Who is the Farmworker Housing Project For?
Pictured above is a team of 8 full-time and 27 seasonal employees posing in the final moments of an annual “team building” afternoon, where there is intentionality about designating time to enjoy each other’s company outside of the fields. This team encompasses the labor designated to steward 270 Regenerative Organic Certified™ acres in Brevard, NC, also known as the Gaia Herbs Farm.
We are a farm family ranging from 20-66 years of age, holding decades of agricultural experience, at least two languages (three if you include Spanglish), and an unquantifiable amount of passion for producing about 20% of the raw material needs for Gaia Herbs under a ROC™ framework. When the Gaia Farm began tending this Cherokee land in 1998, some of these faces were there, but all pictured are descendants of those who were there. Their labor and heart energies persist today and are in the roots of the ginkgoes and hawthorns.
While this blend of full-time and seasonal team members flows with the fluctuating labor demand that seasons reveal, it is also a blend of privilege: privilege to be a full-time employee and return home to our immediate families at the end of each workday; to have modern and dependable comforts of home; to have privacy.
Privilege of countless ways, even as tasted in every mouthful we take here in the good ‘ol United States of America, because, well, farmworkers, mostly migrant, produce the ingredients in you the reader, me the writer… all of our meals.
Why Did We Launch the Farmwork Housing Project?
Our nation’s dependency on migrant and seasonal agricultural laborers is in relation to domestic labor shortages, which farmers across the U.S. say are getting worse every year.
The H-2A visa program, established in the 1980s under the U.S Department of Homeland Security (one of many nonimmigrant classifications for temporary workers as illustrated in the image below), allows employers to bring in foreign farmworkers on a temporary basis, therefore contributing substantially to the food on your plate, flowers in your vase, Christmas trees in your living rooms, herbal supplements in your cabinets, and so on.
While nationals of 88 countries are eligible to receive H-2A visas through the US Department of Homeland Security (see list of eligible countries below), the entirety of the farm crew that has been stewarding the Gaia Herbs Farm since its inception in 1998 are Mexican nationals.
Specifically, all but two team members reside in the region of San Luis Potosi. This team is made up of brothers, uncles, cousins, son-in-laws, fathers, sons, Godfathers… in one word, they are family.
This family dynamic undulates across the farm fields, in the handling of agricultural equipment to the care of the soil, nurturing of seeds to seedlings to transplants through to harvest, so it is a priority of Gaia Herbs to treat this farm team with the same care and respect that they have been bringing to the farm for the past 26 years.
This comes in the form of ensuring equal opportunities to the seasonal farm team members that all full-time staff enjoy as well (free organic produce, lunches, free and reduced priced Gaia Herbs products, wellness opportunities, holiday paid time off, assurance of a living wage), trainings conducted in culturally appropriate language including employee handbook policies (grievance reporting, harassment, discrimination) and detailed safety/PPE procedures.
They also have open access to free health care services through Vecinos Inc, a local non-profit, and are allocated time to pursue continuing education, like English classes.
I invite you, reader, to fact check me on these points if you’d like, through learning more about our ROC™ certification in which Gaia Herb’s commitment to Social Fairness is an annually audited standard, and reigns equal to soil health (unlike USDA Certified Organic Certification, in which there is no social fairness standard).
How and Where Did We Build the Farmworker Housing?
Gaia Herbs’ pursuit to ROC™ began at about the same time the company initiated a goal to improve our farmworker housing. H-2A employers must provide housing at no cost to H-2A workers and yes, there is “criteria” for housing compliance. While the entire checklist can be found here, imagine for a moment that you were residing in housing that met some of the snips of criteria below:
How would you feel if this was your home for months of the year? Would you feel comfortable sharing a toilet with 14 other coworkers in your “home”? What about coordinating your shower time around nine other people that get off work at the same time?
While Gaia’s seasonal farm team has always resided in housing that hit every criterion far above government required minimums (for instance, our standard is 2 toilets and 2 showers per 5 persons) the company still felt that improving beyond this was an expenditure not focused on our financial bottom line, but our ethical bottom line.
With that being said, we executed a plan not through our own visions of optimal housing design, but with feedback, voting, and buy-in from the very team members that would be calling these units “home” for 7-9 months out of every year.
Six new housing units are now officially grounded on the Gaia Herbs farm property, passing all permits and necessary inspections, with a filing under “Gold Star Grower” criteria with the Division of Labor.
These units are complete with porches, grills, flat screen TVs, ultra-thick consciously manufactured Leesa mattresses, couches, washer/dryers, and fully equipped kitchens with two refrigerators. We absolutely cannot wait to see the team’s faces when they set foot in these new climate-controlled, energy-efficient homes.
The units will evolve with landscaping this spring (including a trail being installed down to Cathey’s Creek swimming access), and the personal touches as the farm team make these units their own.
What Meaning Do We Hope These Give to Our Employees and Our Community?
These seasonal team members enable the Gaia Farm to function. They not only deserve more, but all seasonal and migrant farmworkers deserve more. We are hoping that our commitment of actualizing projects like new housing for the Gaia Herbs seasonal farm team not only resonates with them in reciprocity for stewarding the land and producing the highest potency herbs, but can serve as a platform of advocacy for other agricultural employers to emulate.
Efforts to ensure farmworker dignity and justice will continue to energize our full-time and seasonal farm team family, our entire Gaian community, and perhaps you, too, our customers and audience.
We are dedicated to not only passing testing for purity and potency in our herbal supplements, but also integrity on an incredibly important ethical scale.