Agriculture

While Meatpacking Companies Reap Big Profits, Cattle Ranchers Struggle

Leave a Comment / Agriculture / By max cyril

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Grocery store beef prices are rising. The rancher’s share is falling. And the companies that dominate the highly-concentrated meatpacking industry are making a killing. Shad Sullivan has stopped paying for cable TV, yearly vacations and trips to movie theaters. He’s contemplated ending his health …

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Historic heat wave highlights the need for farmworker protections

Leave a Comment / Agriculture, Climate Change, Farm Workers, workplace safety / By max cyril

Summer heat is a danger for farmworkers every year, with heat deaths happening steadily. But with climate change and heat waves like the one that hit the Pacific Northwest in recent weeks becoming more frequent, the need for legal protections for farmworkers is becoming more urgent. At least one worker died during that heat wave. California farmworkers have a right to shade when …

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How the Covid Land Rush Is Hurting New Farmers

Leave a Comment / Agriculture, economy, Farm Workers, Rural America, Uncategorized / By max cyril

The pandemic has inspired city dwellers and investors to buy land in rural areas. That’s driving up farmland prices and pushing some beginning farmers out of the market. Abel Dowden, age 20, grew up on his family’s beef farm in the Missouri Ozarks. He just got married and is ready to start his own farm. Dowden …

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Why Climate Plans Must Include Farmers of Color

Leave a Comment / Agriculture, Climate Change / By max cyril

Proposed legislation would give farms resources to fight climate change. Will farmers of color get equal access? Marvin Frink looks out at his Black Angus cattle farm as the sun is coming up and ponders what’s on the horizon. He and his wife Tanisha started Briarwood Cattle Farm in Raeford, N.C. 10 years ago after Marvin was …

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Judge tosses Trump-era pork processing speed-up, this week in the war on workers

Leave a Comment / Agriculture, President Trump / By max cyril

Line speeds in meat processing plants are a classic example of something that’s simultaneously a worker safety issue and a consumer safety issue. And this week, both workers and consumers got a major victory when a federal judge threw out a Trump-era rule allowing pork processing plants to operate at higher speeds. According to U.S. District Judge …

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US to Workers Killed on Small Farms: We Don’t Care

Overtime for farmworkers passes California legislature, heads to governor’s desk

Leave a Comment / Farm Workers / By max cyril

The California legislature has passed a bill that would give farmworkers the same overtime protections as other workers. Now the question is whether Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not taken a position on the proposal, will sign the expansion from the state’s current law, which requires employers to pay time-and-a-half after farmworkers put in 10 hours …

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Heat kills California farmworkers, but the state won’t always admit it

Leave a Comment / Workplace Conditions / By max cyril

Agricultural workers have fewer job protections than most other workers even as they do physically grueling labor for low pay. It’s a vicious circle—most of the people who work in the fields come from vulnerable groups, and the low wages and lack of protections keep them vulnerable. California’s heat is one significant source of illness …

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N.M. Field and Dairy Laborers Win Right To Workers’ Comp—Court Calls Exemption ‘Absurd’

Leave a Comment / worker's rights / By max cyril

The New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled in June that excluding field and ranch workers from workers’ comp protection is unconstitutional. It was the second victory for New Mexico’s farmworkers in less than a year—and that’s big news in a low-wage sector made up primarily of immigrant workers, where victories tend to be few and …

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Citing ‘Tradition,’ Big Ag Fights Reforms for Child Farmworkers

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / By max cyril

Advocates push for stronger protections during National Farmworker Awareness Week “[When I was 12] they gave me my first knife. Week after week I was cutting myself. Every week I had a new scar. My hands have a lot of stories.” –17-year-old boy who started working at age 11 in Michigan (Human Rights Watch) America’s …

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