Opinion: Plenty of food, but not for all farmworkers

Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn

EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief, Caitlin Rockett News Editor, Will Brendza Food Editor, John Lehndorff Interns, Ben Berman, Chad Robert Peterson

Contributing Writers: Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Shay Castle, Angela K. Evans, Mark Fearer, Jodi Hausen, Karlie Huckels, Dave Kirby, Matt Maenpaa, Sara McCrea, Rico Moore, Adam Perry, Katie Rhodes, Dan Savage, Bart Schaneman, Alan Sculley, Will Matuska, Tom Winter

SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager,

Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman, Chris Allred Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar

PRODUCTION

Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman

CIRCULATION TEAM

Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer

BUSINESS OFFICE

Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella

Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer

Aug. 11, 2022

Volume XXIX, number 48

Cover, Molly Mitchell, photo by Cedar Wright

As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism, and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage. Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com

Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2022 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly

welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

Plenty of food, but not for all farmworkers

by Astra Lincoln

is column originally appeared on Writers on the Range

On a summer morning in southern Idaho, the day breaks early, before 6 a.m. e air is stale, never fully cooled from the heat of the day before. In the indigo hour when night becomes morning, dozens of people—most from Mexico—queue for the van that will shuttle them to the picking elds. For the next 15 hours they harvest. Ladders teeter on the uneven, parched earth. Cherries are quickly pulled from high branches by the handful. e fruit isn’t for them. Like most regions in the country whose economies rely on exporting food, little of what’s picked here makes it onto the plates of the people who harvested it.

At the end of the daylight hours, a company bus returns and drives the farmworkers to Walmart, on the far side of town, where they can shop for groceries and gloves. Farmworkers forced to shop late at night have frequently been met with depleted shelves ever since the early days of the pandemic. ey buy what little they can, then re-board the van that brings them home. Many fall asleep hungry.

In 2020, when the pandemic began, organizer Samantha Guerrero drove across the low, parched hills of Idaho’s Canyon County to a neighborhood she calls Farmway Village. First built as a labor camp, the low-income housing complex has become home to many of the county’s agricultural employees. Guerrero had planned to distribute