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| ISSUE NO. 601 |
| This is the third in a series of essays from the Not Our Farm project in solidarity with Good Food Jobs and the raise to $15/hr fair wage for workers. You can read the first and second essays here. DEAR FARM OWNER / BOSS . . . Since the season ended, I have been reflecting on my experience at your farm. I have been back and forth trying to figure out if I want to do the labor of sharing feedback with you. For the sake of transparency, and for my own peace of mind, I am taking the time to write to you some of my thoughts and feelings. The space for feedback should have been created as soon as we began the internship program. The bottom line is that your internship program is exploitative, misleading, and should simply end. Hire employees and pay them a living wage. Fuck - at least pay them minimum wage. If you can't do that - you shouldn't be running a business. Honestly, I don't believe that you should be farming at all considering the way you use your power over the land and over others. You are not prepared to be in a leadership position or to be stewarding land. I applied for and accepted a position with you under the expectation that there would be an educational exchange. In the instances that we brought up issues with you and asked questions - we were not listened to. Often, I felt immediately met with defensiveness. You were repeatedly asked for a syllabus which you agreed to provide but we never received. I wasn’t learning from you, rather from the embodied experience of laboring for you. You were unprepared for our questions about cover cropping, compost, finances, even the plan for the week. Most of the time, even the plan for the day. You aren’t prepared to have workers because you don't even have a hygienic place for them to use the bathroom and wash their hands! I asked you for a hand-washing station next to the bathroom which you never put in place. In a pandemic. I don't need veggies or thank you's. I need to be compensated for my labor. The dedication I felt farming this year was a dedication to the land, a dedication to learning, and a dedication to the rest of the crew. I am deeply grateful for the experience and for the relationships I have formed through it. You say that you love growing food, but it was a rare moment if I felt that love or care from you. I spent a large part of the season wondering why you choose to farm at all. Your ideas around efficiency, urgency, rest, and your entire approach to the land is colonial. And funnily you were constantly asking for speed and efficiency without providing us with any structure, clear instructions, or open communication - which would have made things faster, smoother, and overall a better experience for all of us. I want to do you the courtesy of being upfront - and hope you will take some of this to heart, reflect, be honest with yourself, and change your behavior and actions in the future. Perhaps you can invite some of your white peers into conversation with you and create a plan for moving forward. Take a break from farming and give up your land while you learn how to be a more effective leader. . . . The letter above is adapted and excerpted from a letter I wrote to my boss after my first season farming, where I was paid $5/hour. I made the choice to work at this farm for multiple reasons. I had been wanting to farm for a while, and had been unable to find beginner farm jobs that paid minimum wage. I had encouragement and financial support from others who knew how much I wanted this, and the opportunity to learn was how I justified the decision to myself despite my hesitancies. Amidst pandemic, climate change, and ongoing apocalypse(s), growing food felt and feels urgent to me. As others in the series have said, slavery and colonization are inseparable from the ways we (especially in the U.S) treat farmers and landworkers. Farming under capitalism is a job like any other. Farm owners cannot applaud themselves for growing “sustainably” while sacrificing sustainability for their workers. They cannot claim moral superiority for feeding people while sacrificing their relationships. The communities I want to feed and be fed by require trust and a real investment in collective care and collective liberation. $15/hour is a minimum. It is an invitation. Let’s dream bigger. Why are we okay with land and water being owned? What do farming and agriculture look like when we are also demanding/enacting material decolonization and abolition? How do we earn with and from one another in ways that are generous, boundaried, and without hierarchy? Mallika Singh on behalf of Not Our Farm Not Our Farm (NOF) works to support and bring visibility to the workers on farm operations. The hands of these workers are often unseen and their stories untold in our American farming culture, but are no doubt the hearts of any operation. NOF is a combination of story sharing and advocacy, and strives to collectively reimagine the future of worker-centered farming.
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