FERN’s Friday Feed: The Hamburglar
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Trump, not Democrats, could take away your hamburgers for real
FERN and The New York Times
“Today, nearly half of the people who slaughter, butcher and package beef, pork and poultry in America were born elsewhere. In some packing houses, more than four dozen languages are spoken. In some, Somali, Sudanese and Burmese refugees alone account for as much as a third of the work force. The fact is,” writes Ted Genoways, “America’s largest meat producers are dependent on the immigrants Mr. Trump is threatening to round up and deport. If he is elected and makes good on his promise to bar refugees, those producers could lose a vital source of labor overnight. If he succeeds in rescinding certain protections for asylum seekers and speeds the process of deportation trials, the entire industry could be brought to a halt. Meat processors are only just recovering from the ravages of the pandemic. This would push them to the breaking point — and perhaps crash the whole food system.” (You can read a Q&A with Genoways on the issue here.)
The immigrant workers taking on America’s largest meatpacker
The Nation
“I spent four years, from 2020 to 2024, interviewing dozens of current and former meatpacking workers at Tyson Foods and their family members for my book Life and Death of the American Worker,” writes Alice Driver. “In September 2020, I began driving across Arkansas from one poultry town to the next, speaking to workers at their homes … With the arrival of Covid, I knew the choice the industry faced: follow … social-distancing recommendations and … therefore decrease production or continue as though the pandemic did not exist. Decreasing production would mean less profit, something I knew the industry would never stand for. During this harrowing time for workers … workers organized to demand safe labor conditions and get justice for family members who had died or become disabled due to labor conditions at Tyson. I followed the work of Venceremos, an organization founded in 2019 by 16 immigrant women poultry workers with labor organizer Magaly Licolli. It is a worker-based organization in Arkansas whose mission is to ensure the human rights of poultry workers … Licolli believes Venceremos … can transform the poultry industry in Arkansas.”
Using comics to unpack ‘the structural injustice’ of India’s ‘Right to Food’
Mongabay
“Do you sometimes sit back and think about the food served on your plate? How did it reach you and who are the people who made it possible? Why is more than 15% of the Indian population undernourished? Such pertinent questions related to food and the ‘Right to Food’, which is guaranteed in the Indian Constitution, are addressed in the new graphic novel, Food & Farming,” writes Arti Das. “The 240-page graphic novel … explores aspects of farming and food security through two characters — Soni and Lucky — who travel to various parts of the country” where they “interact with farmers, foragers, Anganwadi workers, community leaders, teachers, food vendors, ration shop owners, supermarket attendants, transport workers, and many others” and grapple with “the structural injustice when it comes to the ‘Right to Food’ in India.”
When the hottest, driest place on Earth became a lake
Orion Magazine
“This year Death Valley, the hottest, driest place in North America, filled up with water. In February,” writes Natalie Middleton, “raindrops from back-to-back atmospheric rivers—ribbons of water vapor streaming into California from across the Pacific Ocean—thundered into Badwater Basin, transforming it from a crystalline salt flat into a shimmering, seven-mile lake. ‘It was mind-boggling,’ Patrick Donnelly, a conservation biologist and director of the Great Basin’s Center for Biological Diversity, tells me. ‘Like an out-of-body experience. It was also total climate chaos.’ Even as his kayak glided over the water, he knew that the spectacular lake was a symptom of an ecosystem spectacularly disordered by climate change.”
In California, a solitary herder cares for his goats and for the hills
Yale Environment 360 (video)
“Christian Cordova Aliaga, a shepherd from Peru, spends his days trailing and tending a flock of about 150 goats in California’s East Bay. Employed by Goats R Us, a local ranch, he moves the animals every few days to overgrown meadows, grasslands, and forests near homes, schools, and other buildings that are vulnerable to wildfire. Targeted grazing is a tradition that goes back centuries, and Aliaga — whose earnings support his wife and three children in Peru — learned at a young age how to care for animals from his parents and grandparents. ‘This was passed down through generations,’ he says. Unlike thinning with machinery, Aliaga’s goats don’t spill oil, spark fires, or disturb the soil. ‘This is more natural,’ he says, ‘and at the same time they are fertilizing the land.’ The goats are particularly keen to eat the leaves of poison oak and French broom, which are difficult to remove by hand.”