It's a question we ask a lot lately, in regard to vaccines, health benefits, government aid, access to opportunity...so many things.

Two weeks ago we spoke about who qualifies as a front line worker - grocery workers, specifically - as well as how this issue calls to mind the question of who qualifies to have their labor valued, and who qualifies to have their work viewed with respect and esteem. 

We know that grocery workers are essential workers, and that means farm workers are essential, also. Of course! you may be thinking to yourself... Yet farm jobs receive the same kind of degradation as many low-level professions (the exception being the often idolized 'maker culture' that has been cultivated over the last decade, with particular reverence reserved for White male makers). A farm job is not viewed as a 'real' career, nor does the work of producing food lead to the valuing of those food products in a system where the cost of food is driven ever downward by corporate consolidation. 

The need to constantly make more money while lowering the costs of goods and services has had a particularly strong and unfortunate impact on the food that we eat. For those that do hold farm jobs in high esteem, the ways that White supremacy hide in plain sight can make it all too easy to ignore the question of who has access to land, and who has access to low-paying work. 

When farmers are struggling to maintain their own living, it has a trickle-down effect where the systems in place - in this case, a U.S. Agricultural system built on slave labor - are not what someone would necessarily choose to maintain, yet they feel trapped in a cycle of the status quo. Who has the time or effort or energy to envision something different when you are fighting to save this year's crop from a climate disaster, as just one example?

As we consider solutions, we keep coming back to the dual issue of wages and respect. As one newsletter reader recently shared:

We could keep and draw in so many more talented people if there were real opportunities to make farming a career instead of an improbable scenario that prevents many from entering and for those who do, a sacrifice that might break you at any step along the way.

The legacy of racism is hard at work on the continued standards of paying farm workers little to no wages, as well as the tendency to view their jobs as beneath what an upwardly mobile American would aim for. One key way that these two issues interact and reinforce one another is directly tied to the elevation of farm work as a career, rather than a last resort, a challenging summer job, or a stepping stone to something else: the ability to save money over time.

Without savings, farm workers cannot act on ambitions to own their own land or farm business, nor can they care for themselves and their loved ones in the present moment (when farms jobs favor those who are young and single), nor in retirement (when the demands of physical labor become impossible to meet). As another newsletter reader shared about her lifetime of farm work: 

I've gotten a lot of gratitude over the years for my work.  At the time it felt wonderful and I thought those good references and new skills would take me to another level, but it never landed me that dream opportunity of a living wage, long term job with benefits or the ability to save enough to have my own property.

Among the many inherited consequences of United States agriculture's foundation in enslavement is the myth of unskilled labor, a concept that seems to be at the foundation of maintaining low wages and low respect. As Marianne Stupfel-Wallace writes on Medium, "I put quotes around the word “unskilled” because that’s a misnomer. ALL jobs require skills even though some jobs like grocery store workers, servers in a restaurant, delivery people etc. don’t require a college education."

A common response that employers of all kinds level against a $15 federal minimum wage is the issue that many team members come in with fewer skills and more need for training. Categorizing those people as unskilled, and paying them less accordingly, is another way of saying that some people are worth less. It's dehumanizing, and we invite you to consider what it would mean to get rid of the idea entirely.

We recently spoke with a farmers' market vendor who put it succinctly: "to say that we can only pay those who are coming in with certain skills, is to say that the only people that deserve to be trained are people that can subsidize their own training." 

The myth of unskilled labor is not only an excuse to pay low wages, but it also results in high turnover, at cost to the employer. As Annie Lowery wrote recently for The Atlantic, "In any given month, one in ten low-wage workers leaves or starts a gig; fast-food restaurants have annual employee-turnover rates as high as 150 percent. That means a large share of low-wage workers experiences a spell of unemployment in any given year. ...a worker earning $15 an hour for six months is still better off than a worker earning $7.25 an hour for twelve months." (italics our own)

In short, the myth of unskilled labor focuses only on the expectations set out for an employee, and ignores the necessary balance of an employer investing in your team.

Next week, more on the impact of low or no-wage positions. Thank you for being here with us as we continue to unravel the knots and push forward for change. If there is something you'd like to hear more about, please get in touch. 

Yours in food, justice, and food justice,

Dor + Tay

photo by Alexa Romano for GFJ Stories