Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers
Author
Ruth Conniff
Summary: (A compelling portrayal by the veteran journalist of the lives of farming communities on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border and the surprising connections between them) In the Midwest, Mexican workers have become critically important to the survival of rural areas and small towns--and to the individual farmers who rely on their work--with
undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico, accounting for an estimated 80 percent of employees on the dairy farms of western Wisconsin. These stories offer a rich and fascinating account of how two crises--the record-breaking rate of farm bankruptcies in the Upper Midwest, and the contentious politics around immigration--are changing the
landscape of rural America.--- A unique and fascinating exploration of rural farming communities, Milked sheds light on seismic shifts in policy on both sides of the border over recent decades, connecting issues of labor, immigration, race, food, economics, and U.S.-Mexico relations and revealing how two seemingly disparate groups of people have come to rely on each other, how they are subject to the same global economic forces, and how, ultimately, the bridges of understanding that they have built can lead us toward a more constructive politics and a better world.
