Word: ferrara
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...permanent residences Mr. Ferrara makes so much of, the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor found in 1969 that 42 per cent of all farm housing was substandard, or three times higher than all other housing (including urban slums). The issue of concern in the UFW's requests for support, of course, is not home ownership or "migrancy" but the real circumstances of farmworker life...
Finally, Mr. Ferrara claims that growers have been victims of UFW misrepresentations regarding grower size and economic power and that the growers cannot afford nor do the workers want unionization. The image presented is one of farm workers being goaded by "outside volunteers" to make demands against economically marginal producers. In support, Mr. Ferrara asserts that large corporations and conglomerates comprise only a small part of the agricultural industry (1 per cent of all farms and 7 per cent of all farm acreage). He also points to low returns on farm investment in recent years...
Again, his use of data is very misleading. Mr. Ferrara mentions only farm corporations, but USDA figures indicate that in 1968 40 per cent of all farm tax returns over $500,000 were filed by sole proprietorships. In addition, USDA definitions of "farm corporation" include only those corporations where farm products account for the largest part of business receipts. Therefore Tenneco, which owns approximately 1,000,000 of California's 36.6 million acres of agricultural land, would not be included in Mr. Ferrara's statistics. It is estimated that the 1 per cent of farm corporations that Mr. Ferrara refers...
...Ferrara may be quite right that there are few large farm corporations (in fact there are not many large farms). But the number of large farms is simply no indication of their power and influence in the market. As the above figures show, a few farms dominate that sector of the market that employs farm labor, and it is primarily against these large farms that UFW has struggled in California, Florida, Arizona and other states...
...workers, of course, seem far more cognizant of these facts than Mr. Ferrara. Over the past eight years, farm workers have voted for unionization in every election that has been held. In all but one (since reversed) they have voted to be represented by the UFW, and they have ratified every contract negotiated by the Union...