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Food And Farmworkers : Planet Money To find out what's happening with our food, we talk to an economist, a farmer, and, of course, farmworkers. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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Food And Farmworkers

Food And Farmworkers

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Mexican farmworkers who are allowed into America on a special seasonal harvest visa known as an H2A, weed a tobacco field in Greene County, North Carolina. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
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Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Mexican farmworkers who are allowed into America on a special seasonal harvest visa known as an H2A, weed a tobacco field in Greene County, North Carolina. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

The empty grocery shelves are unnerving. While we're probably not going to starve in the long run, the farm system is going to be seriously stressed. Most of our fruits and vegetables are picked by hand. 73% of farmworkers in the U.S. are foreign born; half are undocumented. What happens when those workers get sick? How do we keep the food supply chain going when borders are closed over coronavirus concerns?

In this episode, to understand how the coronavirus is affecting and might affect our food, we talk to an economist, a farmer, and, of course, the people who really make farms go — the farmworkers.

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