The Fields of Yuma

Many foreign hands
work the soil in Yuma to
provide a harvest.

~ carliewired

Each day, more than 1500 seasonal workers from Mexico cross the border to work the fields in Yuma County. They are gathered up in white buses and given their work papers. The busiest time for the border stations is between 4 and 6 AM. Sometimes it takes an hour's ride to get to the fields to begin the backbreaking work that American citizens don't really want to do. The Mexicans are critical labour to the farms in Yuma County. Although the wages they earn are minimum in the US, the wages are important to the Mexican workers who cannot match those wages in their home towns. It is certainly a long day for each Mexican worker. They arrive back on the Mexican side of the border about 6 PM.

I've watched these white buses for some time. They park beside the fields on the edge of the road. Each has a trailer behind it which carries one or more portable latrines and a wash station. They scurry into place before sunrise and at the end of the day, they scuttle back across the border.

A crew of 30 can cut more than 40 tons of lettuce in an 8 hour day. It is punishing work, requiring a worker to stoop, slice and pack while working behind a machine in the field. Yuma is the winter lettuce capital of the USA. 12 million heads of lettuce are harvested each day during the winter months.