Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024 Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Looking at what farmworkers are paid in Oklahoma
In Oklahoma, where the state minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since 2009, an effort is underway to ask voters to more than double the rate over the next five years. Standing in the way is the Oklahoma Farm Bureau.
The farm bureau claims an increase in the minimum wage could put family farms out of business, and it has asked the state’s Supreme Court to stop an initiative petition from moving forward. Supporters of the minimum wage increase say low pay only helps corporate agriculture, not farmworkers, who are paid some of the lowest wages in the state.
Investigate Midwest took a closer look at the Farm Bureau’s opposition to a minimum wage increase and what wages look like for farmworkers in Oklahoma and across the country.
— Ben Felder, Oklahoma reporter
Why the Oklahoma Farm Bureau is fighting an effort to increase the state’s minimum wage
By Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest
Raise the Wage Oklahoma, a political organization seeking a statewide vote to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2029, along with removing current exemptions for employees working on farms, ranches and in feed stores, filed paperwork last year to begin collecting the 92,263 signatures needed to put the question on a statewide ballot.
But before the petition process could begin, the State Chamber of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Farm Bureau filed a legal challenge in November, asking the Oklahoma Supreme Court to declare the effort invalid.
Read more.
Midwest ranks second for new and beginning farmers in the latest Agricultural Census
By Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest/Report for America corps member
More than a million farmers in the U.S. are now “new and beginning” farmers, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture.
See the whole graphic.
OPINION: Congress needs to review pesticide approval process
Columnist Dave Dickey scrutinizes EPA actions on chlorpyrifos and dicamba. He writes: "It is entirely fair to say that the Environmental Protection Agency has a checkered history when it comes to following its rules to register pesticides."
Read more.
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Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public as a watchdog over influential corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism.
