Farmworker Awareness Week

Global Health Week has begun on campus this week. Happening concurrently—although less advertised—is Farmworker Awareness Week.

In honor of the 13th annual National Farmworker Awareness Week, a small group of student organizers on campus working with Student Action with Farmworkers, a small non-profit organization based in Durham that is dedicated to creating a more just agricultural system, has prepared fun activities and events on Duke’s campus to raise awareness about current issues related to farm labor and the inequalities facing farmworkers and their families. As North Carolina is heavily economically reliant on agriculture, farm labor is topic that is worth taking time to become educated about.

Often times, our community focuses heavily on the need for healthier and local food, but the workers who pick these crops for us are too frequently overlooked. The people that perform the backbreaking labor to ensure that we have affordable crops should be recognized for their hard work rather than looked down upon by the general population. These agricultural laborers are usually immigrants from Latin America, coming to the United States to work long hours in the hot fields six days a week. They are underpaid and overworked, without overtime compensation. While we are living comfortably on campus, some complaining of not having air conditioning in their rooms, some farm laborers are surviving in homes that are deemed unsafe for human beings.

Being college students with so many resources available, it should be within our means and responsibility to educate ourselves on local issues such as this, and speak up for those who cannot always speak up for themselves.

Yuchen Long, Trinity ’15