The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.



Bloomberg / Getty Images Workers pick and pack strawberries during a harvest at Fancy Farms near Plant City, Florida, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015. Annual strawberry harvests in the area bring nearly $1 billion to the local economy, according to the Florida Strawberry Festival Growers Association. Photographer: Mark Elias/Bloomberg via Getty Images

With Florida's peak growing season underway, thousands of foreign guest workers are descending on farm fields to join a labor force that has endured the hardships of crowded boarding houses, law enforcement raids, and indentured servitude for generations. But now the workers who are critical to the nation's food supply will face a nemesis they've never encountered. The explosive growth of the novel coronavirus prompted one of the nation's oldest farm labor organizations on Monday to push for new safety standards for thousands of the workers and demand that growers provide medical care during outbreaks. “If it reaches the agricultural community, it will devastate them,” said Baldemar Velasquez, founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. “There won't be a safety net.” The entry of the workers comes just days after the US State Department lifted restrictions on temporary work visas and allowed the laborers to enter during the busiest agriculture season in Florida, where the nation's largest supply of oranges, winter sweet corn, and other crops are harvested. Created decades ago, the guest worker program allows farmers to hire foreign laborers if they can show that no Americans are available to work the fields. If the virus spreads among the workers — many of whom sleep in dilapidated trailers and cramped barracks — it could impact the spread of the illness among the laborers and the grower's ability to harvest the fields and stock American groceries.

Velasquez, who founded the advocacy group in 1967, said he is requesting that workers abide by social distancing rules, request isolation quarters if they get sick, and ensure their employers take them to hospitals. If the growers refuse, Velasquez, who has led farm labor strikes, said his group is prepared to file lawsuits. “These are among the most vulnerable workers in the country,” he said. “It's a national problem.” The son of Mexican migrant workers, Velasquez, 73, said he expects growers who signed contracts with farm labor groups will try to meet the demands. So far, about a third of the growers in North Carolina with those contracts have provided safeguards, including places for workers to be isolated, he said. Florida, however, could be a “ticking time bomb,” said Greg Schell, a veteran attorney who has represented laborers there for decades. The state has a dark history of abusing its agricultural workers, dating to the 1940s, when the region's largest sugar grower was indicted for slavery — and later, when the town of Belle Glade was profiled in the Edward R. Murrow television documentary Harvest of Shame.

Do you have questions you want answered? You can always get in touch. And if you're someone who is seeing the impact of this firsthand, we’d also love to hear from you (you can reach out to us via one of our tip line channels).



The guest workers “are in the middle of stinking nowhere,” Schell said. “They work on top of one another and they live on top of one another.” Schell, who sued in 2001 to stop crew leaders from forcing workers to pay them kickbacks, said about 10,000 workers will be coming to Florida in the current wave, joining another 25,000 who have been in the state since January. By next month, Florida could have more guest workers than any state.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images A woman walks along a street in the rural agriculture community of Immokalee on September 9, 2018 in Immokalee, Florida.