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 challenges and opportunities Oregon farmwarkers face today.
See part-one in this photo series by photographer Alan Borrud illustrating the FHDC housing
community of Oregon farmworkers.
“Street Roots strives to serve an often-forgotten population within our
community. I offered my services to assist in this project that showed
an organization’s effort to increase proper shelter and childhood
education for people in its community.
“Caring for others — I just wanted to honor that with my camera. But,
as is often the case when spending some time on a project, I learned as I
worked with my camera. I saw good people working hard to assist others
in their quest for a better life.” — Alan Borrud
Borrud is an experienced freelance photojournalist with a
newspaper and editorial background, living in Portland. Over the years
his work has included documentary work on a domestic abuse shelter, a
small town high school prom, a skateboard church preacher and a Russian
Orthodox Old Believer teaching in a Woodburn grade school.
This article appears in 2013-06-07.