Starving. Starving I tells ya!
For 2016, the Province of Saskatchewan reports the average farm operator income at $60,771. The average farm operator also brings in $44,521 in off-farm income, to bring the total average to $105,292.May 29, 2018
I just left one Crown job to start another at the end of Aug.
Life is rough.
How much are the children making or are the worrking just for room and board?
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/29/small-farms-labor.html
Small farms, big problems: Labor crisis goes ignored in idyllic setting
Despite small farms’ nostalgic image, their reality is much more troubling, say workers and advocates
July 29, 2014 5:00AM ET
by
Peter Moskowitz @ptrmsk
FONDA, New York — The hills of this rural area 45 minutes northwest of the state’s capital look as idyllic as the scenes pictured on boxes of Stonyfield Farm organic rBST-free milk.
The ground is green with grass, onions and cabbage, broken up by thin gray strips of pothole-dotted roads. The only protrusions are white farmhouses, red barns, a few silos and some cows.
For some, this scenic land contains a hidden hellscape.
As Americans have latched onto a particular idea of agriculture as morally ideal — small, often organic-certified farms transporting vegetables, humanely raised meats and antibiotic-free dairy short distances to farmers’ markets and ethically focused grocery stores like Whole Foods — farm workers and activists say a crucial link in the food chain has gone largely ignored by those who may consider themselves conscious consumers: labor.
With the image of the small farm becoming ever more present in the collective conscience of an increasingly food-aware nation, farm laborers and activists say it’s more important than ever to set the record straight and highlight the fact that even in the quaintest settings, labor abuse is still rampant.
In central and western New York, where farm workers are often undocumented and speak limited English, working on farms small enough to avoid the scrutiny of U.S. labor regulators, data are lacking on just how rampant abuses are. But workers and the activists who represent them say minimum wage violations, verbal abuse, long hours, unsafe working conditions and even physical attacks on workers are commonplace. And they say the problem is growing, especially on small dairy farms as the dairy industry in New York booms, thanks to the country’s newfound fondness for Greek-style yogurt.
Lázaro Álvarez, one of as many as 800,000 undocumented farm workers in the U.S., has decided to speak up, despite the risks that entails,
Álvarez, 39, lived in Mexico City until April 2013. He was laid off from his job as a manager at a warehouse run by pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim after the company switched to a mechanical system to manage inventory, and he couldn’t find any work in his hometown.
Álvarez left his wife and two kids behind for the U.S., spending eight days crossing the desert — including three without food or water. He made his way to Tucson, Arizona, and over the next few weeks to upstate New York, where a friend helped him find a job corralling cows on a dairy farm in Chenango County.
In September, Álvarez was charged by a bull. The animal pushed him up against a metal railing, injuring his shoulder and ribs and giving him a deep cut just below his right eye. His boss, the owner of the farm, pulled the cow away from Álvarez but wouldn’t take him to the hospital for two hours, until after the owner finished milking his cows.
When Rebecca Fuentes, an organizer from the
Workers’ Center of Central New York called the hospital to check on Álvarez, the owner’s sister answered the phone and pretended to be a nurse, according to Fuentes and Álvarez. Because his medical team did not speak Spanish and because his employers waited by the phone at the hospital, he wasn’t aware until weeks later that his employers had told authorities that he was just visiting the farm, not working on it, when the accident happened. His workers’ compensation case is now a lot more complicated.
About 15 days after the incident, when it became clear that Álvarez’s ability to perform strenuous manual labor was still impaired, his employer fired him. He searched for work for two months.
“I tried to get out of my head that I had this accident, because it meant I couldn’t provide for my family,” Álvarez said. “It took me three months to tell them because I was ashamed.”
He eventually found work on another dairy farm. He now lives with two other workers in a dilapidated farmhouse at the edge of his employer’s property. He makes $500 a week and sends home 80 percent of that to his wife and kids in Mexico. His son is still finishing college, and his daughter recently landed a job as a lawyer in the Mexican government.
Álvarez says the hardest part of living in the U.S. isn’t the low pay or even the hard work; it’s the isolation and fear of being found by police and deported back to Mexico.
“I’m used to a subway, to restaurants and seeing lots of people,” he said. “This is a big change. I can’t go many places.”
About a month ago, a small fire started at the back of his house. He called his employer and told him to get the fire department.
Then, fearing the firefighters would call the cops on him or arrive with them, Álvarez walked deep into the woods behind the farm. It took him hours to find his way back to the house.
Advocates say stories like his are common: injuries, underpayment and other forms of labor abuse occur, and migrant workers don’t know where to turn.
There’s Luis, who until recently worked 12 hours a day on a farm where one of the owners yelled and pushed him. When Luis found the environment too hostile to continue working, he picked up his family and moved hours away to a new community to find work, re-establishing his young children in a new school.