United Farm Workers show off the work that goes into your Thanksgiving table

As we all prep and eat Thanksgiving meals, or any meal in general, it’s important we remember and acknowledge where the food we are eating comes from and the hard work and labor put into getting it. To remind us of those who put effort into the food we put on our tables, United Farm Workers (UFW), a U.S. labor union founded in 1962, has compiled videos and photos of farmers hard at work. 

The thread, which has quickly gone viral, reminds us that it's not easy to obtain the food we eat. It not only allows us to appreciate and thank these farmers but sheds light on how the ingredients many of us use daily are farmed.

UFW, formerly known as the National Farm Workers Association, is a labor union founded in 1962. According to its website, it seeks to empower migrant farmworkers and improve their wages and working conditions. 

“For more than a century farmworkers had been denied a decent life in the fields and communities of California’s agricultural valleys. Essential to the state’s biggest industry, but only so long as they remained exploited and submissive farmworkers had tried but failed so many times to organize the giant agribusiness farms that most observers considered it a hopeless task,” the website reads.

“And yet by the early 1960’s things were beginning to change beneath the surface. Within another fifteen years more than 50,000 farmworkers were protected by union contracts.”

As you shop and prepare your #Thanksgiving meals, we'd like you to know a little more about the work behind the ingredients and the people doing that work to put food on our tables.

Here's a thread for everyone who wants to thank a farm worker this week.#WeFeedYou pic.twitter.com/sAEu5ldKFp

— United Farm Workers (@UFWupdates) November 22, 2022

Asparagus requires delicate handling and a grueling posture. Harvesters have a high rate of repetitive strain injuries. This video is of an asparagus worker from Gonzalez, CA. #WeFeedYou pic.twitter.com/W37NlfqRvV

— United Farm Workers (@UFWupdates) November 22, 2022

Veggies make great sides on the #Thanksgiving table.

Here Teresa harvests beets in the Oxnard area. She spends her 8 hour workday on her knees on the damp earth. #WeFeedYou pic.twitter.com/bIdY7Icr8P

— United Farm Workers (@UFWupdates) November 22, 2022

Follow #WeFeedYou on Twitter to find see more photos and videos of the hard work farmers do. Thank you to our farmers!