Guest's Blog
These are harrowing times for the nearly 1,500 migrant workers laboring on Vermont’s largest dairy farms. These farmworkers, predominantly from Mexico, are forced to live in the shadows, where their farm bosses harbor them in exchange for long hours, low wages, and cheap housing. It’s a human rights stain on the state, allowing these migrant workers to live and be treated this way. And it continues because there’s a whole lot of “looking away” from the deep-rooted ugliness of this system, which has been described by human rights advocates as “close to slavery.”
Worse than looking away, with its implicit acceptance of the exploitation, is the complicit role Vermont’s dairy industry giants are playing to maximize their profits on the backs of this cheap labor. As the state’s near-billion-dollar-a-year ice cream and cheese corporations – Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot Creamery – continue to pay less than the cost of production for its dairy supply, Vermont’s remaining 700-or-so dairy farms are forced to cut costs at every opportunity, particularly when it comes to labor. Gone are the days when these farm jobs were filled by neighbors and community members, as the danger, speed, scale and filth – coupled with poverty-level wages — has made it impossible to attract local workers.
It is hard to imagine Mexican culture without corn. To make the most of this traditional, popular domesticated plant, Mexicans have developed a variety of dishes popularly referred to as “Vitamin T:” tacos, tortas, tlayudas, tlacoyos, tamales and the queen of them all, the tortilla.
Tortillas are popular in the U.S., too. So popular that they’re outselling quintessential U.S. fast food staples like burger and hot dog buns. According to the Tortilla Industry Association, tortillas are more popular today in the U.S. than all other ethnic breads, including bagels, English muffins and pita.
The art of beekeeping in Maya communities can be traced back centuries. Beekeepers pass the skill down from one generation to the next.
For these indigenous communities in Mexico’s Campeche and Yucatán regions, beekeeping isn’t just a tradition or a hobby. For many, it’s a livelihood.
And that livelihood is now being threatened by Monsanto.
Monsanto has a long history of sneaking around—or outright violating—the law. Nowhere has that been more evident lately than in Mexico’s Campeche and Yucatán regions, where the agribusiness giant, in collusion with Mexican government authorities, is violating a court order requiring them to consult with indigenous communities before granting permits for the growing of genetically modified (GM) soy crops.
Around the time The New Yorker published a personal attack on me, in 2014 (my response – Seeds of Truth), there was also an effort to quickly approve field trials of 12 GMO crops, illegally.
Currently, as Monsanto’s push in India, through corruption and lobbying, to get approval for Genetically Modified Mustard becomes stronger, Monsanto’s ‘typewriters for hire’ are preparing another attack on me to distract from the science and international laws, in a bid to rush the approval of Terminator GM Mustard, illegally.
I recently received an email from a woman named Kavin Senapathy, who introduced herself as a “pro-GMO writer.” She wrote to tell me that my messaging on the plight of Indian farmers and the victimization of Indian people by multi-national corporations like Monsanto was “unrealistic.”
I had to look up who this person is. This is what I found.
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