Eva Longoria On Producing New Documentary, ‘The Harvest/La Cosecha'

More than 400,000 children in the United States are torn away from their schools and homes to work as migrant workers with their families.

The documentary, “The Harvest/La Cosecha: The Children Who Feed America”, produced by long time actress and activist, Eva Longoria, and Shine Global, the Academy-Award nominated producers of War/Dance, provides an "intimate glimpse into the lives of these children who struggle to dream while working 12 – 14 hours a day, 7 days a week to feed America." The award-winning documentary profiles three children, Zulema, Perla, and Victor, on their journey from the heat of onion-fields of Texas to the bitter cold of apple orchards in Michigan finally ending in the humid tomato fields of Florida.

"If you eat produce, this issue affects you," said Eva Longoria in an interview with HuffPost LatinoVoices.

"Agriculture is the most dangerous work open to children in the United States," according to the Centers for Disease Control's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). These “children risk pesticide poisoning, serious injury, and heat illness. They suffer fatalities at more than four times the rate of children working in other jobs,” the Human Right Watch organization reports.

Long time advocate for farm workers Eva Longoria was approached to help produce the documentary by Shine Global, an organization dedicated to ‘ending child abuse and exploitation through documentaries to raise social awareness and inspire political change.’

Longoria explains how many children die from heat exhaustion and lack of water. They are also constantly working in toxic environment. She said that even though the pesticide level was lowered, the level is suitable for a 160 pound person. “So if you are a child in the field you are exposed to 2 to 3 times as much as you are supposed to,” Longoria said.

The psychological effects are also most detrimental to their success, she said.

“These children don’t have an answer to ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ They feel like they don’t have any other options because they are stuck in the cycle of poverty,” Longoria stresses.

In her interview, she said Shine Global wants to use the film as a political tool to help change policy in Washington. The Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act), HR 3564, would ‘ensure that all working children are protected equally.’

“As human beings, you have to be responsible about where your food came from and who picked it.
In a small way, you can always eat organic because that means that person that picked your food wasn't subjected to pesticides,” Longoria explained.

WATCH TRAILER:

The Harvest Trailer 2010 from Media Voices on Vimeo.

Comments

[Ann Cornell]

03:16 AM on 10/23/2011

what congressman will really stand up and bat for the many disable claimants such as myseld. I have learned that Owcp could care-less about the damangage people that have no help why are ppl lving in poverty, slums when? i

[LMPE]

03:04 PM on 10/20/2011

Are the people who want immigrants deported willing to do this work themselves?

[Laura Lee Noss]

02:58 PM on 11/28/2011

No they are not. Alabama's new immigration law has revealed that to us. Maybe if America is willing to pay $3 for 1 tomato then that may fly. What i see happening is an increase in import of produce from other countries.

[loyalist1]

10:55 PM on 10/19/2011

My father used to tell stories about the wheat harvest in North Dakota. Even in the early years of the 20th C. it was done by crews that used harvesting equipment. If we relied upon hand labor for basic like wheat and corn we would be in a terrible mess.
Just about anything grown can be harvested by a mechanical device---and many of them are simple tractor attachments. Without modernization US agriculture will lose out to Third World agribusiness that hires labor for only a few dollars a day. Not all crops may benefit, but there is the agricultural visa program.

[saint bernard mom]

10:13 PM on 10/19/2011

I had previously posted about working on a farm from the age of 9-16 picking mostly strawberries and my brothers worked on the farms all day during the summer for $2 a day. My DH picked onions in West Texas when he was a kid. Also, I spent a almost a decade in Hawaii and I knew a slew of people who worked the pineapple fields starting in high school and worked their way thru college doing that. 

I don't think kids should be kept out of school for extended periods to work as an education is important. But where I grew up all the high school boys whose families had farms missed school for a few days when the hay was harvested. One of the farmers had a teen-age son who rolled a tractor and was killed, but he was the only one I ever knew who was fatally injured. I knew a couple of boys who fell and broke their arm while picking apples, but I also knew boys who fell while climbing trees who broke an arm. 

I don't believe working on farms is harmful to kids, anymore than normal boy's activities or kids driving cars. Ironically, the statistics for children being hurt in sports activities is so bad that sports for children should be outlawed. 

[Laura Lee Noss]

03:02 PM on 11/28/2011

yes but some of these kids are forced to work. No breaks "working 12 to 14 hours a day 7 days a week."

[Consequence]

03:26 PM on 10/19/2011

The Hispanics that have their children work as child laborers in the fields should have their children taken away by social services.

[saint bernard mom]

09:21 PM on 10/19/2011

What about white or black kids? 

Just in case you don't know this, parents used to MAKE their kids work for spending money, it wasn't just handed to them. I worked on farms in Missouri (from approx age 9-16) until I was old enough to get a SS card and get an easy job in a store. In a small farm town, this is a great source of income for kids. My brothers worked on the farms all day for $2 a day all the way till they graduated. One of them ended up being a VP for IBM.  

I still believe it does not hurt kids to do hard work on farms. 

[arecibo48]

10:19 PM on 10/19/2011

Taken away? Where's the due process. What is needed is for the parents to be educated about our laws.

[saint bernard mom]

02:29 AM on 10/19/2011

I was raised in farm country in Missouri and we (all the kids in the town) all "picked" when the crops came in. My brothers worked on the farms full time all summer. Children of the farmers worked right along with the rest of the family, most had done at least an hours worth of chores before going to school. The older boys would always miss school when they had to harvest the hay. The whole community worked together to keep the farms running. 

I remember when the strawberry crops came in we would eat breakfast, walk to the farm (about a mile), and pick all morning, then eat the lunch our parents had packed, and picked all afternoon and then walk home. When we got home we ate dinner, took a bath and collapsed.

I always thought that doing farm work was a great deterrent to dropping out of school. The work is too hard. You have to love farming to do it full time. I don't feel it ever harmed us picking crops, it taught us about hard work. I was sure glad when I was old enough to get a SS card to get an "easy" job at a store.

[sabelmouse]

06:51 AM on 10/19/2011

i appreciate what you're saying but this article seems to be about slave labour .

[prettyfnliberal]

09:15 AM on 10/19/2011

you do realize that you and your family actually earned money from the crops you harvested right? you have a family farm.

this documentary is about migrant workers, who go from region to region to be there in time for a specific harvest. they move their children with them and enroll their children in migrant worker school programs. they earn very little for what they do and the children earn even less, and less of an education with it.

don't compare your upbringing to theirs unless you also did the same.

american ignorance at it's worst.

[saint bernard mom]

09:04 PM on 10/19/2011

Actually I live in central Tx now and I am very familiar with migrant workers. Migrant workers have been given special provisions and services as they travel from place to place, from state to state such as schooling, and allowed to collect services such as medical and food stamps in multiple states. I have seen and copied the migrant worker cards, I know many in Tx who OWN, completely paid for, homes and ranches and vehicles.  

"The Act provides federal labor-related standards with respect to the transportation and housing of agricultural workers, sets specific requirements concerning payment of wages and conditions of employment, and deals with the relationship between agricultural workers, their employers and farm labor contractors. The Act requires certification of farm labor contractors through the United States Department of Labor"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_and_Seasonal_Agricultural_Workers_Protection_Act

Also, before you respond and call other people names,  you might want to READ the comment. I did not say we owned the farm, but walked a mile to it. We only got paid what the farmers were paying that year. My brothers made $2 a day and worked from about 7 to 6 everyday,  and when we picked strawberries we made .05 a pint. Oh, and this was back in the 50s and 60s when everything was sprayed with DDT. 

The article was about children working on farms, being part of a migrant family. I posted about how working on farms was not harmful to anyone I know, having done it for 6-7 years before I was old enough to get a SS card and get a job in a store. 

[happypatb]

04:23 PM on 10/18/2011

Let's see, when Alabama passed its law requiring that only legal labor be employed teh vast majority of posters here at HP criticized the law by saying that without it work wouldn't get done and/or the price of agricultural products would skyrocket. So, I suppose they can justify the use of child migrant workers on the same grounds. I would say (as I did before) that if prices rise as a result of using legal labor (including labor that is legally in the country and of legal working age) then so be it: that is the free market working to reflect the real cost of the product made.

[prettyfnliberal]

09:16 AM on 10/19/2011

migrant workers aren't all illegal. they have work permits to be in the country so the laws don't apply to them.

[happypatb]

04:21 PM on 10/19/2011

That wasn't the point, my point was that people on these comment pages frequently rationalize an illegal and exploitive labor practice (hiring illegal laborers) with the argument that without those laborers, prices would increase. That rationale would also apply here and if they were to be consistent, they would defend this eggregious practice too. I think both are abhorrent.

[saint bernard mom]

09:24 PM on 10/19/2011

They also have an Act to protect them and give them benefits and services in multiple states. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_and_Seasonal_Agricultural_Workers_Protection_Act

[Consequence]

02:42 PM on 10/18/2011

Allowing children to work in the fields is terrible.

Social Services should remove the children from any parents that allow this.

[saint bernard mom]

02:39 AM on 10/19/2011

I grew up in farm country in Missouri and all the kids in town picked crops in the summer. My brothers worked on a farm full time all summer. It never hurt any of us. And it taught us some valuable lessons about hard work.

[Cayita]

12:37 PM on 10/18/2011

I used to work serving poor migrant families. One day, a mother who was my student brought her 14-year-old son. He did not want to be there. He had crossed the border illegally and without her mother's permission (he had been left behind in rural Mexico when his parents immigrated, also illegally, to the US).

I told this boy that he should enroll in school. He did not want to. He wanted to work in the fields, as he had done in Mexico. I, and his parents, tried to explain him that is was against the law and the he needed to go to school. He refuse. He had not attended school in Mexico and he simply wanted to work and make money. He stopped coming to my class and my guess is he found a job.

While I can not envision my children being happy if at 14 I send them to work in the fields, I do understand that for some "children", that is a normal thing and not a traumatic experience. It is difficult to reconcile the cultural clash of who is a child and what a child should (or should not) do. Having said that, child labor should be regulated and tough safety rules should be implemented in all work areas, including farming.

[saint bernard mom]

02:46 AM on 10/19/2011

In Tx, many families encourage the kids to drop out of school and work with the Dad doing painting, drywall, landscaping, fencing, etc. Most of the migrant families I know own (completely paid for) a house or small ranch and all their vehicles are also paid for. The families do work together for the benefit of the whole family. Some do encourage school and some don't . Actually, my plumber brought his son along with him (during summer vacation) to work with him the last time I needed some repairs. 

[Puzzlr]

12:37 PM on 10/18/2011

And the names of the farms are.....? Shine a light not only on the children, but the companies. If we do that, then the companies will be fined by the government for hiring children and illegals AND people will stop buying their produce. Double whammy. That there are no longer any jobs for them, will also put a dent in the number of illegals who come here.

BTW, why aren't the parents being indicted by this documentary? They could easily say no or I don't have any kids, when the farmers ask. Why are they given a free pass, while selling their children into a life of hardship?

[jimmurphySF]

12:18 PM on 10/18/2011

Check out the Human Rights Watch advocacy film "Fingers to the Bone: Child Farmworkers in the US" http://www.hrw.org/video/2010/05/03/fingers-bone-child-farmworkers-us

[markspence]

12:25 AM on 10/19/2011

This is revolting.

These children need to taken away from their parents and placed in foster homes. The work should be done by US citizens for prevailing wages and/or by machines. I will pay the added cost.

[JTyroler]

11:39 AM on 10/18/2011

America has tried to banish child labor in various forms for well over a century. We still haven't banished it - we have some politicians that want to make it legal (Maine's governor, for example), people willing to hire children (not just in agriculture) and families who have so little that they feel that their only chance to survive is by having children go to work.

[Alopez105]

11:31 AM on 10/18/2011

This Just Shows How Some Of You Hate Even Kids Of Mexican illegals Or Not ...TO YOU I SAY THIS...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU ??? AND YOU CALL URSELFS CHRISTIANS...MAKE SURE YOU WASH UR VEGETABLES..REALLY WELL !!!!

[prettyfnliberal]

09:20 AM on 10/19/2011

lol true. but dont' tell them to wash their vegetables. it's better if they learn the hard way.

[sibyl9]

11:21 AM on 10/18/2011

I suppose these migrant fruit pickers figure that if their child is har med, what the heck, they'll just have more.

[Gloria Casillas]

06:48 PM on 10/18/2011

You have no idea what you are talking about! You don't know what grinding poverty and great need are. Shame on you!!!

[Elecktra001]

10:01 PM on 10/18/2011

Shame on you for suggesting that endangering a child is somehow justified because someone is in those circumstances.

[arecibo48]

10:26 PM on 10/19/2011

Siby, you are loca.

[Fairley De Cunha Parson]

11:20 AM on 10/18/2011

this is not funny as some below seem to portray it. . This is a serious issue. It need not compete with other serious issues facing immigrants. thanks Ms. Longoria -Glad there's someone with the spotlight on them, who is eloquent, accessible, and informed-- actively in spreading the word.