Life of Kika Collage

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Organic Farms: Good food and Bad Work Ethics.

I hate that I sound like a hipster fort even using the word "Organic", but I guess I'm asking to be made fun of after saying that. I try to eat organic as much as I can. And with the lack of healthy resources in the New York, it's difficult to buy authentic food that hasn't been processed or pumped with chemicals. Even the vegan restaurants in Brooklyn are bullshitting their customers with fake ingredients and nothing is really as healthy as it seems. The trend of eating healthy has always been popular and people are coming up with schemes to eat to live longer using less preservatives. It's a great lifestyle, but some how a lot that goes behind it seems to be held by a scam. Any part of the food industry and distribution has some sort of pyramid scheme behind it. This happens in most businesses in the United States, but for such a small business it's surprising to witness the harsh realty of modern day hard labor within the workers of the farm. I went of a family trip to explore outside of NYC to discover the great wide spaces used for tourists and what goes in between the fields.  
 
My family and I decided to go apple picking in Fish Kill Farms in the New York state. The day was perfect, we collected apples from trees and roamed around the vast lands full of healthy crops. The whole place was spectacular to look at. It was refreshing to be out of the city for once and it was a great way to start the Fall season. Although the environment seemed friendly and all, I couldn't help but notice the workers seemed out of place. And maybe I'm bringing up the fact that a lot of workers happened to be Jamaican. I just found that to be a little odd after noticing we were in a prominently white area and I happened to also spot a few confederate flags while driving around. After a few hours, my family and I were walking into one of the untouched apple fields and met up with one of the workers. He asked us if we were enjoying our time and so forth. My mother managed to interview one of the farmers and he basically explained to us that he works in the farm for a short period of time and bring money back to his home in Jamaica. What he was telling us seemed pretty normal until her pointed out that in order to pass health inspection, they were basically striped down in order to do tests on them. Health test, physical test and fertility test. I'm not making this up. I know that the young kids working on land didn't have to go through that. It was actually quite disappointing to hear what goes behind the inspection of workers. Why is it that they were treated like this instead of the other workers? I find it to be awfully sad that a majority of the workers from Jamaica are basically placed in the lowest position of labor.

It's better to see things through both point of views. It makes me wonder whether there are sorts of business that do abide by treating all workers equally. Any form of business is run by a pyramid system where the workers are at the bottom of the pit. To be honest, when I have my own business, I really want to pay attention to how my employees are treated. Whatever kind of reputation I am trying to live by, I want to dignify all of the people helping my business grow.

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