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.