Food Chains
The documentary Food Chains offers insights into the lives and working conditions of the farmworkers with an emphasis on the workers in Immokalee, Florida, the largest tomato producing region in the US. It accomplishes this by showing how the workers who are primarily formed from Latin America endure some challenging conditions. These include deplorable working conditions such as having to pick 4,000 pounds of tomatoes each day, wage theft, living in cramped houses, pervasive sexual harassment, and slavery. Supermarkets perpetuate these exploitations at the top of the food chain who have refused to revamp their produce buying policies keeping the wages of the workers low. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Food Chains presents its audience with a portrayal of farmworkers’ plight for social justice. Farmworkers have banded together to form the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to campaign for better wages and their rights. The initiative seeks to influence the Florida supermarket chain Publix to pay an extra penny for a pound of tomatoes(Food Chains). The workers estimate that the increase would increase their salaries and offer them some decent living, enabling them to enjoy their human rights. However, Publix’s officials have relentlessly refused to even meet with the workers.
Food Chains also includes a history of the farmworkers’ movement by citing the Cesar Chavez-led grape strike, supported by Robert F. Kennedy. His family has shown up to assist the CIW. It also expresses the problems encountered by farmworkers in Napa Valley who have to make long commutes to the farms because they cannot afford housing near their jobs.
Eric Scholsser, the documentary’s author and producer, argues that what is lacking is awareness and hopes that his film will appeal for change. Although the film ends without showing CIW’s achievements, it creates a message of hope for the farmworkers and their advocates. Thus, like many documentaries advancing social progress, it is deeply inspirational.
Work Cited
“Food Chains.’’ Tubi TV, 26 April 2014, https://tubitv.com/movies/486426/food_chains