Oregon is a bountiful state. We produce 220 crops and
livestock commodities, a greater variety than any state except Florida and
California. The value of these crops and commodities totaled more than $5
billion in 2011, a record high.
As consumers, we can shop row upon row of premium produce,
meats and other products, most of us with little thought about who makes that
possible — the roughly 90,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers who work in
Oregon each year.
For them, Oregon’s agricultural industry presents a much
different experience. Farmworkers, nearly all of them immigrants, receive nominal
pay for labor-intensive work, suffer food insecurity and hunger, and most are
without health insurance and have limited access to health care providers.
Topping the list of needs, however, is housing. Only a small
fraction of the state’s farmworkers live on state-registered farmworker camps.
The Farmworker Housing Development Corporation, a nonprofit based in Woodburn,
is working to fill the enormous deficit, building community-based properties to
provide stable, supportive housing for this vital labor force. Also read an in-depth interview on the successes and challenges Oregon farmwarkers face today.
In this edition, Street Roots presents the first of a
two-part photo series by photographer Alan Borrud illustrating the FHDC housing
community of Oregon farmworkers.
This article appears in 2013-05-24.