As COVID-19 bore down on New York state, the Cornell Farmworker Program used mobile phone technology to provide rapid guidance and clear health information in multiple languages to the state’s farmworkers. Now, new federal funding will expand the program and further integrate the initiative with Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE).
The funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) will help the program continue to reach more than 3,000 New York farmworkers with critical health and legal information. The three-year, $90,000 grant will help integrate Cornell research across colleges with on-the-ground training for farmworkers from the Cornell Farmworker Program and CCE.
“The success of New York state agriculture relies on effective communication between farm owners and farmworkers, many of whom are non-English speakers,” said Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program and senior extension associate in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Department of Global Development.
“Rapid communication is essential to addressing health, safety and training challenges for New York’s farmworkers,” Dudley said, “in addition to fostering communities and improving the well-being of essential workers in the food chain.”
New York’s farm labor force includes many foreign-born workers with limited English skills. The Cornell Farmworker Program is seen as a trusted partner of these workers, many of whom, due to legal and other concerns, do not readily share cellphone numbers with government agencies.
The Cornell Farmworker Program swiftly mobilized in response to the pandemic and used that database of private numbers to share text messages and links in Spanish, Mam (an indigenous Mayan language) and other languages.
“From the very start of the pandemic, the Cornell Farmworker Program has been confronting issues of inequitable access to medical information faced by farmworker communities,” said Lori Leonard, chair and professor of global development. “This new grant and collaboration with CCE will catalyze efforts to reach these essential workers, whose role is central to strengthening the state’s farm and food systems.”
