Factory farming- corn version.

The way this big farm working system works is sometimes entirely baffling. For those of you unfamiliar with the system (as I was just two months ago), let me explain how it works. Big farm companies (those signs you see next to corn fields for huge multi-million dollar businesses) find one person (the crew leader) to recruit a number of workers. The company pays the crew leader a lot of money and tells them to use that money for transportation and housing. Not surprisingly, these crew leaders often skimp wherever they can with workers in order to get more money for themselves. The crew leader is often easy to pick out-- read: expensive cowboy boots, big trucks with expensive rims, flashy jewelry.

Meanwhile, the farm workers come from south Texas with very little, and by the time they arrive to central Illinois, they have nothing. Emergency food stamps-- even IF (and I've come to realize this is a big if) the migrants have the opportunity to apply immediately and the applications get turned in as they should-- take three business days. We spoke to some migrant workers who arrived on Friday, July 2nd, applied for food stamps that day, and since we had a holiday, had to wait until Thursday of the next week to get their food stamps. It was upsetting to me to have to tell these people that there was nothing I could do. Furthermore, because it was a holiday weekend, food pantries were closed.


In central Illinois, many of these workers live in what used to be an Air Force Hospital in Rantoul. Now, it's stripped of all of the medical equipment but some remnants, such as signs like "Pediatric Ward," remind you of what it used to be. Some couches are in the common areas. Some rooms are small enough for one person or one family. Some rooms are large and are separated into rooms by makeshift separators, i.e., blankets hanging off of clotheslines. Kitchens are sometimes portable hot plates. Laundry is done in a common room downstairs and sometimes hung on the bushes outside. Air conditioning in any room is surprising, and flies and more in all rooms are expected. The workers are in cornfields all day and come back dirty, tracking mud through the hallways. On one side of the hospital, there are bare floors, so the pesticide-packed dirt just sits where barefoot kids run and play. On the other side of the hospital, where old rugs still are on the floors, the dirt and moisture is rubbed into the carpet. The smell of mold is more noticeable by the carpets, and we all get headaches when we are there for too long.

The longer I do this job, the more this system infuriates me-- how can this continue?

See also: http://cu-citizenaccess.org/content/empty-harvest-migrant-family-faces-hardships-rantoul. (My favorite quote: “How are you going to get people from South Texas to come to Rantoul, Illinois?” he asks. “If you tell them, ‘You’re only going to get 20 hours a week and live in a dump,’ no one is going to come." Fellow IMLAP workers, identify the speaker.)