When you bite into a peach, fuzz hardly detracts from your enjoyment. But long-term exposure to peach fuzz (and pesticides) is an almost unbearable experience, making the peach-picking industry one of the least desirable in the agricultural sector. As such, the industry relies heavily on the desperation and poverty of migrant workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants. While most of these workers are paid a wage, some corrupt crew chiefs trap the most vulnerable workers in debt bondage. They charge workers inflated costs for food and shelter, and then demand repayment in the form of labor.
Despite prominent coverage of such abuses by CNN and CBS News, problems remain in abundant supply. In 1998, authorities liberated 28 indentured laborers in South Carolina when crew leaders accidentally revealed to inspectors a second set of financial records -- concrete evidence that workers were being held in debt bondage.
The peach-picking industry is just one agricultural industry where forced labor persists. According to the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP), there are "too few protective laws under agriculture labor standards."
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