Deep Futures

Deep Futures Episode 6: Farming - Armando Elenes

Armando Elenes: All the trends are “Oh, what's our footprint,” right? “What’s our carbon footprint.” You know, “How much time did it take? How far did it come from?” Which is great for the environment, but what about the worker?

Annalee Newitz: When we talk about the future of farming, a lot of buzzwords get thrown around.

The News Project VO: “Just what is Permaculture?”

USA Today VO: “There’s now something new and it’s called biodynamic.”

BBC World Service VO: “GM stands for genetically modified.”

WSJ VO: “Lab-grown meat.”

YouTube VO: A food revolution is underway with an unlikely ingredient leading it: crickets…”

YouTube UNC VO: “The future of farming … might just be … hydroponics … aquaponics.”

USA TODAY Life VO: “Aerofarms are rethinking the technology behind vertical farming...”

Annalee: But there’s something we miss when we focus on these cutting-edge technologies of the future: the workers. You know, the people who actually fertilize the trees, tend to sick plants, and pick our organic, locally-sourced strawberries.

Annalee: Right now, there are roughly a million agricultural workers in the United States, and over half of them are undocumented. During the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve taken to calling them essential—because what could be more important than growing food? And yet—we don’t treat them that way. What will happen to farm workers over the next few decades? And how will that change what we put on our tables for dinner?

Annalee: I’m Annalee Newitz. In this episode of Deep Futures, we’re talking to someone who has spent his life in the fields, right alongside farm workers. He’s going to show us what farming is like now … and where it’s headed in the future.

Armando: And I hated the damn peaches. all that fuzz gets into your forearms throughout the day, and it just you're itching that crazy the entire day. So you're having to itch and rub your forearms from all that fuzz that gets into your skin. Man, that was terrible. I hated the peaches.

Annalee: Meet Armando Elenes. Born in Sinaloa, Mexico, he came to the U.S. when he was just a kid. His dad was a farmworker who’d spent years crossing the border for seasonal work, and he wanted more opportunities for his whole family.

Armando: My sisters and I, at the time it was four kids, and my mom and dad, we crossed the border illegally, three times. I was eight years old at the time. Got caught three times. And the fourth time they told us that if we got caught, they were gonna throw us in jail for 30 days. But we were able to finally make it on the fourth time.

Annalee: His family settled down in California’s Central Valley, where most of the state’s agriculture happens. During the summers, Armando helped his dad in the peach orchards. After he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force. It was a few years later, while studying at a community college, that he was first introduced to the United Farm Workers.

Annalee: At the start, he wasn’t exactly motivated by lofty ideals....

Armando: My original purpose was not really to be involved, I was just kind of going to have fun. And there was girls, so why not?

Annalee: But then, during a union membership drive, he had an experience that changed the course of his life.

Armando: I remember it was a Saturday. It was a sunny day.

Annalee: Armando had just arrived at a house in Oxnard, California, where some farmworkers were staying. He was there to talk to them about joining the UFW.

Armando: With farmworkers, especially in the Ventura County area, you're almost used to going to the back, because they most likely will live in a garage or live in the back somewhere. But I knocked on the door and I'm like, “Hey, I'm looking for this person.” And the lady said, “Oh, they live in the back.” I said, “okay”

Annalee: Armando goes around back, but he doesn’t see anything: no door, no garage.

Armando: I said, I'm sorry, “I don't know where you're talking about, I don't see a second house.” And she's like, “oh”, and she pointed to the tool shed. And I'm like, “What?” so I went and knocked on the tool shed and, to my shock, they opened the door. And there was four workers living in a tool shed. And I was like, “Wow”, like, “This is what you're putting up with. These are the conditions you're living under.”

Annalee: That’s when Armando knew he needed to do something more. The UFW wasn’t just a way for him to meet girls—although he did wind up marrying a union organizer—it was something he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

Armando: It really motivated me. It really just said,”This is why this work is meaningful” It's stayed in my mind, it's still to this day stayed in my mind.

Annalee: Today Armando is the secretary treasurer of United Farm Workers, the oldest agricultural workers union in the United States.

Dolores Huerta VO: “Come along brothers, we are waiting for you! You are earning more money today because the workers here went out on strike on September the 9th, and they are still out on strike, does it make you feel good to know you are taking your brothers’ jobs? Don’t be a traitor against your brother!”

Annalee: That’s the legendary union organizer Dolores Huerta, one of Armando’s heroes, filmed during the Delano Grape Strike that began in 1965. She founded the union, working alongside Cesar Chavez. A lot has changed since then. Farming has become a lot more automated in the last 70 years, which is partly why there are around 2 million fewer farmworkers in the U.S. than there were in the 1950s. But the UFW is still organizing workers, and successfully changing the laws to make their lives better. Today, the union represents only a small fraction of those jobs, but it fights on behalf of all agricultural and outdoor workers.

Armando: There's over a million farm workers in this country with about 400,000 of those million in California… according to federal statistics over 50% The workforce is undocumented. We believe it's much higher—closer to 60, 70% of the workforce being undocumented. It's a tragic reality for most farmworkers. Most of them don't have health care.

Annalee: Health care is one of many things the UFW works to secure for its members—along with fair wages, help with immigration, and other basic protections. Though it sounds like union organizers spend a lot of time protesting and arguing with politicians, Armando says that’s not how it’s done. The most important part of his job is listening to workers.

Armando: The best organizers will find what's important to them. The worst organizers are trying to say what's important to them as the organizer.

Annalee: Armando travels to the fields where people are picking produce to ask what matters to them. It’s not always easy—workers are nervous they might get fired if word gets around that they were talking to the union guy.

Armando: And it depends on the crop. Like if you're going to strawberries, you can't hide anywhere, you can't really have a private conversation because everybody's in the open air. The strawberry plants are just no more than 12 inches off the ground. They can see you from 1,000 yards away. Versus if you’re organizing in, let's just say the table grapes. The vineyards will hide you from being able to see you. And they will muffle the sound from somebody being able to hear you.

Annalee: Workers have alerted the union to all kinds of shady practices—like one grower, who refused to pay for a bucket of tomatoes if the picker hasn’t heaped the fruit way up over the rim of the bucket.

Armando: They were having to top off the bucket, meaning that they would have to put on an extra four to five pounds of tomatoes to be considered full….. It really is a huge amount of money that they were losing. And now, as a result of having a union ...

Annalee: So the UFW drafted language that specified exactly what “full” means—

Armando: … no more than half of a tomato can protrude above the rim of the bucket to be considered full.

Annalee: —and the workers wound up taking home a much bigger paycheck, because they were finally being compensated accurately for their work.

Annalee: But protecting workers goes beyond helping them earn more money.

TV News clip VO: “State investigators are tonight looking into whether a labor contractor is criminally liable for the death of a young pregnant farm worker in San Joaquin County. Her body temperature was 108 degrees when she passed out in the fields …”

Annalee: The union also fights to pass legislation that protects workers—laws that you can hardly believe don’t exist already. After a 2005 heat wave killed four workers, the union got Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign an emergency order that guaranteed workers’ access to shade, rest, and fresh drinking water.

Armando: And we had to battle. Fresh drinking water, and shade. We had to battle for that. And that's literally saved lives.

Annalee: And these regulations eventually became law, protecting workers outside the farm, too. It applies to any outdoor worker, from gardeners to people on construction sites.

Annalee: But then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic posed a new threat. It spread terrifyingly fast in communities of farmworkers across the United States.

Annalee: People were calling farm workers essential, because more than anything we needed food during the pandemic. And yet these workers were among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus. They often worked side-by-side in warehouses with no protective gear. And with no sick days, they had to go to work even when they ran a fever—or they might lose their jobs.

Armando: Just naming them essential for them was a big deal. But then they also started kind of being a little bit incredulous, like saying, “What do you mean, we’re essential? We're getting treated like dirt. We're having to expose ourselves to harvest America’s food supply. But we're not given the essential benefits, we’re not being paid a living wage.” That really struck a chord with them.

Annalee: Armando says the union has been getting farm workers onto a healthcare plan—and it’s helping employers, as well as workers. One grower said he’s saving a million dollars a year because of the plan.

Armando: Not only is it saving him money on the business side, but it's also a huge recruitment and retention tool for workers [to] keep on coming back.

Annalee: What would a future look like where farmworkers are recognized and protected as the essential parts of American society that they really are? We asked Armando to step into our time machine and imagine….

Annalee: We step out of our time machine fifty years into the future, and look for a farm. Though I’m expecting to see a rural landscape, its fields planted with fruit and vegetables, that’s ... not where we are. Instead, we’re standing in a huge warehouse on the outskirts of a large city. It’s early morning on a weekday, and workers are arriving. But they aren’t wearing outdoor gear and boots. Instead, they’re dressed in office casuals.

Armando: I think agriculture will come back into the cities, where they'll be in warehouses, because the land, the water, and the other elements are just becoming more scarce, much more expensive. So I think that's going to drive into more vertical farming and growing near, into cities.

Annalee: All your produce could be locally grown, just a few kilometers from your house, right in the city.

Annalee: We step inside the warehouse, and see strawberries growing in hydroponic cubes, stacked to the ceiling and lit by LEDs. The walls are covered in trellises for tomatoes and grapes. The automation trend has continued, and all the produce is now tended by giant robots. But there are still people working on these urban farms of the future—

Armando: I do see a lot more robotics being incorporated. And that also creates opportunities for farmworkers. because somebody's gonna have to fix those machines, somebody's gonna have to drive those machines. Agriculture needs that human touch, to be able to pick the right products, whether because of delicacy or because it's just so complex.

Annalee: And after all that training with robots, farmworkers will be more like high-tech workers, with engineering skills. Of course, they’ll be unionized, too.

Armando: I could see them really being more middle class, where they have a living wage, access to health care, where they have vacations, they have holidays where they can actually enjoy their time with their family.

Annalee: Armando also believes that tomorrow’s farmworkers will no longer be undocumented. At that point, we’ll have passed immigration reform that gives farmworkers a path to citizenship and gives guest workers more rights.

Armando: I don't see a more open border. Unfortunately. I just don't see that. But I do see the workforce being legalized. There will be guest workers, but they will have more mobility, so they can work and transfer and bring their family if needed.

Annalee: And then—we head into the supermarket of the future...

Armando: I can imagine when you go into a supermarket and you click on a screen and you can see the entire supply chain story. Like, this is where this apple was picked at this time, at this day, by Juan, and Juan has these benefits, and Juan has this family. Where that matters more.

Annalee: Consumers today look for labels that say whether their produce is organic. Tomorrow, they’ll be able to see who picked it, and whether they have health benefits.

Armando: I would like them to think more about the farmworker. Think about the hands that are harvesting that produce, and think about the impact you’re about to have with your spending dollars.

Annalee: You can see how that vision grew out of the work that Armando is doing today. When he thinks about everything he’s seen—from farmworkers living in tool sheds, to fruit pickers dying of heat exhaustion in the fields—what he really wants is for people to remember that food is made by people.

Armando: What I have to remind folks, is when you're putting in that table grape into your mouth, you got to realize the last hands that touch that table grape was a farmworker’s hands. Those grapes weren't washed, they weren't air dried or processed in any way. The entire process is done there in the field. The harvester picked the grape bunches, the packer went and cleaned off the rotten grapes, and they put them in the little clamshell and those were put into a grape box, and that grape box went to the supermarket. And then the consumer goes and buys a clamshell, takes it home … and put it in their mouth.

Annalee: Yeah, they’re puttin’ labor in their mouth [Laughs]

Armando: Right!

Annalee: Whatever the future brings, this truth isn’t gonna change. We’re always going to need farms, and the people who tend them. But we have a chance to change the way we treat our essential workers. It all starts by learning who harvested your food, and most importantly, the conditions under which they work.

Annalee: This season on Deep Futures, we’ve walked to people who are trying to build a better tomorrow—not just by playing with cool machines, but by reimagining human relationships. They’re thinking about futuristic democracies, sustainable cities, police reform, new ways of healing, and how to foster empathy through art. That’s because we can’t survive on cool innovations alone. We need each other. And that’ll still be true in thousands of years, just like it was thousands of years ago.

Annalee: You can find out more about what the United Farm Workers is doing to support essential workers at UFW.org. Thanks to Armando Elenes, and thank YOU for listening to the first season of Deep Futures. If you’ve enjoyed time-traveling with us this season, leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Annalee: Deep Futures is an original podcast made in partnership by Campside Media and Mailchimp. The show is hosted by me, Annalee Newitz. Our associate producer is Natalia Winkelman. Research help from Callie Hitchcock. Fact-checking by Aleah Papes. Sound design and mixing by Mark McAdam. Our Executive Producers are Maya Kroth and Matt Shaer. Beep-boop-boop-boop!