Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
growing regions, the extremevariation in labor needs was captured by the
use of the phrase tiempomuerto, or ''dead season,'' to refer to the months
between harvests. Even bananas, harvested throughout the calendar year,
displayed variation in labor demand as a result of grower efforts to time
their biggest harvests in conjunction with periods of peak market prices.
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One historical outcome of seasonal variations in labor demand has
been a widespread and enduring dependency on migrant field workers.
Post-emancipation sugar and coffee production in Brazil and the Carib-
bean; export banana farms in Central America; and fruit growers in Cali-
fornia relied on regional and transnational flows of migrant laborers
throughout much of the twentieth century. In the second half of the twen-
tieth century, even smallholder coffee production relied increasingly on
migrant labor for harvesting operations. The preponderance of migrant
laborisallthemorestrikinginlightofthexenophobiaandracismthatmi-
grantsfrequentlyconfronted.Theeconomicandsocialstatusofmostfield
hands improved significantlyduring the twentieth century when workers'
movements succeeded in unionizing some commodity sectors. Working
people also gained voting rights and greater access to government ser-
vices. However, by the late twentieth century, both union membership
and the political power of farmworkers were in decline in many parts of
the Americas. Harvesting operations continued to rely upon migrant field
workers who often lacked the rights of full citizens and therefore seldom
enjoyed equal access to educational, medical, and financial institutions.
Thepoliticalmarginalizationoffarmworkerscannotbeexplained—much
less justified—by the harvesting cycles of crop plants. Instead, an aware-
ness of production processes sheds light on the particular ways that indi-
vidual farmers and agribusinesses have historically overcome obstacles to
capital accumulation by shifting the risks resulting from environmental
processes onto the backs of field workers. Additional research is needed
to understand how workers understood and responded to these risks.
A heightened sensitivity to environmental contexts also helps histo-
rians to lend content to the lives of people categorized by census takers as
''jornaleros,'' ''colonatos,'' and ''esposas.'' By following the movements of
actors through spacewe might discover that they spent a few months har-
vestingsugarcaneorcoffeewhileintermittentlytendingtoahomegarden,
in addition to hunting, fishing, and collecting plants, water, or firewood
from nearby forests, rivers, and wetlands. Acknowledging the importance
of the interstitial times and spaces inhabited by farmworkers also opens
up new possibilities for understanding political projects.
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For example,
my research in local archives along the North Coast turned up examples
