Reading Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies by Seth Holmes

Anthropologist Seth Holmes

Many people do not stop to consider the fruits and vegetables they eat every day and where they come from.  Even as someone who works around fruit for five to eight hours a day, I myself have not considered the places that our produce comes from.  And I don't think other people really think about it either.  Because of this, most people do not know of the hard labor and intense conditions that farmworkers face to get this produce to Americans all over the country.  Though people do not realize it, the fruits and vegetables that we eat every day are a result of sacrifices made by migrant farmworkers.  In his book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, Anthropologist Seth Holmes goes in depth about these sacrifices and conditions that migrant farmworkers face in their daily lives.  The purpose of his book is to raise awareness for the problems that migrant farmworkers face, and to do so, Holmes puts himself in their shoes and works in fields to experience firsthand what the farmworkers experience.  Reading this book has really opened my eyes and changed my perspective on the things that migrant farmworkers go through.  Overall, I am glad that I had the chance to read this book.

I think that because of Seth Holmes' experience, he was able to do a great job describing to readers what the lives of migrant farmworkers are really like.  Some of the issues he brings up in the book might be things that some people could not imagine experiencing.  There is a message that Holmes presents in his book saying that "American society gains much from migrant laborers and gives little back beyond criminalization, stress, and injury"(Holmes 197).  Unfortunately, what Holmes is saying is true.  Americans get so much from migrant farmworkers, yet what they give farmworkers in return does not even compare especially considering the hard labor that the farmworkers have to perform to feed the rest of the country.  It is like Americans take advantage of the farmworkers' situations.  While farmworkers are forced to resort to field work in order to feed their families, Americans simply benefit from their hard work while having nothing to offer in return.  The farmworkers' situations are best described by the website National Farmworker Ministry: "the very people who work to feed the U.S. struggle to feed their own families."

Farmworkers wearing face coverings

Throughout the book, Seth Holmes sticks with a theme that he first describes way back in his thesis, saying that his book "engages a critically embodied anthropology to confront the ways in which certain classes of people become written off or deemed less human"(Holmes 44).  He is saying that people are being treated as if they are something less than humans which raises some awareness as to how environments should be treated.  In a way, these farmworkers have a large impact on our environment.  So how farmworkers are treated can eventually have an effect on the environment or vice versa.  In conclusion, we should treat farmworkers the same way we would treat our environment and we should take care of our environment the same way we should take care of farmworkers.  This all could be tied to my humanities theme on how humans affect the environment.  So treating farmworkers better could result in a better looking environment.

I would definitely recommend this book because of the awareness that it raises for these migrant farmworkers.  I don't think that they're talked about as much as they should because they are just swept under the rug and unacknowledged by society.  Migrant farmworkers play such a big role in the United States, but are often disregarded not only as citizens but human as well.  However this was not the case when it came to Seth Holmes.  He was treated better than the other workers because of his race which was something I found quite interesting.  Overall, I would say that this book has really opened my eyes to things that are happening nationally as opposed to locally.

Janet Mclaughlin giving a TED Talk raising awareness for migrant farmworkers

Works Cited

Holmes, Seth M. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. University of 

    California Press, 2013

"Issues Affecting Farm Workers." NFWM, 17 July 2020, nfwm.org/farm-workers/farm-worker-issues/.