National Farm Workers Day: History, significance, and 5 important quotes

National Farm Workers Day is observed annually on March 31

PUBLISHED MAR 31, 2023

(Representational photo, Scott Olson/Getty Images)

National Farm Workers Day is a day to honor and express gratitude to farmers for all they do to keep food on the table. The staples of your grocery bag—vegetables, meat, and herbs—all come from a farm.

National Farm Workers Day is observed annually on March 31 to honor the farmers.

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History

During the colonial period, men and women who had been enslaved by coercion or fraud had few rights and no guarantees of subsequent freedom. In the 1600s, plantation owners began to enslave African immigrants with crueler methods and no hope of freedom because they needed more labor.

Even though agricultural slavery and the international slave trade were ended by the expansion of the country, it took 55 years, the American Civil War, and World War I to end this involuntary servitude.

Farm laborers with Fresh Harvest wash their hands before work on April 28, 2020 in Greenfield, California. They practice social distancing, and receive masks, gloves, hair nets and aprons. Fresh Harvest is the one of the largest employers of people using the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa for labor, harvesting and staffing in the United States. The company is implementing strict health and safety initiatives for their workers during the coronavirus pandemic and are trying a number of new techniques to enhance safety in the field as well as in work accommodations. Employees have their temperature taken daily and are also asked a series of questions about how they feel. Despite current record unemployment rates in the U.S. due to COVID-19-related layoffs, there have been few applications to do this kind of work despite extensive mandatory advertising by companies such as Fresh Harvest. — Farm laborers with Fresh Harvest wash their hands before work on April 28, 2020 in Greenfield, California (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

After the American Civil War, California became a hub for importing Asian farm workers. In the 1930s and during World War II immigrants who were agricultural laborers moved to Mexico. In the 1960s, Cesar Chavez, a Mexican-American civil rights activist, farm worker and community organizer, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, now the United Farm Workers. With the Delano grape strike, which lasted five years and eventually led to long overdue wage increases for grape pickers on California wine farms, the organization fulfilled its first goal of fighting for the rights of migrant farm workers.

Significance

A farm worker labors in a field on August 11, 2004 near the town of Arvin, southeast of Bakersfield, California. California?s Central Valley is one of the nation's most important agricultural and oil producing areas. Mass food production has brought heavy use of chemicals, including pesticides that have sickened hundreds of area workers and residents. In 2002, the last year for which numbers are available, 172 million pounds of pesticides were used on California fields sickening 478 people as airborne chemicals drifted 39 times, according to the state Department of Pesticide Regulation. On May 2, a crew of 100 workers was caught in a drift of pesticide near Arvin that made 19 of them sick, including a woman who was five months pregnant. This spring, state Sen. Dean Florez introduced a bill, the Pesticide Drift Exposure Response Act, to help pay for field workers' medical care. — A farm worker labors in a field on August 11, 2004 near the town of Arvin, southeast of Bakersfield, California. California (David McNew/Getty Images)

Farm workers provide the nation with enough food to export to other countries. Ironically, they have the lowest annual household income in the United States, leaving only a small amount of food at the end of the month. Nonimmigrant farm workers contribute more than $9 billion annually in the fruit and vegetable industry alone, both on and off the farm, reports newsd.

National Farm Workers Day Quotes 2023

1) "The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." - John F Kennedy

2) “As long as there are a few farmers out there, we’ll keep fighting for them.” - Willie Nelson

3) "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield." - Dwight D Eisenhower

4)“The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.” – Will Rogers

5) "Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health." - Paul Chatfield