After living for some time in Central California, America’s top farming region – where more than 250 different fruits and vegetables are grown! – you can’t help but notice the disparities and imbalance. On one side, the farmworkers, who often earn wages well below the poverty line – because farm labor is a seasonal occupation and because it pays little. …
AP STORY: Proliferation of food labels
Healthy eating has become a big trend in the U.S. in recent years. And companies big and small have been trying to monopolize on it. Eco-labels — describing a dizzying array of sustainable agricultural practices — are increasingly cropping up on farm products, claiming everything from ‘grassfed’ to ‘free-range’ to ‘predator friendly’. Some labels are legitimate, representing a stringent cerficiation process, while others …
AP STORY: Deferred Action for workers
Thousands of young immigrants lined up last week across the country hoping for the right to work legally in America without being deported. The Obama administration’s new program – called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA for short – is meant for those who came to the U.S. as children, grew up steeped in American culture and have little or nothing to …
AP PHOTOS: Bug’s Eye View
Last year, I did a photo shoot for the AP about strawberry workers. Some time later, I was contacted by a painter from the Central Coast. Claire O. Harkins wrote that she saw my article and photos in the Monterey County Herald and asked whether she could use one of the photos as inspiration for an oil painting. I agreed …