Agricultural Workers Advocacy Coalition

why help our farmworkers?

Our supermarkets are lined with countless fruits and vegetables. From avocados to tomatoes, lemons to lima beans, potatoes of every size and shape, berries of every color, our choices for fresh produce are limitless. We are blessed with incomparable abundance. The United States is indeed the land of milk and honey. And yet, most of us don’t know how nature’s bounty reaches our tables.

Every year, tens of thousands of migrant farm workers from Mexico and Central America are granted H-2a temporary work visas. In the Eastern Shore, they are the lifeblood of our economy, performing the jobs no one else is willing to do. They sustain us, yet suffer in the shadows. Their days are long and difficult. They are exposed to the fumes of bleach and pesticides. They toil with few breaks and work in the heat of the sun past sickness and injury. They are forced to meet incredibly unfair quotas in order to get paid. These migrant laborers are isolated and exploited.

And this past harvest season has proven to be even more difficult. Bad weather and a bad harvest have left these workers without pay for days and weeks. When they are not on the fields, they don’t get paid and in what is the cruelest and most unfair predicament of all, they have been going hungry. Without their wages, they can’t send money home for their families and don’t have money to buy food for themselves. The Dos Santos Food Pantry has risen to the challenge and has extended some temporary relief to these workers, but unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to keep going. We are humbly asking you to hear these workers testimonies and see if there’s a way you can help in gratitude for the hard work they do to provide the food that is on your table.