AS FARMERS, WE ARE PRESSED ON BOTH ENDS . . .
by Anita Ashok Adalja to make a living for ourselves and our hired crew and to provide food to a country that is paying much less than...
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The Natural Farmer
Summer 2023
Farmworkers
Image Credit: David Bacon
Religious and Cultural Diversity on the Farm
By Shani Mink The Jewish High Holidays are a very special time for my family. It’s a yearly reset – we pray, eat, don’t eat, gossip, ask...
Operation Blooming Onion and the Long Sordid History of the H2A Program
By Cindy Hahamovitch In 2021, a multi-agency sting called Operation Blooming Onion netted two dozen alleged “human traffickers” who were...
Immigration Reform, H2A, and Justice for Farmworkers
By Elizabeth Henderson During the month of February, the Farmworker Association of Florida members, low-income Latinx workers, many of...
Culturing a Rural Livelihood: A Young Dairy Farmer’s Determination
By Lily Massee Lisa Marchetti’s life as a farmer has been nothing short of nomadic. Over the past decade, she has worked on ten different...
Forty Stolen Acres and a Volunteer Mule: Free Labor, Free Food, and the Illusion of Freedom
By Karina Lutz Volunteers working on small organic farms are so common they deeply impact farm economics. Many farmers I know, all I've...
Farmworker Mental Health: how our food system is affecting the mental health of the people who feed
By Míchi López Take a second to close your eyes and picture the answer to the following question: where does our food come from? It may...
Farm Worker to Farmer – Different Journeys
By Al Johnson We might agree on the definition of a “farmworker,” but defining a “Farmer” is more complicated. Does a farmer own and work...
Alianza Agricola – an Interview with Luis Jimenez
By Xochitl Antziri and Elizabeth Henderson Against all odds, undocumented farmworkers on conventional dairy farms in Western NY have...
Farm Work –the Agony and the Ecstacy
By Elizabeth Henderson Like many TNF readers, I chose to become an organic farmer because I enjoy farmwork. When people asked me and my...
Immigration Reform: Farmworker Voices
By Mary Jo Dudley Immigration reform is a priority among farmworkers in New York State, yet current legislative proposals offer a complex...
The Reality of the H2A Farmworker Program: the Jamaican experience
By Jahdea Clare The H2A farm worker program has been running for decades to fill American farms' labor gaps and shortages. Growing up in...
A Farmworker Story
By Alex Baten Spanish submission is translated below. My name is Alexander Baten. I am from Guatemala, originally from Totonicapán (a...
Opinion: What Materials Qualify for Use in Organic Production? OMRI
What Materials Qualify for Use in Organic Production? The Role of OMRI Editorial note: Soon after the National Organic Program launched...
Opinion: Solutions to Replace the Destructive International Neoliberal Agricultural System
By George Naylor Life becomes more precarious day by day because of multinational monopolies’ priorities for cheap labor and raw...
Opinion: Let's Talk: Land Access for Beginning Farmers
By Sarah Greenberg In a speech delivered in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. discussed the distortion our government imposes when asking...
Opinion: Farmworker Housing
By Ernest (Buster) Caswell As I continue to advocate for housing for agricultural workers across the State of Vermont, multiple parties...
Hatching the Great Chicken Rescue
By Casey Merkle When I was 9 years old, I wanted to save all the chickens. I wanted to rescue all the eggs from going sunny-side up on...
Changing the World—One Chicken at a Time
by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin The chicks have arrived! A 6 a.m. phone call from the Northfield, Minnesota, post office alerted Eric...
TNF NOFA FARMER PROFILE: Elizabeth Henderson of Peacework CSA
Interviewed by Holli Cederholm, TNF Advisory Committee Member People feel connected to NOFA because of our shared love of the land and...
Letter from the Editor - Summer 2023
By Elizabeth Gabriel After a first look at the hazy skies before heading out on the farm today, I excitedly thought some rain might...
Why Do I Farm?
By Elizabeth Gabriel Farming is so damn hard. I’ve just walked inside after inspecting the fruitlets on our apple trees and very few, if...
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