food for thought
Feeding the Nation: The Mexicano People’ s Role in U. S.. Food Production
story and photos By Alejandro López
It is often said that almost no one in the world works as hard as the Mexicano people. In the Midwest they operate the slaughterhouses, dressing and packaging the meats that land on the breakfast and dinner tables of millions of Americans. In the Carolinas they do most of the heavy lifting required to keep the enormous poultry farms in operation and the endless buckets of fried chicken coming. In Florida Mexicanos pick citrus. In Louisiana they dredge up shrimp from the sea. In Texas and California, they tend enormous farms and greenhouses overflowing with a cornucopia of vegetables from lettuce, green beans, okra, tomatoes, and squash to onions, bell peppers, peas, eggplant, corn, carrots, radishes, asparagus, and more.
In California’ s wine country the Mexicano people grow and harvest the grapes that end up as fine table wines that soothe the nerves of a jittery nation experiencing a crush of unanticipated forms of bewilderment in every category of life that seems to matter, from health to wealth and everything in between. Other grape varieties go to adorn sumptuous platters of fruit in hotel ballrooms where people pop them into their mouths without so much as a thought as to how they got there.
In Washington and Oregon the
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