The Face Behind Your Food: Three Farmworkers Share Their Stories

Lupita López Dearcia Comitán is a farmworker in Sonora, Mexico.  She’s forty-four years old, has five children, and just so happens to grow the cucumbers you put in your salad last night. It’s a job she has a lot of pride in. Most people don’t know that cucumbers grow on vines like tomatoes, requiring constant care to ensure that the plant grows in the proper direction. It’s a technique called “training”, and Lupita has the practice down to a science.

Lupita knows that agriculture is important work, as do Rubi Lucero Pazos Ávila, 24, and Juan Ricardo Pérez Núñez, 18, who are also employees of Grupo Alta, a Fair Trade Certified farm in Northern Mexico. Each year Lupita and Rubi travel from their home communities, in Chiapas and Veracruz, to work the harvest. This is Juan’s first season with Grupo Alta; he also grew up in Chiapas in Southern Mexico. Together they’re part of a global agricultural workforce more than 1.2 billion strong, lending their time and their skill to the task of growing the world’s food.

Given that it’s Farmworker Awareness Week, we asked Lupita, Rubi and Juan to share their thoughts on what it means to be a farmworker, why Fair Trade matters, and what it takes to produce our favorite fruits and veggies. Here’s what they had to say:

Continue on to Triple Pundit to continue reading: http://fairtradeusa.org/blog/face-behind-your-food