Slavery in Farming - Research Paper Example

Slavery in Farming Organic food is essential for the world today, especially America. According to some findings of USDA, almost 28 percent of the consumers purchase fresh and also processed organic food every week. They get it from big supermarket chains as well as the retailers like Costco and Walmart. Organic food is extremely good for the heath and thus buying organic food and consuming it becomes a good thing for the majority as they feel good and healthy about their buying patterns. It is not only good for the health of people but also very healthy for the planet. Consumers are trying to develop a very healthy buying behavior as they are taking steps to make sure that more organic food is procured from the local producers in the farmer’s market along with the delivery trucks which are coming door to door with consumer supported agriculture boxes and goodies. A huge blind spot exists between the majority in relation to the origin of the food which is consumed today regarding the fact that who basically plants it, grows it and later harvest it. What is their living pattern, how much are they paid, what kind of working conditions are they experiencing and are they satisfied. In a Country like United States there are about 1.4 million farm workers who work in states like Washington, Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, Florida and about one third of them are living in California. Majorly the farmers are working in the large farms. Most of the farm workers are immigrants and are part of the temporary population. From the times of Chinese gold diggers coming from the Pearl River Delta and trying to work on their native horticulture especially in the valleys and areas of California from the 19th century, the farm workers are mostly marginalized and are living a life which is precarious especially in the agriculture state along with slavery practice bringing with it from the South a lot of concerns about the agriculture. They are problems and the major problem is their language problem and this makes them live an isolated life, totally away from the outside world (Hopkinson, D. 2006).  During the New deal era, there was a Wagner Act along with national labor relations act which was signed by the President Franklin Roosevelt during the year 1935, sadly the farm workers were excluded from these acts as per the demand and request of the democratic senators coming from the south. They were not ready to extend the privileges to the African Americans and these were mostly the farm workers who were working in that region. The situation and condition along with the treatment had been the same with the farm workers since that time and no remedies and solutions have been taken out to work or improve conditions for them or think about them. Minimum wage laws do not apply federally to the farm workers along with the farmers not being entitled to the overtime pay as well. The labor rules totally change for the farm workers. Children who are of 12 years can be hired to work on the farms. According to some researches and surveys there has been an estimation of about 300,000 and 800,000 who work in the American fields at some point of their life in a year. There is no proper system to check, track and count them and their work. A lady from Bon Appetite Management company foundation, Vera Chang said that last week at the Eco Farm Conference that about 22 full time inspectors are taking control of 1.4 million farm workers and even during the 21st century there has been a systemic progress linked with the farm workers and their situation. Throughout America different incidents took place, from farm owners who were existing in Florida were charged for violating human rights and there has been about eight cases which involved slavery and about more than 1000 farm workers who were foreigners were prosecuted (Bushman, C. L., & Walker, J. 2002).  There are many organizations who are working against the Farming slavery and they want the farmers to get their rights, and in the midst of the bleak situation which was common to the US agriculture, there a remarkable work done by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who was a Florida based organization and their recent victory and achievement was the deal sealed with Sodexo. All the multinational food service providers and facilitation management who is responsible for serving 9.3 million meals a day approximately signed this Coalition Fair food agreement. It was a code of conduct which included fair treatment of the farm workers along with properly looking into the farm workers complaints by the third party. The agreement they signed also committed Sodexo to pay a premium which is around 1.5 percent a pound for the tomatoes which are grown in order to ensure fair wages to the farm workers along with bringing transparency in the tomato purchasing. The American organic culture which exists with the superior standards of social justice cooperation and also participative democracy during the 1970s has not been able to make any difference or a dent in the practices which are conducted. Organic food is very crucial for the society today and it has a very long way to go. It just comprises of about 1 percent of the cultivated land in America and it is very important to make sure that exemplary records are shown when it comes to the labor practices being conducted. An example can be taken from Amigo Bob Cantisano was an organic farmer in California working since 1974, he was also an activist and the founder of the Ecological Farming Association in 1981.All the farmers who are working in about 600,000 acres to organic farming know that these people are paid very less per yield. Young idealistic farmers who are trying to live a lifestyle who are toiling the soil in order to feed their community are learning it in a hard manner. Farmers have become a very valuable link in the food chain which was dominated by the corporations who demand high volumes and they want to provide low costs when it comes to the US Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz moto was established and it came into existent. On the other hand demand of the consumers along with the expectations from low food prices became a huge component and part of the sad state of affair linked with the income of the farmers (Hopkinson, D. 2006).  There has been dreadful financial straits which lead to desperate strategies designed in order to reduce the labor costs. In California there is a foundation named as Full Belly Farm which performs debt free operations. They are responsible for providing decent living for the families. They provide and work on providing labor practices which are sustainable which include proper and stable payroll along with health benefits for the two third of the employees and also their families. There are many problems which exist today the socialist world today and one of the major problem which has been extremely complex is the spreading of the proletarian point of view amongst the more and also less scattered and disconnected agrarian workers. The wage slave has been in comparison a simple and a direct process in which the method is exploited which was linked with one easy of comprehension and also stark naked which was linked with the casual methods. Country slavery has been an important point here with the position being obscured by the form of concentration of capital which is responsible for extracting full profit behind the property ownership. The workers who are working at the farms only have wages and that too at irregular intervals. They are the caretaker of the land, machinery and also horses. All such cases are basically aggrieved by the presentation of the socialist position. There are other means of subsistence which are interlinked with the common property of the society and they also have socialists contemplate exclusion which is about the indebtedness (Bushman, C. L., & Walker, J. 2002).  Farming slavery is also a very common phenomenon in Brazil, and the Brazilian authorities are working to protect the farm workers who live a life of a slave in extremely worse conditions in the two south eastern states along with the official agencia Brasil reports. Almost forty four workers were working for the sugar cane plantation in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Their working rights were not registered and also they had no clean drinking water for the safety equipment. There were also 51 workers who were rescued from the similar conditions especially at the strawberry farms in the state of Minas Gerais. The employees here were compensated and the government of the Brazil launched a plan in order to eliminate and eradicate farm slavery from the year 2002.During the May of 2008, in Joao Pedro Stedile, there was a top official which was working at the movement of landless workers and according to him there were about 5266 workers who were living in near slave conditions and were rescued during the year 2008 (Bales, K. 1999).  For a country like America, from the 16th to the 19th century and there was an estimated amount of about 12 million Africans who were basically shipped as slaves to America and a lot of the majority went and started working at the sugar plantations of the Brazil and also West Indies and the humanity level was high here. There was a huge amount of people working as slaves in the plantation and even large farms. They were cultivating lucrative cash crops like tobacco, rice, sugar and also cotton. From 1860 there were many slaves who were in the Deep South and they also were in the large plantation directed by the white paid overseas. Under this system there were becoming chattel slaves who mean that they were working as ownership of a human being which was like descendants and there was also a racial element which was fundamental. All these slaves working in the farms were blacks of Africa and they were owned by the whites of European descent. During the 17th century, Virginia was followed by many southern colonies which enacted law that all the children of the slave mothers were born into slavery and the slaves were treated extremely in a poor way(Manegold, C. S. 2010).  The very first image which comes in the mind when chattel slavery is considered is that of the plantation life. The cultivation of the planter’s crop is the priority. The farmer has a lot of duties beyond this which include the slave clearing the land, building the fence and also working and performing many other odd jobs which are dictated by the circumstances. The working conditions were extremely harsh for the larger plantation and the overseers were assigned to monitor and perform the work and tasks. The connection with the slaves was less and they always tended to treat all the slaves in a very cruel and brutal matter. There were times when the slave was called the driver and he was enticed to hold the position and all the drivers were hated in the community of slaves. They had simple and small living quarters along with the food being usually just few meat morsels with some bread. The large plantations had household slaves and all these domestic servants were given master’s meals and they tend the house along with preparing meals for the guests and also taking care of the master’s children. Household slaves were treated in a better manner as appose to the plantation slaves (Bushman, C. L., & Walker, J. 2002). They were eating better and also were considered to be an integral part of the extended family. There were various paintings depicting the slaves as people who are busy picking cotton on a Mississippi plantation. Not only the slaves but also their children were suppose to work and the youngsters would start carrying water at a very young age of 5 or 6. There were slaves who were living on the smaller farms and these slaves enjoyed a very close relation with their masters which were on the side of the plantation. The reason behind this was linked with four slaves developing closer bonds instead of a planter owning four hundred. This situation use to lead towards a kinder treatment. There were some urban merchants and also artisans who were employed as slave labor in their shops. All the slaves were thus able to acquire great marketable skills and also there were some craftsman who displayed a great amount of resentment with a believe that labor price will suffer and generally the slaves who were living in the towns will have a greater amount of freedom as oppose to the ones who live on the farm. They were able to meet more people and they also became extremely worldly and all the individuals who were rebellious and daring took out some time and escaped as soon as they got an opportunity. From the year 1936 to the year 1938 there were more than 2300 former slaves who were interviewed and their work was recorded by the Works Progress administration. There were also slaves of the farm who talked about their lives and how much misery they went through in life. There are many books and work written about the Farming slavery and one of them is taken from the biography of Hillery Kane who lived a life of a slave and his work was available at the St Mary’s County in the state of Mary Land.(Hopkinson, D. 2006).  There are few artifacts of the slave life at the Lloyd Manor which was on the Long Island New York. His life and glimpses of his life as a farming slave are kept safe there. Africans were living a life of a slave and they discovered this and understood that they were bound to live a life of a slave. All these slaves were extremely submissive and they had a common response about this which looked and took care of the opportunities which were to be developed through their talents and also the farming slaves becoming skilled craftsmen. There were some submissive slaves who opted for passive resistance along with some passive aggression which was extremely obvious through their behavior. The lifestyle of the slaves on the farms and plantation was extremely different from the domestic slaves and it was not only the work which was different, there were many other important aspects (Manegold, C. S. 2010).  Slavery is an illegal phenomenon throughout the world and there are about twenty seven million people who are trapped in the social institutions which are extremely old and hold great historical significance. There is a very disturbing story of farming slavery linked with Kevin Bales which starts from the brick kilns in Pakistan along with the Thailand brothels which are on the offices of the multinational corporations (Bales, K. 1999).  He conducted an investigation which was linked with the conditions in Brazil, Pakistan, and Thailand along with India where extremely tragic results were revealed and this slavery was linked with the global economy. The slaves who are new basically are not the long term investors; however the situation is different with the farming slavery. According to Bales the slaves of the farms are cheap along with they getting little care and they were disposable. There has been an enormous population explosion which was over almost three decades and was flooded by various labor markets of the world with millions of desperate people who were also impoverished. There has been a revolution of the economic globalization along with the modernized agriculture which ended up in disposing poor farmers and also making them along with their families to get ready for enslavement. They were made targets for need and addiction. There has been a rapid change in the economic side which was through the developing countries and it also led towards violence and corruption. All the social rules were destroyed and most of the vulnerable individuals were protected and safeguarded. There has been various case studies of Bales which talks about all the actual slaves, public officials which are in well drawn cultural along with geographical and historical contexts. They are able to observe the complex economic relationships which are existent in the modern slavery and they also understand that liberation is a phenomenon which is linked with bitter victory for repression and oppression miner along with child prostitution and also starvation. There are suggestions provided for fighting the slavery which is new along with setting up proper examples of very positive and influential results which are from organizations like Pastoral Land commission which is situated in Brazil, also Anti Slavery international and also Human rights commission which is present in Pakistan. There are calls for researchers to follow the raw materials and products flow which is from the slave to the market place in a order which is designed to target campaigns linked with naming and also shaming corporations which are have a strong and deep relationship with slavery (Bales, K. 1999).  There is a book named as disposable people which is about abolishing slavery in the global world today. Also there is a book named as “Ten Hills Farm” which talks about a powerful saga of almost five generations who are slave owners and are working in New England colonies .America is one country which has been a hub of condoning slavery. There was a time when land became city and this book which is Ten Hills Farm deeply takes into account the story of a slavery which is existent in the North. Over all farming is a very important and crucial factor of the society and there has been a great deal of slavery in farming which has always been very existent throughout, from the oppression period to the modernization and development (Manegold, C. S. 2010). References Bales, K. (1999). Disposable people: New slavery in the global economy. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press. (Hopkinson, D. 2006). Up before daybreak: Cotton and people in America. New York: Scholastic Nonfiction. (Manegold, C. S. 2010). Ten Hills Farm: The forgotten history of slavery in the North. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. (Bushman, C. L., & Walker, J. 2002). In old Virginia: Slavery, farming, and society in the journal of John Walker. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkin s University Press. Read More