All FERN Articles
The people who deliver your food are hungry
On a sunny Saturday in March, Gustavo Ajche and Ligia Guallpa welcomed two dozen food delivery couriers to a morning rally in lower Manhattan. As mimosa drinkers filled SoHo cafes’ outdoor tables, couriers lined up for hot chuchitos, Guatemalan tamales filled with chicken and beef. Guallpa, head of the immigrant-focused Worker’s Justice Project, and Ajche,… » Read More
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8 million readersMother Jones
Farmworkers face a life-and-death commute to Arizona’s lettuce fields
It’s one in the morning and the stars are out as hundreds of people shuffle slowly along the wall that marks the U.S. border in the small Mexican city of San Luis Río Colorado. In heavy boots and wide-brimmed straw hats, most everyone here is headed to work in the vegetable fields of Yuma County,… » Read More
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1.3 million readers per monthThe Nation
Vilsack’s checkoff problem
When Joe Biden nominated Tom Vilsack to run the Department of Agriculture late last year, the former Iowa governor had a somewhat paradoxical political liability. After eight years as Barack Obama’s agriculture secretary, Vilsack was easily the most qualified politician for the job — only one person in U.S. history has served longer as agriculture… » Read More
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The hog baron
Jeff Hansen, who owns Iowa’s largest hog operation, brought about 5 million pigs to market last year. Each one spent its entire life in a windowless metal shed called a confinement. Passing clusters of the massive sheds on the rural highways, you wouldn’t imagine that a standard confinement holds almost 2,500 pigs — unless the… » Read More
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34.7 million unique visitors a monthVox.com
Mapping Covid-19 outbreaks in the food system
Since April 2020, FERN has been closely tracking the spread of Covid-19 at meatpacking plants, food processing facilities, and farms. This dashboard is home to our latest reporting on Covid-19 cases and food system workers, and is updated each weekday. According to data collected by FERN, as of June 11 at 12pm ET, at least… » Read More
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As halibut decline, Alaska Native fishers square off against industrial fleets
Each year in mid-June, Father John, dressed in long black robes, heads to the small boat harbor on St. Paul, a tiny island of 500 souls in the middle of the Bering Sea. It’s the start of the fishing season, and the Blessing of the Fleet is a community affair, an opportunity to give best… » Read More
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National Geographic26 million visitors a month
A year later, food workers still experience waves of Covid-19
For weeks last spring, as the Covid-19 pandemic spread, the country was gripped by fear of potential food shortages. As speculation arose about widespread meat shortages, Americans started panic buying. Shoppers worried they would contract the virus from food shipped from countries with high infection rates. These concerns were never borne out. But they distracted… » Read More
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Which states are vaccinating food system workers?
As the Covid-19 vaccine becomes available across the country, the workers who pick, pack, process, sell, and serve our food have been placed in a range of priority groups. Food system workers can receive the vaccine in most but not all states. As of April 19 at 12pm ET, farmworkers, food processing workers, meatpacking workers,… » Read More
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At California pork plant, confusion and safety violations as Covid-19 spread
A coronavirus outbreak at the Farmer John pork processing plant in Los Angeles County began nearly a year ago. But it never went away. In recent months, as the county has become a Covid-19 epicenter, in part driven by outbreaks at manufacturing facilities, the cases at the Smithfield Foods-owned plant have more than doubled —… » Read More