Reflection

Reflection

My family comes from multiple generations of migrant farm workers, which Latinos call braceros. My grandpa always loved to be around nature and didn’t mind working in the fields. So he moved my grandma, my mom and her siblings to Chino, California, which was an agricultural town. He worked picking strawberries and cabbages alongside Latino and Asian migrant workers. And during the summer my mom and her siblings would work in the strawberry fields with their neighbors. Climate change has increasingly impacted farm workers' health, 78% which are Hispanic or Latino, mostly of Mexican heritage. Agricultural workers are 35 times more likely to die from heat related stress than workers in other occupations. As the climate warms, it causes more dramatic heat temperatures and drought, and harvest season is starting to collide more with wildfire season. Exposure to wildfire smoke can escalate underlying respiratory problems such as asthma and is linked to heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer. Many of these workers have had limited information or access on how to protect themselves from the smoke or don’t even realize they are putting themselves at risk. Many workers are also not able to miss work since it’s their only source of income and the income depends on how much they are able to harvest. Because my family has a history and experience with working in the fields it was important for me to spread awareness about this issue. My mom likes to say that migrant workers are like the bees of the economy and are the closest thing to working with the earth to produce our food. So what affects them is going to have a ripple effect. As climate change affects the workers by making them sick and decreasing the amount of jobs due to crop loss, it’s also going to affect the people that consume the food.