Picking & Packing for the North: Agricultural Workers at Empaque Santa Rosa

1. Picking & Packing for the North:Agricultural Workers at Empaque Santa Rosa

2. Globalization from Above: Empaque Santa Rosa • “I’ve heard that the tomatoes go “al otro lado” [to the other side] -Reyna Gomez, a 16 yr old Indigenous worker who came with her husband from the south to pick tomatoes for Empaque S.R. in the Mexican state of Jalisco. • The “giant to the North” swallows up the majority of tomatoes produced in Mexico & directs Mexican agro-export production from primarily U.S.-based MNCs • The U.S. also draws Mexican workers across the border to work in U.S. tomato fields

3. The history of agriculture in Mexico is complicated and has deeply woven & tangled roots connecting the land, chemicals, migration, racism, & sexism in the production system • Since independence, Mexican presidents maintained development and agrarian policies that favored large commercial export-oriented industries, leaving the worst land for campesinos and their subsistence • Since the revolutionary struggles led by Zapata in the early 1900s for “Land or Liberty” there has been an ongoing struggle between two visions of the land: 1. A vision of the land that honors ecological integrity and local survival 2. A vision that privileges the needs of export markets and northern consumers

4. Dual Structure of Agriculture • While U.S. efforts to promote economic growth according to a western-style model were felt strongly in Mexico, there was a countervailing nationalist orientation rooted in the Mexican Revolution • Leaders promoted national pride & self-sufficiency even as the Mexican economy became increasingly entrenched in world markets • An asymmetrical pattern emerges : Northern countries supply inputs, extract surpluses & provide markets Southern countries supply: favorable climate, easy access to land, & cheap labor for production controlled by foreign interests

5. Tomatoes in the Past

6. The Genetic Moment

7. NAFTA • The latest in a long series of neoliberal policies that exploited the Indigenous workers of Mexico as cheap labor while also marginalizing them as citizens & producers of the land. • Agricultural surpluses from the North are dumped on in Mexico as cheap food or food aid • Formerly self-sufficient in food, Mexico was forced to dismantle national food programs because they can’t compete with the cheaper imports • Agro-exports are a source of foreign exchange to pay off national debts

8. Contract Farming • Contract farming is central to the multinational agribusiness strategy because it allows foreign companies to control the entire production process. • Farmers are required to: • buy inputs (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, even boxes) from outside Mexico • provide foreign technical assistants who manage the technology, dictate the prices, marketing & distribution mechanisms without taking any of the risks of producing the food

9. Empaque Santa Rosa: Primed for Export • Family business – founded in the 1970s, today, is run by 4 sons of the founder • Began small scale & is now a large corporation with over $300 million in sales. • Employs 12,000 employees—90% are field-workers • Plants & harvests more than 6,000 hectares of field tomatoes and 80 hectares of greenhouse production • One of the few large companies to control the fruit & vegetable production in Mexico

10. Empaque Santa Rosa • Closely linked to North American financial & agro-industrial capital, its success depends on access not only to land but also to markets • Concentration & control of the land are clear: the largest companies comprise only 0.2 % of the agribusiness yet cover 4 % of the land, while 59 % are cultivating only 5 % of the land • Large domestic companies have become “global” by joining financial groups & setting up their own distribution centers in Mexico, U.S, Canada, & Europe

11. Head of Empaque Santa Rosa, International: • “NAFTA is common sense. The guy with the best product, that has the best price, that has the best efficiency, will win. NAFTA leveled the playing field and said the best players play. Your government can’t protect you. The best players are those who have the best natural resources, the most efficient people.” • Santa Rosa was commended by U.S. officials for its leadership in preparing the ground for the implementation of NAFTA in central Mexico.

12. Techological Efficiency: • ↑Investment in machinery & agrochemicals resulting in↓in wages • ↑In workers’ productivity due to technological advances (GE seeds that produce more homogenous ripening), speeding up of work

13. Workers & Tomatoes Follow the Sun • Large agribusiness that take advantage of the diverse growing seasons within Mexico have been called girasols, or sunflowers, because they follow the sun • Because the company leases rather than owns most of the productive land, or subcontracts with small producers, its greatest resource is the ample supply of local campesinos (20%) & migrant farm workers (80%) • Santa Rosa employs 12,000 temporary workers & 850 full-time workers; temporary workforce is expendable

14. “Mining Mentality” • In the 1980s, after several years of mono-cultural production with intensive agrochemical use, a mosquito plague struck that could not be controlled, forcing Santa Rosa to abandon the infected & depleted land • The white mosquito that destroyed the crops had deserted the mountainside for the fields, due to deforestation caused by clear-cutting for constructing crates to pack tomatoes for export. • Local residents have nicknamed these companies “grasshoppers,” a metaphoric critique of how companies “hop” on to the next fertile field, leaving behind a degraded environment & a community that has come to depend on the economic activity

15. Bodegas (Warehouses) • Santa Clara operates 12 wholesale bodegas in Guadalajara & Mexico City, controlling much of the market in the centralized markets. • In Guadalajara, it owns a building with Del Monte Fresh Produce that has 15 refrigerated rooms with a storage capacity of 75 trailers worth of fresh produce. • Because tomatoes are highly perishable, they are not stored for longer than a day. When there is overproduction or while waiting for prices to rise, they are gassed with ethylene before being shipped so they will ripen by arrival

16. Ethylene • Ethylene acts as a hormone in plants & is used as an anesthetic agent to hasten fruit ripening, as well as a welding gas. • Ethylene is the most produced organic compound in the world and is a key component in Levinstein sulfur mustard, a chemical weapon agent. • Ethylene can be conveniently produced in the laboratory by distilling absolute ethanol with an excess of concentrated sulfuric acid &washing the distillate vapor stream in an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide to remove the sulfur dioxide contaminant

17. Globalization from Below: Picking and Packing for Survival “The story of tomato production in Mexico is told quite differently by the women who work at Santa Rosa as pickers & packers in the fields, packing houses, & greenhouses. From the perspective of the owners & managers, these workers are crucial in a labor-intensive agro-industry, seen primarily as factors in production, ready to be called into action when the seeds are to be planted or the tomatoes are to be harvested & packed for export. Moving from a globalization-from-above to a globalization-from-below perspective, their stories make visible work that is often hidden from the rest of the world, & reveal some of the complexities & differences among women workers themselves.”

18. Gendered Fields • The “feminization of labor” has been central to the development of agro-export economies such as Mexico • Women entered the production process as packers after a U.S. Embargo in 1932 forced producers to improve their practices to compete with American producers • Women are considered more “flexible” & “gentle” with the fragile fruit • Firms use gender ideologies to erode stable employment & worker rights where women are concerned • Women’s participation has increased in recent years & since the mid-1990s, these migrant workers have been predominantly female, 2/3 under 24 years old & a majority 15-19 years old

19. “Family Wage” • Campesino families depend on money being sent from migrating family members, & send several family members as salaried workers to agribusiness • By 1993, more than five family members’ salaries were needed for family survival • Desperation has pushed families to move from harvest to harvest, from countryside to cities, and from formal sector work to informal economic activities creating the epitome of the “flexible” labor force

20. Gendered Division of Labor Male Tasks Clean and plow land w/ tractors Hoe fields, Spread fertilizer, Irrigate Mix agrochemicals Spray pesticides, herbicides, fungicides Farm manager, Foreman Move boxes from fields to plant Box makers & carriers Move boxes to storage &/or trucks Company executives Plant supervisor Field production manager Fumigation manager Female Tasks Plant seedlings in greenhouses Prune plants Tie plants to stakes ___ Pick tomatoes Record production Wash tomatoes Select by size, color Pack tomatoes Secretaries Receptionists Preliminary Planting Cultivation Harvesting Packing Management

21. Gender Inequalities • It is argued that men are better at the heavier jobs requiring physical strength, as well as managerial jobs that require experience, access to technical information, & have the initiative & ability to exert authority • It is assumed that women are more skilled at the intricate tasks (the famous “nimble fingers” mantra), are more efficient, productive, & responsible than men & are also preferred because they are paid lower wages & are seen to be more compliant • “Women ‘see’ better than men to distinguish the colors. In selection, care, & handling, women are more delicate & treat the tomatoes more gently. They can put up with the routine & monotony better than me” • Women put up with exploitative conditions out of necessity and a commitment to feed their families—not because they are naturally disposed to possess these qualities

22. At 33 cents a box, a packer might average 200-500 boxes a day = 66-150 pesos = $13-$30 a day • A sorter, earning 5 pesos/hr would average 35-60 pesos = $7-$12 a day “If gender discrimination is entrenched in the tasks offered women workers, racism is manifested against the Indigenous migrant workers who are brought in trucks by contractors, w/o certainty of getting work and w/ even worse living & working conditions than local campesinos. Housed in deplorable huts, w/o water, electricity, stores, or transport, they come as families to work in the fields and move from harvest to harvest. Because their own regions offer even less opportunity, they are forced to endure these jobs & the racist treatment built into them.”

23. Border Inequalities

24. Border Inequalities • Mexican side bordered by huts along hillsides • where workers receive low wages • Mexicans are unwelcome in the U.S. • U.S. side lined with elegant homes where • managers of companies live • Mexican exports are desired by U.S. citizens

25. Ecological Footprint • Hidden ecological costs: Transportation—heaviliy subsidized by government  Fossil fuels burned in transport  Hydroflurocarbons released by refrigerated trucks  U.S. tomato imports emit 221 tons of carbon dioxide per year