FOOD & FARMING
They Pick Your Blueberries and Peppers. But NJ Doesn’t Protect Farmworkers from Rising Heat
Farmworkers form the backbone of New Jersey’s $1B agriculture industry but climate change is putting their health at risk
MICHAEL SOL WARREN and KAREN YI / NJ SPOTLIGHT NEWS and WNYC – Beyond the high-rises of New Jersey’s cities and the sprawling suburbs that make it the most densely populated state in the U.S., large swaths of the Garden State are dedicated to agriculture.
Yet there are no heat-specific federal or state laws regulating conditions for the roughly 25,000 farmworkers in New Jersey — even as state environmental experts expect the number of heat-related deaths to double over the next three decades …
