Eat With Your Head

To blog yet another Slate article, here’s a case for why farm workers would rather work at big, industrial farms rather than the small family farms we romanticize on our trips to the farmer’s market.

The main point is, big farms have more money, so they can afford to hire workers for longer periods of time and provide health insurance.

Ideally, I’d like to see all farmworkers (and actually, everyone) have health coverage, which is too expensive for small farms. So sure, if you have more money, you have more resources to fairly compensate employees and ensure a strong workforce.

Slate is all about articles that turn conventional liberal wisdom on its head, and it’s worth noting that not everything about small farms is sweet and good,  and everything about big farms evil and wrong… though I would argue that working for a large farm is probably not exactly a luxury job…or we wouldn’t be so  dependent on undocumented immigrants to pick our crops.