Ramón, 25, and Pedro, 29, came to the United States with visions of a land of opportunity: bountiful fields, which they could work, that would help supplement their families' incomes.

They were recruited by agricultural contractors who took them through the process of applying for H-2A visas. The recruiters promised that all costs the men would incur to get to the US - about $1,300 total - would be reimbursed by their employer, a farm within Whole Foods' supply chain. But when they got to the farm, they were not reimbursed, they were immediately trapped in debt.

Instead of an hourly wage, they receive a piece rate of $1 per bucket of produce picked, making climbing out of debt nearly impossible. Their employers also deduct money from their wages for things like food. If they need tools or protective gear, the workers have to buy those themselves. If they need to use the bathroom in the field, they must walk about half a mile to get to one.

For over two years, we've been investigating and exposing inequality in the food value chain and how supply chain workers, such as Pedro and Ramón, lose out to large supermarket chains. It's your support as a member of the Oxfam community that makes this work possible. And today, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's more important than ever to conduct research, hear from workers, and put pressure on supermarkets to end the human suffering behind the food we eat.

Read more about Ramón and Pedro's story - and how they're fighting back.
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Ramón and Pedro have been working with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), Oxfam's partner in North Carolina, to claim their rights. It's not an easy fight; there's a threat their visas will be revoked, or they will be blacklisted. But these are chances they are willing to take.

The first step to changing their working conditions, FLOC organizer Leticia Zavala says, is to confront their grower. And to do that, she says, they need support from all of us consumers to put pressure on growers and the companies they sell to, like Whole Foods, to improve worker treatment.

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that supermarkets protect their workers, from farmers like Ramón and Pedro to cashiers in your local grocery store, as they risk exposure to help put food on our tables. As we put pressure on supermarkets to protect their workers, we're also scaling up our work to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and keep up our work fighting poverty, hunger, and injustice in more than 90 countries around the world.

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