Farm workers form the backbone of New Jersey’s $1 billion agriculture industry but climate change is putting their health at risk.
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.Beyond the high-rises of New Jersey’s cities and the sprawling suburbs that make it the most densely populated state in the U.S., large swaths of the Garden State are dedicated to agriculture.
Farmworkers are excluded from some of the most basic labor protections nationally, such as the right to unionize. Unlike New York, New Jersey does not extend bargaining protections to farm workers, making it harder to organize a socially isolated, transient workforce that doesn’t always speak English and generally cannot vote in the state.
For the last six summer harvests, Edgar Gonzalez Murillo has worked on a South Jersey farm, picking melons for 10 hours a day. His life between April and October is largely confined to a radius of a couple miles in Salem County: the farm where he works six days a week and the labor camp where he sleeps at night.“I went to the beach, Atlantic City for July 4,” Murillo, 23, said in Spanish, as he chewed on a watermelon slice after one of his shifts in August.
“It’s obviously worrying because you are going to be putting in more energy into work and every day will feel heavier. You’re going to get weaker because the sun weakens you,” Murillo said. “If the temperature outside is 95 degrees, it can be 15 or 20 degrees higher,” he said. “Imagine working at a temperature of 120 degrees and then get home and not be able to sleep because of the heat.”
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