The Sunday Times November 28, 2021 29
who wanted to work in the delta’s fields
but then black Americans began losing
their jobs to the South Africans. “It
started to spread like cancer, this farm
then the next farm,” said Strong. “As
more of them came there was less of us.”
Now a group of displaced black work-
ers have filed a legal case against white
farm owners for lost income, stolen liveli-
hoods and racial discrimination. They
are waiting for a federal court to set a date
for a preliminary hearing.
For the white South African farmers
new opportunities in the American Deep
South have provided a welcome refuge
from the greater adversity they have
faced under majority black rule following
the end of apartheid. White farmers still
own 72 per cent of agricultural land in
South Africa despite whites making up 8
per cent of the population but many feel
besieged, citing high levels of rural crime
and the recent announcement that new
land reform laws will allow the expropria-
tion of land without compensation.
Danie Liebenberg set up Farm Recruit
USA after he worked a season in Missis-
sippi in 2016 and realised there was
demand in the area for South African
labour. He estimates that 5,500 South
Africans completed the season in US agri-
cultural areas this year. A season runs
from February or March to October or
November and the South Africans come
in on a temporary H-2A visa. The jobs are
supposed to be offered first to American
workers on at least the same terms.
“The Americans want farm workers
who are skilled and hardworking,” said
Liebenberg. “They tell me that they bat-
tle to get local young blood into farming.
They like the fact that South Africans can
speak English and are prepared to work
hard for $12 [£9] an hour, which goes a
long way in South Africa.”
When Richard Strong walked into the
Mississippi Centre for Justice in Indianola
to seek help, Ty Pinkins, a lawyer and
community organiser, realised that not
only had Strong lost his job but that onthe minimum wage of $7.50 an hour he
was paid significantly less than the South
Africans. Under the visa rules they were
on a minimum of $11.83 an hour last year.
The visa rules state that employers
“show that employing H-2A workers will
not adversely affect the wages and work-
ing conditions of similarly employed US
workers” and that they “demonstrate
that there are not enough US workers
who are able, willing, qualified, and avail-
able to do the temporary work”.
“It is really personal to me because I
grew up in this area,” said Pinkins, 47,
who was raised in a wooden shack on a
delta plantation where his father drove a
tractor. He was 13 when he first chopped
cotton — the backbreaking manual labour
of removing weeds by hand up and down
the long rows, now a thing of the past
thanks to chemical treatments.
After a 21-year career in the military —
including three tours of Iraq and a stint as
a communications assistant in the
Obama White House — Pinkins graduated
from Georgetown Law and returned to
the delta to help the sort of disadvan-
taged people who were his neighbours
growing up.
Six former employees of Pitts Farms,
including Strong, are bringing the case
for compensation and damages, while
two more may join. The case also
demands redress under the Civil Rights
Act, stating that the farm “intentionally
sought out white workers to fill its labour
force and paid them at higher rates than
its long-time black US workers” and
“intentionally discriminated on the basis
of race”. It adds that a white superviser
“frequently used racial slurs, including
the n-word”, that the farm “denied raises
to its black workers that would have
made them equal to [the] white workers”
and that it “largely reduced its black
workforce, including plaintiffs, in favour
of more white workers from South
Africa”.
The legal complaint also points out
that “since 2014 [Pitts Farms] has usedRichard Strong,
left, has lost his
job. Kobus
Campher, far
right, says
American
farmers prefer
his attitudeHe was
paid less
per
hour
than the
South
Africans
Pigs feast like hipsters after avo-lanche hits Australia
New Zealand in huge
quantities and sold in
supermarkets.
“It’s bullshit,” he said. “We
don’t need their bloody fruit.”
Having been fawned over
by health-conscious
celebrities such as Gwyneth
Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston,
avocados were already
enduring a backlash.
Environmental
campaigners have
complained about illegal
deforestation, illegal logging,
and forest-clearing for
avocado farming and about
the environmental impact of
the fruit, due to the volume of
water required to grow them.
The industry has bristled at
this criticism, pointing out
that staples such as rice,
chicken, dairy, beef and
chocolate all consume more
water than avocados.
Now the focus is on
persuading Australians, who
are the biggest consumers of
avocados in the English-
speaking world, to eat even
more. With the Australian
summer starting on
Wednesday, a multimillion
dollar “green gold”
advertising campaign is
attempting to convince
households to throw another
A fan dresses up as an avocado at the Sydney Sevens rugby tournament. Left, avocados on toast, a millennial favourite avocado on the barbie.MATT KING/GETTY IMAGESThe first sign that Richard Strong had lost
his job was when his farm-owned pickup
truck disappeared from outside his farm-
owned house.
A text informed him that his employ-
ers had cut a key and reclaimed the vehi-
cle. Then a second message arrived,
ordering him to move out of the house.
The wooden shack where he lived with
his wife and four children was a relic. Rats
ran under the floorboards, there were no
window screens to keep out the mosqui-
tos and birds flew into the attic. But there
are similar wooden structures in various
states of disrepair all over the vast
expanses of the Mississippi Delta, one of
America’s most fertile and poorest
regions. It was still home.
“They said that somebody else was
interested in the house and they were
going to need the house,” said Strong, 50,
a black American who had spent 19 years
ploughing, sowing and harvesting the
fields at Pitts Farms Partnership in Sun-
flower County, which has been owned by
the same white family for generations
and had employed his father and grand-
father before him. “There was no expla-
nation or nothing. Everything changed
and now I don’t have the job.
“Normally they would call me when it
is time to go back in the fields, about
March, depending on the weather. They
just didn’t call.”
He realised that he had trained his own
replacement. For several years he had
shared all he knew about cotton and soy-
beans with a man who came to Missis-
sippi about seven years ago in the van-
guard of the most seismic change in the
delta for decades.
“One of the guys said we got some Afri-
cans coming this year. I’m like OK,”
Strong said, recalling the moment when
the influx began. “Then when I seen
them they weren’t black.”
The new arrivals were white South
Africans and they are so numerous that
the country has become the second larg-
est overseas source of seasonal farm
labour in America after Mexico.
In the Mississippi Delta, where cotton
growing was established under slavery in
the early 19th century and where unoffi-
cial racial segregation still persists, their
ethnicity carries an extra charge.
The area covers 7,000 square miles of
flood plain east of the Mississippi river
and the population is about 70 per cent
black. Unemployment is at more than 10
per cent — more than double the national
average — while life expectancy and edu-
cational attainment are among the lowest
in America. Black residents have histori-
cally struggled to buy and retain prop-
erty. They own only 6 per cent of the agri-
cultural land, producing just 1 per cent of
the net farm income.
Seasonal work is a way of life and the
ties between labourers and the land go
back generations. Or rather, they did.
At first there was room for everyone
David Charter Indianola
Jane Flanagan Cape Town
the H-2A programme to hire only white
South Africans — no black South Africans
— although that country is majority black
by a wide margin”.
Neither Pitts Farms nor a lawyer acting
for them replied to phone or email
requests for comment.
One South African who worked in Mis-
sissippi for two seasons claimed that
some white American farmers preferred
the “attitude” of white South Africans to
local black workers. Kobus Campher, 52,
grew up on a 1,976-acre farm in George,
Western Cape, that he and his brother
recently inherited from their father. He
earned $11.80 an hour in the Mississippi
Delta and had free accommodation.
Recalling an incident where two black
American workers refused his request to
sweep the floor of a dusty workshop,
Campher said: “If we finish something we
are looking for something else to do.
Those guys don’t have initiative. That’s
why the American farmers like us. He
employs those black local guys but they
are not fond of them.”
Pinkins rejected this characterisation.
“Unfortunately this feeds into the base-
less, negative, racial stereotype that
blacks are lazy. In fact, farm owners in
the delta have, for centuries, mainly
depended on black workers to plant, cul-
tivate, and harvest crops such as cotton,
soybeans and corn. As a result, much of
the wealth associated with farming in the
delta is due in large part to the literal
blood, sweat, and tears of black farm
labour that can be traced back genera-
tions.”
Publicity surrounding the case has
brought inquiries to the non-profit legal
organisation from other displaced black
workers in agriculture and catfish farm-
ing, another staple of the region.
Strong, who first chopped cotton aged
10, said that he simply hopes for justice.
“It bothers you when you haven’t got any
work. This is what you love doing, what
you were raised doing. This is who you
are.”Germany’s new
foreign minister
has eye on Putin
Germany’s focus remained
resolutely on selling as many
SUVs there as possible.
In Europe, she lacked a
vision for the EU beyond
trying to keep the bloc
together in the debt crisis and
after Brexit. Her efforts to
help the German car industry
by watering down EU
reductions in CO 2 emissions
cost her the title of “Climate
Chancellor” she had gained
early in her chancellorship.
It is difficult to see how that
will change in a three-way
coalition. The government
deal presented on
Wednesday between the SDP,
the Greens and the liberal
FDP makes no mention of
Nord Stream II and the
incoming chancellor, Olaf
Scholz of the Social
Democrats, a party that is
traditionally softer towards
Russia, is highly unlikely to
block the pipeline.
The government is also
unlikely to take the kind of
tough action against China
that would put its second
biggest export market outside
the EU at risk. Instead
Germany will probably keep
on punching below its weight
on the international stage,
analysts say. “Germans willA new era of German
diplomacy is about to begin
under a former competitive
trampolinist who badly needs
to recover her political
bounce.
Annalena Baerbock, the
leader of the Greens, was
confirmed last week as
foreign minister-in-waiting
after her party struck a deal
with the Social Democrats
(SPD) and the liberal Free
Democrats (FDP) to form a
coalition and bring the
Merkel years to a close.
A pragmatic career
politician with a master’s
degree in international law
from the London School of
Economics, Baerbock, 40, is
credited with a strong grasp
of foreign policy but has no
experience of government,
let alone of running a
ministry.
Now after waging a weak
election campaign beset by
plagiarism allegations that
many believe cost her the
chancellorship she has only
weeks to prepare for
Germany’s presidency of the
G7 next year. It will be her
first and possibly best
opportunity to put a fresh
stamp on her country’s
approach to the world
beyond its borders.
In opposition, she argued
strongly for a shift in outlook
towards a foreign policy that
is geared towards fighting
climate change and “guided
by human rights and values”.
During the campaign she
talked tough on the
“authoritarian regimes” of
Russia and China. Last month
she accused the Russian
president, Vladimir Putin, of
“playing poker” with energy
prices. She also opposed
granting regulatory approval
for the Nord Stream II
pipeline to pump Russian gas
to Germany, now completed
but still waiting for its
operating permit.
But it is far from clear that
Baerbock will have the
freedom to pursue any
substantial realignment of
Germany’s overseas goals,
which have historically been
shaped by the chancellery.
Merkel won praise for
representing level-headed
multilateralism in an era of
alpha male populists without
ever developing a consistent
foreign and security policy.
On her 16-year watch, the
German military continued to
struggle with underfunding
that undermined the promise
to take on more Nato
responsibilities and to forge
joint EU military capabilities
Merkel’s attempts to curb
Putin by engaging him in
dialogue failed over and over
again. She spoke about
human rights during her
frequent visits to China butDavid Crossland BerlinBaerbock:
talked tough
on China
and Russiacontinue to have to be asked
to take on a leadership role,
they won’t do so of their own
accord,” said Christian
Mölling, research director at
DGAP, the German Council
on Foreign Relations.
Some of the coalition
partners’ stated foreign
policy aims are more
ambitious. That applies in
particular to the EU where
they are calling for what
amounts to a United States of
Europe. It is a retort to Brexit
but would entail intense
negotiations, treaty changes
and ratification that would
stretch well past the
government’s four-year term.
One challenge Baerbock is
unlikely to face is a rebellion
in her party’s ranks. The once
unruly Greens have become a
disciplined bunch since the
party’s last foreign minister,
Joschka Fischer, browbeat
them into ditching pacifism
and backing German military
missions in Kosovo in 1999
and Afghanistan in 2001. It
was the last time Germany
had a high-profile foreign
minister. Baerbock has big
shoes to fill.The result is that prices
have fallen to a record low,
averaging about A$1 — or just
over 50 pence — per avocado
in supermarkets, down from
A$3 earlier this year.
This has been great for
avocado-lovers and food
bloggers on a budget. But it
has made life difficult for
growers losing money on a
crop that was so profitable it
was branded “green gold”.
Some growers have
resorted to dumping their
lowergrade fruit by the
truckload. Others are running
over avocados with tractors
and using them as fertiliser.
Tony and Julie Pratt run a
small avocado farm in
Queensland, more than two
hours’ drive up the coast
from Brisbane. They are
selling bags of avocados
directly to consumers on the
roadside or on social media
where they can fetch a better
price than at the market.
Kemp complains that big
corporates such as Costa
Group — Australia’s largest
avocado producer — have
jumped on the bandwagon
and planted vast numbers of
trees, flooding the market.
Like many growers, he is
also angry that avocados
are being imported fromThe rise of the world’s most
Instagrammed fruit began in
the early 1990s when a simple
dish appeared in a Sydney
café run by the chef Bill
Granger. It consisted of
avocado, lime, sea salt and
olive oil, served on toast.
Now after almost three
decades during which legions
of fitness bloggers, food
stylists and celebrities turned
the concept into a global
social media food cliché,
Australia is once again the
scene for a defining moment
in the history of the avocado.
The country is facing what
industry insiders have called
an “avo-lanche”.
A blockbuster avocado
harvest after years of drought
has coincided with lengthy
lockdowns in Australia’s two
biggest cities that shut down
the hospitality sector.
Meanwhile, tens of
thousands of avocado trees —
planted over the past few
years to meet growing
demand — have started to
bear fruit and, because of
border closures, many
growers have struggled to
find foreign workers to
pick their crops.
Australia suddenly has
far more avocados than it
knows what do with, so fruit
with even minor blemishes is
being rejected.
Rather than being
“smashed”, paired with a
poached egg, sprinkled with
activated pumpkin seeds and
arranged on carefully charred
gluten-free bread for an
aesthetically demanding
brunch customer, these
avocados have instead been
unceremoniously thrown to
the pigs.
“It’s not great optics,” said
Brad Rodgers, a farmer in
Western Australia and
chairman of the Avocados
Australia lobby group. “But
pigs love that type of food and
farmers know they can get a
lot for the ham.” They are, he
added, “very lucky pigs”.
Australian growers expect
to produce more than
120,000 tons of avocados this
year, a rise of more than 50
per cent over last year.James Salmon Perth
Mississippi farms replace
black labourers with
white South Africans
Men who have worked the land for generations are suing after losing out to imported employees