A cow and a herd of humans is behind it: Employees who homogenize, bottle and deliver it to your store; the lab technician who checks it for quality and safety; workers who make disinfectants for cows and dairy machines; the truck driver who picks up the milk from the farm; the farmer who owns the cows and grows the silage; the nutritionist who supervises their feeding; and the laborers who clean the stalls, feed the cows and milk them.
Like Maria. On a dairy farm in Franklin County, Vt., she and three co-workers feed and milk 750 cows, twice a day.
For everyone living on a dairy farm, keeping cows healthy and productive is a 24-hour concern. Shifts are long and days off are few.
Maria (name withheld) and her co-workers face an additional restriction. Like half the workers on U.S. dairy farms—and well above 60 percent in Vermont—they are immigrants, all from Mexico, according to the Franklin Alliance for Rural Ministries (FARM) website. Undocumented, Maria doesn’t venture much beyond the farm.
“These [dairy workers] live in isolation, far from home,” said Kim Erno, director of FARM, an ecumenical ministry of the ELCA based at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Swanton, Vt. FARM provides accompaniment to Latino migrant workers and their families.
“Most Vermont workers come from the poorest states in southern Mexico, where trade agreements that permitted the dumping of low-price U.S. corn have devastated the local economy and forced small farmers off the land,” Erno said. “Folks are not coming to pursue the American dream but fleeing a global economic disaster.”
Erno knows one young man who supports seven people in Chiapas, Mexico, with his dairy wages. Maria, from Mexico City, hopes to earn enough to return home, buy a house for her family and start a business. Unless she is detained and deported—a possibility that troubles the National Milk Producers Federation, which estimates that losing workers to deportation would nearly double retail milk prices.
“Folks are not coming to pursue the American dream but fleeing a global economic disaster.” — Kim Erno, FARM director
Deportation isn’t the only issue that concerns Vermont dairy farmers. Industry consolidation pressures smaller dairies to increase their herds. Milk production is going up, but consumption isn’t. A strong U.S. dollar has tightened the export market for dairy products. And as government milk prices move from $20 a hundredweight down to $11, farmers are often in the red, said Alan Mesman, a milk industry expert.
While dairy farming is increasingly mechanized, people are still needed. As farmers age and their children choose non-farm careers, help must come from outside the family. Dependable workers like Maria and her family must cover extra shifts as unreliable workers come and go.
Marginalized by language and legal status, Vermont dairy workers can be vulnerable to exploitation, Erno said. Some farmers try to make up for profit-squeezing external factors by scrimping on wages and working and living conditions, Mesman added.
Source: Living Lutheran
Link: https://www.livinglutheran.org/2017/09/secret-life-dairy-workers%E2%80%89/