#DemocracyNow
“The Great Escape”: #SaketSoni on Forced #ImmigrantLabor Used to Clean Up #Climate Disasters in U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BsEpmFfLfI

Two recent @nytimes articles on our broken food system. 1: Farmland Values Hit Record Highs, Pricing Out Farmers. Small farmers are now going up against deep-pocketed investors, including private equity firms and real estate developers. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/us/politics/farmland-values-prices.html) (subscription-firewalled link)

2. Labor Department Finds 31 Children Cleaning Meatpacking Plants (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/child-labor-meatpacking-plants.html) This one hits close to home, as some of the child laborers were identified in my home state of Minnesota. The working conditions are horrible: "Their jobs included cleaning kill floors, meat- and bone-cutting saws, grinding machines and electric knives, according to court documents. The mix of boys and girls were not fluent English speakers and were interviewed mostly in Spanish, investigators said." "The Labor Department found that several minors employed by the company, including one 13-year-old, suffered caustic chemical burns and other injuries. One 14-year-old, who worked from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. five to six days a week, suffered injuries from chemical burns from cleaning machines used to cut meat. School records showed that the student fell asleep in class or missed class because of the job at the plant."

The above articles highlight just two (or so) of the problems with mass-produced factory-farm food. There are other problems.
A strong case can be made for buying as much of your food as possible from small, local producers. CSAs, farmers markets, direct-from-farm purchases. And grow some of your own food as well: Victory Gardens!

#foodsystem #BigAgriculture #agriculture #sustainability #childlabor #immigrantlabor #factoryfarms #meat #gardening #farmersmarket