By David Bacon
The infection rate from the COVID virus is much higher in the rural counties of California than it is in the cities. In Tulare County, 29,078 people had contracted the virus as of four days before Christmas, and 353 people had died.
Yet throughout this summer and fall, farmworkers went into the county's orchards to harvest fruit. Workers are essential, since if they didn't do this work the grapes, pluots and persimmons would rot on the trees, and supermarket shelves would be bare. But being essential during the COVID era also means that workers are forced to put themselves at risk of infection in the orchards because they have no money to pay rent or buy food if they don't.
In the trees and under the vines farmworkers do the best they can to take care they don't get sick. Most wear masks or bandannas, although women especially have always worn bandannas at work. In addition to protecting against infection, they filter out dust. Most important for many, they provide a kind of shield against unwanted attention from men.
Even in a good crew with a responsible foreman, workers almost invariably have to bring their own shears, bags and masks. Summer temperature in the Tulare fields get up to 110 degrees. The masks are hot and uncomfortable, but workers are already challenging accepted wisdom by wearing many layers of clothing, which they say does a better job of insulating against the heat than showing up for work in a teeshirt.
Still, wearing protection and being uncomfortable - cold in November's persimmons and hot in July's pluots and August's grapes - is not really a choice if you have a family to support. And if it's the price of not getting sick, then workers pay it.
POPLAR, CA - 11AUGUST20 - Filipino farmworkers pick table grapes in a field near Poplar, in the San Joaquin Valley. Most workers wear facemasks or bandannas as a protection against spreading the coronavirus. Teresita Mateo came from Laoag, in Ilocos Norte province of the Philippines.
POPLAR, CA - 11AUGUST20 - Victor Tabino takes the picked bunches and puts them into a plastic bag, ready for the supermarket.
POPLAR, CA - 21NOVEMBER20 - Farmworkers pick persimmons in a field near Poplar, in the San Joaquin Valley, in a crew of Mexican immigrants. Maria Madrigal is a picker in the crew.
POPLAR, CA - 21NOVEMBER20 - Next to his ladder, Pedro Rodriguez cuts each persimmon with a shears, placing it carefully in the box strapped to his shoulders.
POPLAR, CA - 21NOVEMBER20 - At the truck, a loader stacks the boxes. The boxes can't be filled to the top, or the soft fruit will be crushed.
POPLAR, CA - 13JULY20 - Carmen, another picker, balances on a ladder while she fills her bag she carries on her shoulder.
POPLAR, CA - 13JULY20 - Sara Toledo reaches through the branches and leaves for the pluots she intends to pick.
POPLAR, CA - 13JULY20 - A worker empties her bag of fruit into the bin.
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