Growing Food, Growing a Movement: How Structural Racism Affects Immigrant Farmers

Claire Seda

doi:10.5304/jafscd.2020.094.038

Abstract

First paragraph: Most U.S. farmers and farm owners are white, while most farmworkers are Latinx immigrants. This timely book uncoils the history, institutions, and politics that racialize farming in America and the growing number of immigrant farmers—primarily small-scale and Mexican—who have climbed the agricultural ladder despite the crushing barriers they face. Author Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern deftly spells out the social, political, and cultural influences that built racism and anti-immigrant practices directly into the structure of American agriculture. She then enriches the picture with the stories of 70 interviewed immigrant farmers who operate within this structure; excerpts from her interviews are spotlighted throughout the book. Additional interviews with agricultural support and outreach programs emphasize how immigrant farmers are often excluded from start-up capital, land access, and farmers market access. The storytelling element, paired with Minkoff-Zern’s first-person perspectives and reactions, enliven each chapter and extricate the book from a purely scholarly work into an engaging read on immigration, race, and agriculture. . . .

Highlights

Most U.S farmers and farm owners are white, while most farmworkers are Latinx immigrants
The second chapter, “Sharecroppers, Braceros, and ‘Illegals’: Racializing the Agricultural Ladder,” explores the links in the chain from the unfulfilled promise of “40 acres and mule” after emancipation, to the Bracero program, “Operation Wetback” and deportation, and their legacies evident in “the structural conditions encouraging lowpaid immigrant labor and criminalizing the people who perform it” (p. 43). She shows how structural racism perpetuates itself through poor census counts, as many immigrant farmers, perhaps due to low literacy and English proficiency or fear of exposing immigration status, decline to complete the census form, which in turn affects policy priorities and funding
For their part, had few records of their farming practices—which is critical to applying for various programs and services

Summary

Introduction

Most U.S farmers and farm owners are white, while most farmworkers are Latinx immigrants. Review of The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability, by Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern.

Results

Conclusion