American Harvest: a naïve, incomplete, and shamefully ignorant portrait of agriculture in the United States

I am writing to express my deep, deep disappointment with the film American Harvest, which opened in Rochester last Saturday at the Little Theater. I am a paralegal and outreach worker at Farmworker Legal Services of New York, a nonprofit law office based in Rochester. From my two years of providing legal services to farm workers in the Rochester area and beyond, I can say—from personal experience—that American Harvest presents a naïve, incomplete, and shamefully ignorant portrait of agriculture in the United States.

The film’s director, Angelo Mancuso, appears to have begun this project with honorable intentions, and I’m sure he feels his film is supportive of the mostly immigrant workers who plant and harvest America’s crops. But, as revealed in scene after scene of his movie, Mr. Mancuso fundamentally fails to understand the nature of our agricultural system and the brutal conditions suffered by its labor force. Essential facts are omitted, crucial context is lacking, and rosy clichés about farm workers’ satisfaction with their lot in life go unquestioned.

To be absolutely clear, I don’t disagree with the central premises of American Harvest: that immigrant farm workers are essential to the contemporary agricultural system, that the current immigration policy is unjust and makes no sense economically, and that America’s politicians need to take far more decisive and pragmatic actions to fix this broken situation.

The problem lies in the fact that Mr. Mancuso has made a 95-minute movie—purportedly dedicated to explaining how the “American Harvest” gets harvested—that contains not one word regarding the abuses of workers’ rights and human rights that are the norm, not the exception, in this line of work. How is this possible? How does a self-proclaimed journalist miss such a crucial part of the story? For instance, about 20 minutes of Mr. Mancuso’s film take place in Immokalee, Florida. With a simple Google search [of Immokalee Florida and immigrants], the director would have learned that the Immokalee area has had half a dozen agricultural slavery cases—not just slavery-like conditions, but actual slavery, according to the federal government—exposed in the last ten years. Many workers in Immokalee continue to live twelve to a single trailer, while paying rent prices that rival Manhattan’s. Mainstream regional newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times and the Naples Daily News have reported these conditions thoroughly, as have magazines such as National Geographic and The New Yorker. Abuse is hardly an obscure aspect of farm work in Florida. Read the rest of the letter by clicking the more button below.

Other Critical Local Reviews: American Harvest: a superficial, patronizing, and smug film

Additional Information: Farmworker Legal Services of New York | Immigrant Solidarity Network | Coalition of Immokalee Workers | Student / Farmworker Alliance | Alliance for Fair Food | DeleteTheBorder.org

Read Full Article