A field trip with migrant workers

When harvest time rolls around in Maine, 10,000 to 12,000 migrant farmworkers and their families come to the state to harvest wild blueberries and cranberries, pick apples and cut broccoli. Others tend chickens, work in the forests and help grow Christmas trees.

The workers who travel from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and Canada play a key role in keeping Maine-grown food on the supper table at a reasonable cost.

Their unsung role is documented and celebrated in an exhibit of photos and comments that will migrate from Augusta to Boston and back to Maine in the weeks ahead. Its final tour will be in areas where migrants will toil during the next harvest season. The list of stops is being finalized.

About 85% of the fruits and vegetables in the United States are harvested by hand, said Barbara Ginley, executive director of the Maine Migrant Health Program, one of the sponsors of the exhibit titled “Farmworkers Feed Us All.”

“We really think it’s important for people in Maine and the rest of our country to be aware of the human labor that contributes to our health,” said Ginley, who hopes the exhibit can put a human face on products most Americans take for granted.

The lives of the migrants are dramatized by more than 150 color pictures from the fields, farms and temporary homes they occupy. Some are also shown being treated by the migrant health program, which took on 1,219 cases in Maine in 2007.

The leading diagnoses listed by the nonprofit health program are hypertension, upper respiratory infection, dental issues, back and joint pain and diabetes.

Maine’s program is notable if not unique nationally in a couple of respects, said its medical director Mike Rowland. It’s the only state that runs its program entirely with mobile centers, which include a converted box truck, two RV-type vehicles and an SUV.

Rowland said the program’s team of camp health aides, who act as a liaison between the medical staff and patients, is “probably the most important secret to our success.”

The program’s core full-time staff of about four expands to roughly 50 doctors, nurses, medical and nursing students and others who are paid, contracted with or volunteer during the harvests, Rowland said.

More than three-quarters of those treated are men, mostly between 25 and 64 years old. Of those treated last year, 75% were Latino, 14% Native American and 2% white. Of the total, 97% fall below poverty level, according to officials for the program, which is funded through grants, donations and the federal government.

Most encounters occur during the blueberry harvest and between the apple and cranberry harvests. Egg-farm workers also account for many of the treatments.

Photos in the exhibit were taken by Earl Dotter of Silver Spring, Md. Slide shows using audio and Dotter’s photos are temporarily housed at www.dlanderson.com/ farmworker and will be permanently featured on www.migrantclinician.org.

Ginley sees the commitment to migrants’ health as a trade-off for the service they provide to consumers, who expect fresh produce at the store.

She also hopes to debunk what she calls a myth that migrants are taking away local, year-round residents’ jobs.

“If you talk to growers across the state,” she said, “they [say they] wouldn’t be able to get their crop in without migrant workers.”