag since reading this, opting instead for the whole, unpeeled variety. Up until recently I hadn't thought that the organic movement would have this problem, but apparently I was very wrong.

There is a movement to add "fair trade" label to food producers that meet the criteria; currently this label mostly applies to coffee, tea, chocolate, and fruit. You can find out which companies have fair trade certification here.