The Rose House Café was eye-opening in a way I did not expect. Prior to the event, I rarely thought of where the food I ate came from. As far as I was concerned really, the food I ate came from the local supermarket a mere 5 minutes away. I paid even less attention to who was picking this food. The food industry is simply more complex than one could ever imagine. A lot of people, including myself have been ignorant of the industry’s complexity. Justine Vanden Heuvel and Mary Jo Dudely’s discussion at the Rose House Café brought a lot of insight as to how the industry operates. When people hear “New York” an image of Times Square or tall skyscrapers pops into their head. Hardly does anyone picture the vast farmland used as the second largest producer of apples and pumpkins in the country, in addition to other crops. I usually made a trip to the orchards with my family one time in the fall season to pick apples in upstate New York but I never realized how big of a contributor the state was. I was shocked to learn that agriculture was a $5.7 billion dollar industry—I wondered if this was a real statistic or just exaggerated; it was accurate. Cornell first started a program to help farm workers in the 1970s because students in CALS who were required to work a farm for a semester or year. These students recognized the need to offer support for farmers and improve living and working conditions for farmers and their families.
It’s true that the conditions for farmers today have improved a lot since then but what about the migrant workers? It is not possible to measure how many undocumented migrant workers there are. Most of the workers are from Mexico and Guatemala and have a 6th grade level education. It is estimated that there are anywhere from half to ninety-five percent of the farm workers are underestimated. Questions remain about the treatment of these undocumented workers. Especially because of the upcoming presidential election, immigration is a topic widely talked about. Deporting these undocumented workers would not only hurt the billion dollar farming industry but it would also break families as children born in America are citizens. Personally, I feel like more attention should be focused on undocumented workers. Of course these workers should not just be granted citizenship but they should be protected in a way that helps the industry and also supports the workers by ensuring their rights and providing health care to them and their families.