The pesticide stories Big Ag doesn’t want you to hear

“Slongwhite’s modern tragedy reflects the increasing power of the Big Food corporations’ influence in D.C.—and why something this unimaginable, passing from one generation to the next, can take place. Testimony like this belongs in the Federal Register.”—Theo Colborn, president, TEDX (The Endocrine Disruption Exchange)

“Poignant, gut-wrenching, and real, this book should be required reading for everyone who eats.”—Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit

“Presents compelling and heart-wrenching stories about profound social and environmental injustices. Yet these are also stories about strength, survival, and the victory of the human spirit.”—Joan Flocks, director, Social Policy Division at the Center for Governmental Responsibility, Levin College of Law, University of Florida

One farmworker tells of the soil that would “bite” him, but that was the chemicals burning his skin. Other laborers developed lupus, asthma, diabetes, kidney failure, or suffered myriad symptoms with no clear diagnosis. Some miscarried or had children with genetic defects while others developed cancer.

In Fed Up, Dale Slongwhite collects the nearly inconceivable and chilling oral histories of African American farmworkers whose lives, and those of their families, were forever altered by one of the most horrific pesticide exposure incidents in United States’ history.

For decades, the farms around Lake Apopka, Florida’s third largest lake, were sprayed with chemicals ranging from the now-banned DDT to toxaphene. Among the most productive farmlands in America, the fields were doused with organochlorine pesticides, also known as persistent organic pollutants; the once-clear waters of the lake turned pea green; birds, alligators, and fish died at alarming rates; and still the farmworkers planted, harvested, packed, and shipped produce all over the country, enduring scorching sun, snakes, rats, injuries, substandard housing, low wages, and the endocrine disruptors dropped by crop dusters.

Eventually, state and federal dollars were allocated to buy out and close farms to attempt land restoration, water clean up, and wildlife rehabilitation. But the farmworkers became statistics, nameless casualties history almost forgot. Here are their stories, told in their own words.