Oxfam America Blog

Jonathan Coley stands outside the office of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Jonathan Coley is a CHANGE leader for Oxfam America and a student at Samford University. Here’s his account of a recent visit to Immokalee, Florida, where many of the nation’s tomatoes are grown—and often picked under grueling conditions.

When you’re enjoying your sandwich or burrito at lunch, do you think about the hand that picked your tomatoes?

Despite working in one of the most dangerous industries in the United States, the average farm worker earns just $7,500 a year with few benefits and no overtime pay. Children as young as 12 work in the fields.

I knew many of these facts before I traveled to Immokalee, Florida, recently for the annual gathering of the Student/Farmworker Alliance. However, I was not prepared for the realities I confronted when I walked the streets of this little-known Florida town. Read the rest of this entry »

Corn will be in short supply this winter in many indigenous communities in Baja Verapaz. Photo by James Rodriguez/Oxfam America

As promised, here is an update on Oxfam’s plan to help the people I met in Guatemala described in my last post: You can read about our work with Gloria Gonzalez’s organization ASECSA here.

It will take more than whatever rain fell from the recent passage of a tropical storm to turn around the super-dry conditions in Guatemala. Winter is essentially here, but hopefully next year, in the absence of the El Niño phenomenon, there will be better rains. If we can help these families survive the winter, they will need seeds and fertilizer so they can plant in the spring. With so many families facing food shortages this winter, they will require all their strength and resources to survive.

The resilience of Guatemalans is impressive. After all the wars, discrimination, and tragedy, the indigenous people keep fighting to survive, and they will not succumb to malnutrition without a struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Medhin Reda depends on rain to water her fields of teff and corn. Erratic weather has a profound impact on the well-being of her family. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

Climate talks in Copenhagen are just a few weeks away. Here at my desk in Boston, I’m hearing a growing urgency in the pitches from campaigners who have been working long and hard to get the United States and the European Union to own up to their responsibility for the future that is facing us all.

But what I hear louder, still, are the voices of the people I met in Ethiopia in August for whom changing weather patterns and increased cycles of drought mean failed crops, skipped meals, and deeper poverty. Read the rest of this entry »

Farmer Maria Lopez says she has lost most of her corn and beans this year due to lack of rain. Photo by Chris Hufstader/oxfam America

It is hard for visitors to fathom the depths of the tragedy Guatemala’s indigenous people continue to suffer, but a brief look at the museum in Rabinal will certainly get the process started. It commemorates those who died in some of the worst massacres of indigenous people during this country’s 36-year civil conflict.

Gloria Gonzalez, a young program officer at a non-governmental group working in the area, showed me the museum. It consists of two rooms filled with photos of the dead, one of whom was her grandfather, Camilo Mayor. The caption under his photo says “assassinated during the conflict in our community.”

The community of Rio Negro was particularly affected: when they objected to the terms of a forced relocation to make way for the Chixoy River hydroelectric dam, the military claimed they were allied with guerrilla forces and killed nearly every resident between February and March 1982, part of its scorched earth counter-insurgency policy. More than 250 were murdered, including 177 unarmed elderly, women, and children on one day. The Guatemala Truth Commission declared the incident a state-sponsored act of genocide.

Today, the Maya-Achi indigenous people who were pushed up the mountain slopes to make room for the Chixoy Dam are suffering a slow-motion type of disaster, no less deadly. The centuries of racism and discrimination that led to their precarious living conditions are now exacerbated by a long drought and high temperatures that have left most with little corn, beans, and other crops on which they depend. Read the rest of this entry »

Terraces around the village of Ashenge have been built to help conserve the soil. Photo by Marc Cohen/Oxfam America

Marc Cohen is Oxfam America’s senior researcher on humanitarian policy and climate change. Here’s his account of a recent visit to northern Ethiopia where famine struck a quarter century ago.

Twenty-five years ago, Michael Buerk’s dramatic BBC footage from Korem, in northern Ethiopia, brought a devastating famine to the world’s attention. Tens of thousands of people had sought refuge from war and drought in the town. Every 20 minutes, a camp resident died from hunger and related diseases. Buerk called Korem “the closest thing to hell on earth.”

Last year, I traveled to Korem while working on a research project about decentralization in Ethiopia and how that affects men and women farmers’ access to services. My colleagues and I arrived in the town just as the regional Orthodox Christian patriarch was inaugurating a large new church; hundreds of people had turned out for the colorful ceremony. This celebration was a big contrast with the grim images of 1984.

But it was a meeting with Merzeneb Firkado—her first name means “honey from heaven”—that made me realize how much has changed for people in the Korem area since that terrible period. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim French is a regional advocacy lead and an agricultural specialist for Oxfam America. He is also a fifth-generation farmer and rancher in south-central Kansas.

Last week, our friend Terry Steinhour died in a tractor accident while moving hay on his farm. Along with my colleagues Rasa Dawson and Katie Danko, I wanted to take a moment to remember Terry, a kind and gentle soul and a true advocate for Oxfam.

Oxfam America knew about Terry Steinhour before Terry knew much about Oxfam. In 2005, Oxfam field organizers were looking for American farmers that could become spokespeople in our campaign to reform US commodity subsidies. We searched in cotton and soybean fields, pastures, dairy barns, and sheep pens across the nation.

Terry Steinhour during his visit to Africa. Photo: Rasa Dawson / Oxfam America

Following a lead, Oxfam organizer Katie Danko reached out to a corn, soybean, and beef farmer outside of Springfield, Illinois. After a very short introduction during corn harvest, Terry had Katie behind the wheel of his combine.

“I had no idea what I was doing, and before I knew it too much corn went into the machine and stopped it cold. I thought it was broken,” recalls Katie.

But Terry gently handled the situation, cleaned out the stalks that plugged the header, and continued to build a wonderful relationship with Katie and the whole Oxfam team. In the next three years, Terry would write opinion pieces for area newspapers, meet with legislators, and take calls from radio interviewers from around the world.

Read the rest of this entry »