Giving Compass' Take:
- Amy Green reports on the harmful conditions facing underresourced Florida farmworkers, who often continue working despite extreme heat.
- What insights about movement building can philanthropy glean from this interview with Jeannie Economos, a project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida?
- Ask a custom question to find other nonprofits focused on farmworker organizing.
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It’s shaping up to be another hot Florida summer. Among the most vulnerable are those with the least resources for dealing with the heat: underserved communities and communities of color, who often are excluded from environmental and climate protections. One need only look at the extreme heat facing Florida farmworkers as an example.
That includes the state’s more than 150,000 farmworkers, who are responsible for raising the food that nourishes us. Jeannie Economos is a pesticide safety environmental health project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida. Her work focuses on pesticide protections for farmworkers, as pesticide exposure can lead to illness and birth defects.
The Extreme Heat Facing Florida Farmworkers
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AMY GREEN: How hot is it this summer for Florida’s farmworkers?
JEANNIE ECONOMOS: Workers that have been doing farmwork for a long time will tell us that even though they’re used to the heat because they work in Florida, that every year the heat feels different. And it feels hotter. And it feels like it’s scorching, and almost like it’s attacking rather than just being hot. There’s a different quality to the heat that they haven’t experienced before, and it’s really rough.
GREEN: How does heat affect the body, especially for Florida’s farmworkers?
ECONOMOS: It affects all aspects of the body. One of the main concerns that we have is dehydration, because not only can dehydration make you thirsty and make you tired and make you weak. But chronic dehydration and even acute dehydration can affect your other organs, including your kidney and your heart and your brain and your liver because your blood flow is different throughout your body. Your elimination of toxins is different. So it really affects all organs of the body, and people don’t realize that. If you’re climbing on a ladder it can make you dizzy. It can make your judgment different, and you could be falling off a ladder. You’re more prone to accidents if you’re really hot and you’re dehydrated.
Read the full article about the extreme heat facing Florida farmworkers by Amy Green at Inside Climate News.