Coronavirus outbreaks among farm workers are popping up in rural
communities across the country, sparking fears within the
agriculture industry that cases will skyrocket as harvest season
stretches into summer.
In the coming weeks, more crews will be sent into fields to
pick, pack and ship ripening crops. About a quarter of the 2.5
million-person workforce follows the harvest into other regions,
bringing concerns that migratory workers could spread the disease
to more farms and states.
Like meatpacking plant employees,
farm workers have been deemed essential for their role in the
nation’s food supply. But the federal government has not made
safety rules mandatory, leaving it to farmers’ discretion whether
to enact any safety measures at all.
Advocates for the low-income, mostly immigrant workforce say not
enough farming operations have taken steps to protect workers,
warning that pickers of the nation’s fruits and vegetables could
trigger Covid-19 contagions in new places just as they are
reopening their economies.
“It’s very concerning given that there have been several
outbreaks at farm labor camps this early in the season in North
Carolina,” said Lori Johnson, managing attorney of the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of
North Carolina.
Farm industry groups insist they are capable of keeping workers
safe, noting that many farms have rebuilt workers’ housing to
provide more separation among sleeping laborers. Many have also
added hand-washing stations and mask requirements.
But evidence around the country indicates that those efforts
have been sporadic and may not be sufficient to prevent
outbreaks.
Farms in nearly every region are seeing a spike in positive
cases. More than 100 workers at
two large produce operations in New Jersey contracted the virus
in May, as the state develops an aggressive testing campaign for
migrant workers. In North Carolina,
a strawberry farm in Guilford County temporarily closed after
eight workers tested positive.
Fruit-packing workers in the Yakima Valley of Washington state
have been protesting for weeks for personal protective equipment
and other precautions. They successfully pressured Washington Gov.
Jay Inslee to
issue safety requirements that went into effect last week.
Nearly 500 farm workers in Yakima, which produces most of the
nation’s tree fruit, have gotten sick during the pandemic.
“People are really scared, there are a lot of unknowns,”
Lupe Gonzalez, a longtime farm worker in Immokalee, Fla., told
POLITICO via a translator. At the beginning of May, there were 44
confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Immokalee, a major tomato growing
region in South Florida. Today there are around 500 cases,
according to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. There is evidence
that an outbreak is spreading in Belle Glade and Homestead, two
other large farm worker towns in the area.
“We’re still seeing a lot of issues here in Immokalee where
people still have to go to work, still have to provide for their
families, and don’t have that access or ability to be able to
socially distance from one another not only in work but also their
living situations,” Gonzalez said.
The medical organization Doctors without Borders set up a mobile
clinic in Immokalee in mid-April to provide testing for migrant
workers, as well as to distribute sanitation products and promote
public health practices. It’s the first time the organization,
which serves high-need patients mainly in conflict zones, has
worked in the U.S.
In May, the clinic, which travels from farm to farm testing
workers after shifts end, saw a whopping 35 percent positive rate,
evidence that community spread was occurring, said Jean Stowell,
head of the group’s Covid-19 team in the U.S. The national positive
rate is only around 6 percent.
Stowell said the high rate is of “deep concern” to the
medical team.
The rising numbers of reported cases is adding urgency to
requests by labor leaders to government and farm industry
representatives for expanded testing at individual farm sites and
labor camps, contact tracing on farms where outbreaks are
discovered, and industry-provided benefits like health care, hazard
pay and safer housing accommodations.
But the workers lack clout: As many as half of them are
estimated to be undocumented, and a significant portion of the rest
are in the country on temporary work visas.
A spokesperson for the Labor Department said that the agency “is
acting to keep America’s workers safe and healthy during the
coronavirus pandemic.” The department’s Occupational Safety and
Health Administration “has preexisting requirements and standards
that not only remain in place and enforceable, but also apply to
protect workers from the coronavirus.” The spokesperson cited the
the general duty clause, which requires employers to provide a work
environment that is free from safety and health hazards, as well as
guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
when determining if violations of workplace safety requirements are
taking place.
In the absence of federal action, advocates are turning to state
governments with their pleas for more support to be provided to
farm workers who form the bedrock of the U.S. food supply
chain.
Crop-pickers work and live in close quarters, making it
difficult to follow social distancing guidelines. So health care
providers in Immokalee have been educating workers on how to
protect themselves as best as possible, such as instructing those
who become sick to shield themselves from others if total isolation
is not an option.
Tomato season is wrapping up in Florida, and pickers are
beginning to move north to follow harvests in other states. Stowell
said the mobile clinic is evaluating where to travel next.
“Covid is here for the foreseeable future, so the issue of not
having access to safe isolation will continue to be a problem for
this community wherever they move, whether it’s Immokalee or
Michigan,” she said.
Hindered by limited testing and stigma around the virus, public
health and labor groups have faced difficulty measuring the
severity of coronavirus outbreaks. In North Carolina, hot spots
have emerged in farm worker camps across the state, but not all
positive cases are being reported, said Anna Jensen, executive
director of the North Carolina Farmworkers Project.
Jensen said the lack of access to comprehensive, clear test
results is why she believes “things are going to get worse.”
The CDC and OSHA, the nation’s public health and worker
protection agencies, last week
issued additional guidance for farm workers during the
pandemic.
The joint guidance noted that “agriculture work sites, shared
worker housing, and shared worker transportation vehicles present
unique challenges for preventing and controlling the spread of
Covid-19.” It recommended that farmers screen laborers for
coronavirus risk, take temperatures and separate workers exhibiting
symptoms when possible.
But Farmworker
Justice, an advocacy group, said the guidance “seems to adopt
language to make sure that essential workers are back to work as
soon as possible,” and repeated its call for OSHA to issue
mandatory rules requiring more extensive protections, along with
more investment in health resources for rural communities.
Marc
Schenker, a public health professor at the University of
California, Davis and founder of the Western Center for
Agricultural Health and Safety, said that “all the
characteristics of farm workers are risk factors,” such as an
inability to keep distance from coworkers, lack of readily
available clean water and housing accommodations. And he said that
OSHA has a long history of a “hands off attitude” that
doesn’t adequately oversee the safety of agricultural
workers.
“Some farms are trying to implement safety and precautions,
and that’s to be recognized, but the challenges are enormous,” he
said.
