Those of us who enjoy eating rarely think about where our food comes from.

Several years ago, I saw the photograph reprinted on the cover of this newspaper at an art gallery in St. Petersburg. The image haunted me. Here were two women bent over all day, picking strawberries just like the ones I'd enjoyed that morning for breakfast. My pleasure, obviously, was greater than theirs.

Stories about the hard life of farm workers have become a staple of American labor journalism, none more famous than Edward R. Murrow's classic 1960 television documentary Harvest of Shame. Forty years later, the complexion of farm workers has shifted somewhat, from poor whites and African-Americans to Caribbean islanders, Mexicans and Central Americans. But the necessities of the work -- and its intertwining of opportunity and hardship -- have in many ways remained the same.

Fortunately, two Tampa Bay area documentarians, Nano Riley and Davida Johns, have collaborated in a new book that describes the state of Florida farm work today.

Florida's Farmworkers in the Twenty-first Century is part of a series on Florida history and culture published by the University Press of Florida in Gainesville (www.upf.com). It's worth noting that the series' editors, Ray Arsenault and Gary Mormino, also are well known in the Tampa Bay area and beyond, through their teaching, research and public service as history professors at the University of South Florida.

The book offers a compelling written and photographic account of the farm worker lifestyle -- its demographics, economics, health and safety issues and family life. With the publisher's permission, we are reprinting excerpts from a chapter on pesticides, which is especially timely today. As Riley reports in a side story prepared for us, the 2003 Legislature once again turned its back on farm worker safety, by failing to reinstate a law that guarantees that workers are told about the dangerous chemicals that affect them.

One more local note: One of the proposal's primary sponsors is State Rep. Frank Peterman, D-St. Petersburg. I know his mama, and in this cause he does her proud. --Jim Harper

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At the edge of a fallow field in southern Hillsborough County, near the tiny hamlet of Parrish, empty pesticide containers lie in a heap, decaying in the sun. The names of the chemicals are now illegible, but the skull and crossbones on the fading labels is a dead giveaway for what they once contained. Some are plastic jugs; some are cardboard boxes.

Although farm workers know pesticides can be harmful, many are unaware of the long-term effects and how they may affect their children, especially the unborn. The symptoms of exposure to these poisons may be similar to those caused by flu or a cold; sometimes it is a persistent rash, a bit of numbness, or headaches. Most do not even bother reporting such nebulous symptoms. With the need to put food on the table, many workers pay scant attention to aches and pains that might cause others to miss a day of work.

Florida passed a "Right to Know" law in 1994, which allowed workers to know what they were handling. Before this, no law required growers to notify workers of the potential dangers of any pesticides they handled or even what the pesticide was. Though the law said pesticide applicators must take a course in pesticide safety and receive a certificate allowing them to use the commercial-strength chemicals, the poisons may still be applied by anyone under the certified person's supervision. This means that anyone can apply pesticides, even if the worker doing the actual application cannot read the instructions that are printed in English.

Because pesticides are easy to mishandle, there are frequent newspaper accounts of poisoning among unsuspecting farm workers. Sometimes these poisonings lead to lawsuits against the largest chemical manufacturers, but it can be tough business fighting such giants as DuPont, Monsanto, and Dow. The difficulty of pressing these suits was illustrated a few years ago by the case of Juan and Donna Castillo, who sued DuPont and Pine Island Farms when their son was born without eyes. Donna Castillo claimed that in November 1989 she was soaked with the pesticide Benlate by a tractor spraying tomato fields belonging to Pine Island Farms as she walked near her South Florida home. At that time she was seven months pregnant with her son, John.

In 1996, a state court jury in Miami deliberated the negligence case brought against DuPont, which alleged that John Castillo's birth deformity was caused by the fungicide Benlate 50 DF, which was commonly in use in vegetable fields. Attorneys for DuPont and Pine Island Farms argued that Benlate was not in use at the time. DuPont claimed that its product, accused of causing devastating damage to some farms by killing plants, causes no damage to humans. The case was the first claim involving the boy's birth defect, microphthalmia, or tiny eyes. (In John's case, there were only dents where his eyes should have been.) The Miami jury awarded $4-million in damages to John, but the case was appealed.

Since 1991, the year DuPont recalled Benlate, approximately 500 cases, many of them in Florida, have been tried in state and federal courts around the country. There are also twenty-five cases pending in Scotland, where farming communities blame the chemical company for children born without eyes. Most cases involved farmers and nursery operators who claimed the DuPont product wiped out their vegetables and ornamental plants. When DuPont's own researchers decided their product was not to blame, the company decided to fight these claims.

Nevertheless, the chemical company has paid out more than $1-million in damages.

In the Castillo case, Pine Island Farms was a co-defendant with DuPont the Castillo case. The Castillos' lawyers said a farm tractor got stuck in neutral and sprayed the mother as well as her young daughter. The farm was accused of spraying in excessive wind. The EPA has standard regulations that prevent spraying if the wind is blowing more than 10 miles per hour. The Third District Court of Appeals, however, said key expert testimony linking Benlate to birth defects should not have been admitted.Seven year later, the verdict in favor of John Castillo remains on hold while the Florida Supreme Court studies the case.

Benlate was banned from use on American crops, but other pesticides still are causing problems. Methyl bromide is now a major political issue in Florida and California, where farmers use the chemical to grow the most popular fruits and vegetables brought to our tables. In Florida, growers use methyl bromide in growing tomatoes, strawberries and bell peppers. Methyl bromide is used as a soil fumigant before planting to eliminate nematodes and sterilize the soil. Because it is completely odorless, it is mixed with tear gas to prevent exposure in farm workers. In California, methyl bromide poisoning is the fourth leading cause of injury among the farm workers who use it. In 1998, the California Environmental Protection Agency blamed fifteen workers' deaths on the poison and reported that another 216 suffered illness from exposure to methyl bromide. In 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halted the testing of methyl bromide on beagles when they found the dogs were suffering severe neurological damage that caused them to bang their heads into their cages. In spite of the neurological damage it can cause, big berry growers are so dependent on methyl bromide as a soil fumigant that they refuse to stop using the chemical.Methyl bromide is not just harmful to humans and animals; it is also destructive to the earth's ozone layer. Recent studies in California show that methyl bromide hangs heavy in smog, and that it often drifts far from the initial point of application. The EPA issued a directive to stop using methyl bromide by the year 2001, but many growers requested extensions.

In 1998, the environmental group Friends of the Earth worked with the Farmworker Association of Florida, Farmworkers Self-Help, Florida Consumer Action Network and the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation to issue a report on methyl bromide use in Florida. The report, called "Reaping Havoc: The True Cost of Using Methyl Bromide on Florida's Tomatoes," documents the effects of the toxic gas on farm workers and their families, as well as the potential damage to communities located near treated fields and the chemical's destruction of the Earth's ozone layer.

More than 160 nations, including the United States, agreed to phase out 50 percent of methyl bromide use by the beginning of 2001. The agreement, known as the Montreal Protocol, was reached in 1987 and has been revised several times, the most recent in 1999. It encountered strong opposition in Florida from the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, the Florida Farm Bureau and the Crop Protection Coalition; and nationwide from the California Strawberry Commission and the Great Lakes Chemical Corporation, a major manufacturer of methyl bromide. Agri-business argues that there are no alternatives to methyl bromide. The proposed schedule of the EPA gives growers until 2005 to complete the phase-out, but growers continue to fight the ban.

While the fumigant does not last long on the tomatoes and berries that grow in the treated earth, methyl bromide does kill anything in the soil, including beneficial bacteria and the valuable earthworm. The Florida task force recommends meeting the phase-out deadlines established by the federal government and the development of an education program implemented through extension services to inform and promote safe alternatives to the toxic chemical. It also recommends protecting farm workers who use the poison and launching a program to reduce pesticide use in Florida overall by promoting sustainable pest management. This method, also called integrated pest management (IPM), uses methods of pest control that involve no toxic chemicals. Instead, IPM uses harmless products such as neem, a powerful bug repellent made from the bark and oil of the neem tree, or specific methods of planting that discourage disease and pest infestation. Other methods include covering plants with mesh fabric to prevent insect infestation or removing bugs by hand.

In the report, the group also considered methyl bromide a public health hazard for people living near the farms that use the fumigant. After studying several Florida communities, it found three counties where fumigated fields create concern because of their proximity to local schools. Gadsden County, near Tallahassee, has 2,950 acres of tomato fields treated with approximately 395,000 pounds of methyl bromide annually. Gretna, a small Gadsden County town of about 2,300 people, sits in the middle of these treated fields, exposing children attending nearby Gretna Elementary School to the chemical.

Dr. Marion Moses, director of the Pesticide Education Center in California, works closely with the United Farm Workers assessing the many pesticide risks threatening agricultural workers and their families. Since many farm workers often live close to the fields, they are exposed to dangerous petrochemicals even when they are not working. The land their children play on is toxic, the water they drink may be toxic, and they must handle the toxic chemicals at work.

Though Moses concedes that the chemical poisoning is less acute than twenty years ago, growers continue to use new and still dangerous chemicals. Parathion, a toxic nerve gas developed by the Germans during World War II, was discontinued because of farm worker protests. It came on the market in 1943 and was responsible for more poisonings and deaths than any other pesticide. But some of the newer approved chemicals may be just as toxic. The EPA rates chemicals from one to four, with one being the most toxic. Moses wants to see all "Toxic Ones" removed permanently from use.Until not long ago, farmers allowed the crop dusters to spray the fields while the workers were picking, but after much protest the practice stopped. In 1990, environmental groups won a victory using the Delaney Clause, a 1958 amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. The Delaney Clause states that processed foods must not contain residues of any pesticides that induce cancer in laboratory animals. It covers thirty-six pesticides including mancozeb, a fungicide used on cereals and grapes; dicofol, an insecticide used on fruits; and captan, a fungicide used on plums, grapes, and tomatoes. Several environmental groups, farm workers, and the state of California sued the EPA using the Delaney Clause, and a California court approved the settlement in 1995. Though this will lead to stricter regulations on the pesticides, a group called the American Crop Protection Association says the five-year review process only proves costly and time-consuming, with resources wasted "in pursuit of trivial and non-existent risks."

Margie Lee Pitter fidgets nervously as she sits in the Farmworker Ministry office in Apopka, where she has turned for help. She is one of an estimated 5,000 workers in Volusia, Putnam, and Lake Counties, north of Orlando, who have been put out of work by the Lake Apopka restoration project that closed the farms once lining the banks of what was once Florida's second-largest lake.After thirty-five years as a farm worker in the area, Pitter worked her last day in a carrot packinghouse on July 31, 1998. That was the day that farming along Lake Apopka's polluted banks officially ended and that the muck farming that was a way of life in Apopka ended with it. Since the farming stopped, Pitter has worked several different jobs, but none with which she has felt comfortable. Now, at the Farmworker Ministry office, she is registering for a class to learn computer skills, something she hopes will provide enough income to keep her from having to receive public assistance.

Pitter's story is typical of many of Florida's farm workers. She started working the fields just out of high school, hoeing between rows of chicory and endive. She worked in the thick muck, which was often dry and dusty and blew around, caking on her face.

"Sometimes we looked like a coal miner at the end of the day," she says. Pitter and her fellow workers wore skirts over long pants, because in those days there were no portable toilets available among the rows of greens. She worked those fields until 1989, when she transferred into the packinghouse. Now, after a bad year compounded by the end of the only work she knows, Pitter hopes things will get better. Last year her house was badly damaged by tornadoes that devastated areas of Central Florida, and then, in late November, her husband died, leaving her all alone.

"I never had no kids," she says in her soft voice. "I had four miscarriages but never had any kids. Just a few years ago a nurse with the health service came and talked to us about safety and health, and she asked if I had any kids. When I told her I had four miscarriages, she said that might be because of the pesticides in the fields. I never had any idea about that.

"When I started working in the 1960s, the boss just told us to go over to the side of the field when the plane came over with the spray so we wouldn't get sprayed on, but we all felt the mist in our faces 'cause it blew around. Sometimes we all had headaches, blurry vision and felt sick, but nobody told us it might be the chemicals."

Pitter and thousands of others never knew the consequences of the pesticides sprayed overhead by the crop dusters. Most of those exposed to the poisons ignored the telltale signs of chemical poisoning. In those days before the law required farmers to tell workers what pesticides they were using, hazards involved many different chemicals, including DDT, which is now completely banned in the United States. Pesticides also can cause skin irritation from handling without gloves and lung damage from the fumes if no mask is used. There is an increased incidence of reproductive organ cancer among farm-working women at a much younger age than the average population, as well as a higher incidence of birth defects among their children.

Now the Lake Apopka restoration project is experiencing problems of its own. Land flooding stopped because of nearly 1,000 bird deaths believed to be related to eating contaminated fish from the lake. The restoration must go on, but the problems with the pesticides seem insurmountable.

Pesticides pervade American agriculture. Most were introduced after World War II, when they were manufactured as nerve poisons. Many of these poisons are related to the deadly nerve gas sarin, which was used in Japan in a 1996 subway attack. That episode was an act of terrorism, but there are many reported cases of poisoning in every rural area in which farmers use pesticides.In November 1989, in the tiny southern Hillsborough County farming community of Balm, workers picking cauliflower began to feel dizzy and nauseated. Someone went to get the boss. By noon, many more workers were ill. Others who were able began taking sick workers to a local farm worker clinic in their cars. At final count, 112 workers in all suffered poisoning from the pesticide Phosdrin (trade name for mevin-phos), a powerful poison used to combat worms.

Goodson Farms, the workers' employer, had sprayed the fields just twenty-four hours before allowing the pickers to return. The recommended time to stay out of the fields was forty-eight hours. The powerful nerve gas penetrated the workers' skin, they inhaled it, and some who munched on the cauliflower in the fields consumed it. The Phosdrin episode became the largest case of farm worker poisoning in Florida, causing outrage among advocates who protested the lack of care for these workers. The workers sued Goodson Farms, but in the end each was awarded only about $1,000.

Phosdrin, or mevinphos, works by attaching itself to the bodily enzyme cholinesterase, making it inactive. When cholinesterase is not active, the body breaks down neurotransmitters, leaving the affected person with a lack of feeling. It also causes headaches, diarrhea, nausea, and stomach cramps, and in extreme cases, fills the lungs with secretions that can result in death. Some workers remained in unstable condition for months, and some suffered permanent damage and never returned to the fields.

In 1993, the EPA listed mevinphos as one of the most dangerous of twenty-eight chemicals, even outranking the highly toxic parathion. Though the EPA attempted to have an all-out recall of the chemical, foot-dragging by lawmakers allowed the chemical's use through the end of 1995.

Children living on or near farms face an increased risk of exposure to highly dangerous pesticides, according to a 1998 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a watchdog group that oversees environmental concerns. Children are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of pesticides because of their small bodies and their habit of putting their hands and other objects in their mouths. Because their bodies and brains are developing, they are more susceptible than adults to toxins.The report, titled "Trouble on the Farm: Growing Up with Pesticides in Agricultural Communities," highlights the problems of the more than 500,000 children under the age of six who live surrounded by these agricultural poisons. Residues from chemicals considered too toxic for domestic use show up in these homes, often brought in on the shoes and clothing of parents who work in the fields; the residues are found on the children's hands and in their urine. Often these residues are at levels exceeding the level currently considered safe. They may also be exposed through contaminated soil, through pesticide "drift" in the air, and through play near the fields.

Over fifty labor, health, and environmental organizations submitted an administrative petition to the EPA asking that farm children's safety be considered when designating "safe" levels of these chemicals. Under the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the EPA is required to consider children's special vulnerability when evaluating their exposure, requiring an extra tenfold margin of safety. However, levels of exposure are uncertain, and critics say the EPA's record in enforcing the law is poor. In 1991, an EPA study showed that 48 percent of children working in the fields were sprayed with pesticides at least one time.

In the 1990s, a dramatic case of pesticide poisoning occurred in Utah that had repercussions as far away as Florida. It happened when a 17-year-old farm worker sprayed himself with a toxic chemical in a sprayer. He was hot in the fields, and he thought that the sprayer contained water. The boy died the next day of a brain hemorrhage, which authorities said might have been prevented had he had pesticide training. The death of the young man prompted the Pasco County Health Department, north of Tampa, to launch a pesticide education campaign targeting farm workers and their children to prevent such a tragedy. There are about 10,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers in the county, and the program is a joint effort between the county health department and Farmworkers Self-Help.

Again, education is the key to prevent pesticide exposure of farm workers. Today, posters -- printed in both Spanish and English -- that illustrate the dangers of pesticides hang in the clinics and advocacy offices. Environmental groups help workers ask for precautionary equipment and offer legal help if workers are exposed. Because children are most at risk from contact with these chemicals, they should not encounter them, either in the fields or brought home on the clothes of family members.

Pesticides pose not only a risk to humans but also cause economic concerns. The problems with Lake Apopka are like the canary in the coal mine. Toxic sites will continue to surface as people realize the dangers of these chemicals, and there may be many more people put out of work as environmental agencies reclaim these sites.

Nano Riley is a freelance writer in St. Petersburg whose work has appeared in the Planet, the St. Petersburg Times and other publications. Davida Johns is a teacher with Farmworkers Self-Help Inc. in Dade City. She describes herself as a feminist photographer. A fresh exhibit of her work will be displayed at Eckerd College this fall. Watch the Planet for details.