Cesar Chavez 2008 Sacramento photos

With agribusiness corporations like Blue Diamond comes a great many problems, labor issues and human rights the most noticeable. In addition the focus of Blue Diamond on maintaining corporate profit comes at the expense of the worker's health and the ecosystem. The clearcut orchards depend on heavy applications of sythetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, many of which are carcinogenic. There are several reasons not to purchase Blue Diamond (BD) products;

Weakening of organic standards to benefit BD and their continued dependency on petroleum derived pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, etc..

Unfair labor practices in BD's plantation monocultura setting. Management actively preventing BD workers from organizing a labor union is an obvious fact that something is wrong at BD and workers are being poorly treated.

Lack of cover crops in BD orchards between their trees. This lack of vegetative protection results in additional need for irrigation, soil erosion during wet season, and need for synthetic fertilizers. BD is so busy being efficient and cutting corners in the short term that they've neglected to focus on the long term benefits of cover crops (ie., legumes like clover fix nitrogen into soil, attract beneficial pollinators, reduce need for synthetic fertilizer applications) between their rows of trees.

Presence of one mega-corporation like Blue Diamond forces smaller (organic) nut growers out of market. Since Blue Diamond is subsidized by taxpayers, they can artificially lower their prices and make greater profit, over time forcing smaller nut growers to charge more to remain in business. The smaller growers are then unable to hire anyone to help, even though the smaller growers would treat their workers more like family than the large corporate agribusiness would. This is not to say that the smaller growers have smaller nuts, only that their operation is family sized and personal relationships are established with their workers..

The myth that synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are needed is used by corporate plantation style agribusiness like Blue Diamond to justify their continued existance at taxpayer expense. If smaller organic farming systems are used instead, farmworkers will not be exposed to pesticides AT ALL, where currently on corporate agribusiness farms like BD there is limited protection from the daily activities of pesticide exposure. If we got into the science of how pesticides and other synthetic chemicals become re-aerosolized everyday then there would be greater demand for enforcing organic standards. There seems to be a pattern of repeating myths where corporate agribusiness claims the need for pesticide applications to sustain their monocultura crops, or else all the walnuts and almonds would die off, the economy would go bankrupt, mass starvation would ensue, etc..

Collectively people have witnessed the abilities of smaller organic farms to provide a good amount of diverse food crops, often with better results than pesticide dependent agribusiness over a few years. Since the last few days a community garden in Santa Cruz is coming under attack by the local police with the eventual goal being development of some sort. This reminds us of the recent invasion of L.A. Sheriffs bulldozers into the southcentral campesino farm after developer Ralph Horowitz corporation decided L.A. needed another warehouse directly on top of the campesino's community garden. Here a diversity of fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs were growing together on this small plot, being way more efficient in the long-term and nutritionally diverse than the current monocultura we witness from large corporate agribusinesses like Blue Diamond..

So we're stuck between trying to make farm work at Blue Diamond's corporate pesticide soaked monocultura orchards somewhat more tolerable by forming a labor union and also trying to stop the police, sheriffs, etc.. in Santa Cruz (or elsewhere) from trying to bulldoze another diverse organic community garden under another development. Somehow the issues of land rights and reclaiming corporate land thefts got pushed to the back burner, and we're plastering people suffering from the cancer of stolen and monopolized land with band-aid measures of unionized factory jobs once again. Guess nobody wants to declare an all out war on Blue Diamond and squat (just don't sit in any pesticides!) the BD orchards, reclaiming the stolen land from this corporation. That's understandable, nobody wants to go to jail as tresspassing on corporate agribusiness property is one action that will draw the police state in great numbers..

Best wishes to the attempts at unionizing Blue Diamond workers, though hopefully with the understanding that phasing out plantation agribusiness corporations like BD and replacing them with smaller organic growers and community campesino gardens is the long term goal..

There was a previous comment sent to this article detailing problems with Blue Diamond as a corporate agribusiness. First it appeared and then quickly disappeared. It critiqued the overall methods of which Blue Diamond goes about their business (both ecologically and with labor abuses), and suggested to phase out large corporate agribusiness like BD altogether in favor of smaller organic nut growers that can establish personal relationships with their workers..

In addition the deleted article mentioned the failings of corporate agriculture in general, and that attempts to unionize farm workers on corporate ag plantations are generally band-aid measures when compared to questioning of land monopolization by corporations and land reclaimation for restoration and permacultura systems, actually growing our food in a way that is sustainable, explaining how monocultura practiced by corporations (or outdated Soviet style factory farms) will always be addicted to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. If we always settle for lesser evil, then we're still trapped by the evils of industrial agriculture corporations..

If the leftist editors on imc are so insecure that they need to censor a comment that critiques the entire process of agribusiness monopolies and the resulting need of labor unions to help the workers survive in this impersonal structure, then they are certainly not the people i would trust with self-governance. Between the capitalist moderates and far right fascists, we now have another group of intolerant leftist neo-Stalinists who cannot or will not think outside the box. Then ya'll wonder why i wish for nothing less than complete collapse of ALL governments, ALL technologies, be they capitalist, communist, socialist or anything else inbetween. No matter how hard i try to work with the reformist elements, the door is always slammed in my face so then sabotage becomes the only possible mechanism for my voice to be heard. Shame on all censoring cowards, be they in the neo-fascist GW Bush regime or the neo-Stalinists of imc..

Now will i or anyone else "go away" simply because some imc editor dislikes what we say!!

Funny how i always need to write some paranoid rant about censorship on imc and then the comment magically reappears! Nice job in making me look like a true wingnut psychopath!!

Sorry for overeacting with the censorship alarm, most certainly the imc editors are not all Stalinists just yet. What is with the delay time in posting comments? This significant delay never happened on sfimc before! Where does the comment "go" from the time it instantly appears for one second and then disappears for several minutes, only to later reappear? Are editors screening the comment to make sure that nothing worthy of censorship is on there? Since i'm not a computer techie the time delay seems wierd and evokes censorship, though once i call it censorship it reappears??

My view is that even comments that express disagreement with an action or article should be printed, as discussing opposing viewpoints is needed. Since Blue Diamond will not become a communist state owned operation anytime soon, phasing out this corporate giant still seems the most direct method of solving the labor disputes, and quiet sabotage of Blue Diamond's equipment the most direct method to achieve this goal..

Not sure how to address the plight of workers of factory farms, agribusinesses, slaughterhouses, etc.. other than there is substantial evidence that these "jobs" are in and of themselves destructive to the BOTH workers AND the ecosystem and to perpetuate the corporate agribusiness model by encouraging unionization of said workers seems self-defeating to me. Maybe this is jumping ahead and skipping steps as agribusiness cannot be phased out overnight and the workers have physical needs to support themselves. Yet labor union organizing will always feel like making concessions for corporate agribusiness methods as the question of time remaining untill organic community farms becomes reality remains unanswered..

This is part of the reason that i'm so disgruntled with any unionizing actions for factory farm workers, because it perpetuates a model that needs to be phased out. What about Cuba, who converted their previously pesticide dependent monoculture "soviet bloc" plantation farms into diverse organic rooftop and community gardens? All this because of a U.S. policy of embargo against any synthetic pesticides being shipped to Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet suppliers. While the embargo of medicine (some pharmaceutical, part of global dominance of petrochemical cartel) caused some people in Cuba problems, in the long term the Cuban people came out ahead by showing their independence from synthetic pesticides, fertilizer, etc.. This embargo of pesticides ended up helping the Cuban people in their quest for self-governance AND equality in a classless society as small community gardens replaced the outdated monoculture systems heavily dependent on pesticides!!

People in general settle for alot of bullshit in their need for "jobs" to pay the rent and feed the family. Even if we jump ahead, a society where the commons (land, water, air, etc..) is reclaimed for the benefit of people and the ecosystem is more desireable than maintaining the infrastructure of outdated plantation era corporate agribusiness..

We're stuck with alot of "in the meantimes", such as "in the meantime we have to do this ______ action" (fill in blank with; vote for lesser evil candidate, reform labor and environmental laws to decrease abuses, unionize workers at factory ag farms, slaughterhouses, drive our cars to another protest, etc..) until the utopian visions of an ecologically friendly and classless society comes into being. Sometimes after hearing endless "in the meantimes" the temptation is enough to pull the plug on the entire industrial system as then we could ALL get there naturally, without the constant tug of war between the left (neo-liberal) and the right (neo-conservative) elements of U.S. policymakers. The problem is nobody is willing to give up their luxuries of industrialization as then we'ld all be on equal footing once the gas pumps stopped working and the supermarkets shut down..

Sometimes it seems like both the left and the right have an interest in keeping this industrial system operational indefinitely, and that visions of green anarchy (collapse of industrial technology, return to hunter-gatherer lifestyle, symbiotic permaculture farming) are stereotyped as either uncaring neo-Nazis (from the left) or treehugging hippie barbarians (from the right), even though this lifestyle is most similar to the indigenous peoples of the Americans (Aztecs, Lakota, Iroqouis, etc..) who were displaced by the coming of "old world" technologies like plantation monoculturas, domesticated factory farming, etc..

So, "in the meantime" (while waiting for an act of Nature!) i'll have to resort to "lesser evil" capitalism of buying any other brand of organic nuts besides Blue Diamond, and maintaining a boicott of this unjust agribusiness corporation. Please join me on this long-term boicott of Blue Diamond!!

PS - Even if the Blue Diamond workers eventually unionize, i will continue to boicott Blue Diamond because they will remain a corporate agribusiness plantation to big for their britches!!

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