few summers ago, in the parking lot of our drivethrough food bank, a guest of our food bank brought a meal to share with our staff and volunteers. They took the food we had given them and gave it back in a meal of pure Christ-like love: giving without counting the cost, without fear of not having enough for themselves.
Agape Service Project’s food bank caters to the farm-worker community of Whatcom County in Washington. It is deeply humbling to play a role in increasing food access for the individuals who are responsible for feeding us all. It is a stark reality to offer produce to the hands that harvested mine. It is a daily reminder that food connects us all—in sacred, beautiful ways and sometimes in ways that also spark righteous anger.
An estimated 2-2.5 million people make up the farmworker population in the United States.1 This community is responsible for planting, picking, and packing almost all of the fruits and veggies that are grown in our country. They also make up the bulk of the workforce in our dairies, nurseries, and feedlots. These highly skilled men, women, and children are our
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neighbors who have touched our food and, therefore, have touched our lives.
Despite their dignified and essential work, these individuals and families face many injustices and frequently encounter barriers to accessing services. “Most dramatically of all,” according to Representative Joaquin Castro in America magazine, “farmworkers too often struggle with food insecurity, meaning the workers who feed America too often cannot feed their own family.” 2 Our farmworkers earn an income far below the national poverty line while working in one of the most hazardous occupations in the United States, an employment situation ripe for abuse. In addition, they are often housed in conditions that should be illegal, and many live in constant fear of deportation; these are just some of the many injustices they regularly face.
Our understanding and appreciation of supply chains drastically increased during COVID-19. For a while, in what I believe was a silver-lining to the pandemic, everyday consumers reflected on the many lives and hands that went into their ability to function: the seafarer, the grocery store employee, the mail
2 Joaquin Castro, “Rep. Joaquin Castro: It’s time for a Latino secretary of agriculture.” America Magazine, December 3, 2020, https://www. americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/12/03/joaquin-castrobiden-latino-cabinet-agriculture-farmworkers-covid
carrier. Roles in our society that are often invisible suddenly became “essential.” But then I think many of us, myself included, unfortunately returned to life as “normal,” once again forgetting all the lives that make it possible for our items to be shipped, our food to be in the store, or our mailbox to be full.
While I am deeply familiar—and connect regularly—with the very beginning of the food chain via the agricultural system in the United States, I too fall into the robotic system that leaves me blind to the many lives that make my life possible. In a space of immense privilege, I don’t have to worry about where I access my food. This non-worry can also lead to non-intention. Do I consider the amount of plastic used to package my spinach?
Cavanagh Altar Bread, a family-owned company in Rhode Island, bakes over 850 million wafers annually, shipping nationally and internationally. Producing for the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Southern Baptist churches, Cavanagh bakes about 80 percent of the communion bread in the United States.
Three of the largest altar wine companies in the United States are Cribari Bulk Wines, Mont La Salle Altar Wines (formally Christian Brothers), and La Salle Altar Wine (owned by Catholic Supply Company). All of these companies own or purchase from vineyards in Napa Valley. It is good to see many vineyards, especially in Napa, are moving to employment practices that honor the person who tends the vine: switching to hourly wage
Do I purchase vegetables with intention from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box or farmers market? In my premeal prayers, do I give thanks to the farmworkers while giving thanks to God?
A EUCHARISTIC SUPPLY CHAIN
As a Catholic, I consider the Eucharist the source and summit of my faith. It is the space where I encounter and receive God as the Lover of Souls, the Dawn of Justice, the Pattern of Patience. I then go forward as a living tabernacle to infuse our hurting and hopeful Earth, communities, and families with that love, justice, and patience.
I rarely, however, stop to think about the supply chain of the Eucharist. And yet, in the same analysis and appreciation of the hands that have touched our physical food, we need to think about the hands and lives who have touched and provided our spiritual food. Is our Bread of Life produced on a supply chain of justice? Are living wages paid to each person who touches the Fruit of the Vine, from seed to altar? Are pesticides and toxic chemicals used in the industrialized growth of our Heavenly Nourishment?
When it comes to the bread and wine Catholics consume during the Eucharist, what used to be produced by brothers and nuns is now made by small and large business enterprises.
rates vs. per pound; providing child care, especially as the workforce increasingly becomes more female; offering health and wellness services and benefits; and providing more flexible work hours. Are these practices that are present in some of the smaller, high-end vineyards consistent in the bulk wine industry, as well? We need to work to ensure all vineyards in the United States are upholding the dignity of their workers, but it must come with the understanding from consumers that there is a higher cost to products produced justly.
Maybe it’s a lofty hope, but imagine the impact on the bulk wine and wheat industry if the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops asked the leader in communion hosts and top altar wine companies to uphold the teachings of dignity of work, rights of workers, and care for creation in the production of the source and summit of our faith. We have an incredible collective capacity to flip the table and infuse this small aspect of the agriculture system with Catholic social teaching.
AN INTERWOVEN SPIRITUALITY
“ Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you; fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.”
“In the same analysis and appreciation of the hands that have touched our physical food, we need to think about the hands and lives who have touched and provided our spiritual food.”
In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis reminds us of the interwoven nature of all of creation: “Creatures tend towards God, and in turn it is proper to every living being to tend towards other things, so that throughout the universe we can find any number of constant and secretly interwoven relationships. This leads us not only to marvel at the manifold connections existing among creatures, but also to discover a key to our own fulfilment. The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others and with all creatures.” 2
Food supply chains are tangible reminders that reveal our sometimes-invisible interwoven physicality, namely the Earth and its fruit, farmworkers, truck drivers, grocery store employees, and everyone else in between creation and ourselves. We are all connected through our food. The Eucharist is the
pinnacle of this interwoven experience, this interwoven spirituality. Ultimately, it is the fruit of the Earth, the work of human hands, and the divine working of God.
Christ does everything with intentionality and intentionally chose for us to receive God in the form of a human creation: bread and wine. When Catholics take Communion, we are not eating raw wheat and raw grapes; we are consuming a hand-made creation, harvested by human hands. The Earth produces, humans harvest and create, and then God performs a miracle, the totality of which lands with peaceful gravity into our hands and bodies.
Farmworkers feed us—body and soul.
Kelsey Harrington is a lifelong Pacific Northwest Catholic and finds immense beauty in that intersection. As the Director of Agape Service Project, she is humbled to encounter our farmworker brothers and sisters of Whatcom County and youth and young adults from around the Archdiocese of Seattle.
Page 10 © Katie Kolbrick Photography; Page 11 © Cornelia Schutz“Food supply chains are tangible reminders that reveal our sometimesinvisible interwoven physicality, namely the Earth and its fruit, farmworkers, truck drivers, grocery store employees, and everyone else in between creation and ourselves.”
