UNEARTHED: AMERICA'S FARM WORKERS: Living Conditions

As a physical therapist, most of these questions simply swam around in my head as conjecture and curiosity, but it was their physical condition that gave me objective data. Over the course of my first season working in the mobile clinic, I kept track of the types of injuries I saw. Overwhelmingly, these men injure their backs and their shoulders, and as might be suspected for anyone who’s ever spent years on a computer mouse, or styling hair, or anything even remotely like that, most of these injuries were overuse injuries, the type of ailment that happens when you do the same thing hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Professional athletes, pitchers for example, do loads of strength training and “prehabilitation” to help prevent injury, despite the repetitive nature of what they do (and sometimes that’s still not enough). But the farm worker population doesn’t seem to have any such regimen. A few have shared knowledge—passed down, no doubt, among workers and through generations—about stretching and warming up, but VERY few seem to do anything of the sort. Many also use back braces to protect their backs from injury, but don’t follow up with core strengthening exercise—a combination that, over time, makes the back more susceptible to injury because the muscles that would naturally support the back simply shut down.

Perhaps the largest driver for these overuse injuries, however, came to light as October rolled around, the air grew crisp and the season drew to a close. Over and over again, we heard complaints from workers about shoulder injuries or back pains that only affected one side of the body. Questioning further about the nature of their tasks out in the fields (it was sweet potato harvesting season) we found, over and over, that men were using only one hand or arm to complete their job (or in other instances, only rotating toward one side, or only lifting a crate of produce onto one shoulder). Overwhelmingly, the reasoning behind this was speed. Men used their dominant arm only, and had been doing so all season. We counseled them to switch sides for a time, or at least rotate back and forth. But each time we were met with resistance. Why? Because they were faster with their dominant side, and the faster they were, the more they picked; the more they picked, the more they got paid.