THE “GREENHOUSE EFFECT": HOW AN OFT-TOUTED CLIMATE SOLUTION THREATENS AGRICULTURAL WORKERS

To harvest tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, to clip herbs, to prune and propagate succulents, people work in oppressive heat and humidity.

Some wring out shirts soaked with sweat. Some contend with headaches, dizziness and nausea. Some collapse. Some hover on the brink of exhaustion, backs straining, breathing heavily.

Many do so not out in farm fields, but indoors – under the roofs of greenhouses. In structures designed to control the growing environment of plants, some workers described humidity with temperatures sometimes soaring past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 38 degrees Celsius).

“The heat is unbearable and the humidity equally so,” said Estela Martinez, speaking in Spanish of the six years she worked in a nursery in Florida. “I lost too much weight because my T-shirts were coming out soaked, soaked from the heat inside.”

The number of greenhouse and nursery workers has increased by over 16,000 people in recent years, according to data from the latest U.S. agricultural census. Some work in conventional operations like commercial nurseries, others in buzzy startups that tout indoor agriculture as a climate change solution.

The data, along with stories of 10 current and former greenhouse workers shows a growing population of workers who are increasingly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses, injuries and death as global temperatures rise and greenhouses become more popular. They work in a gray area – they’re both indoor and agricultural workers, but are not always included in efforts to protect the latter.

But since it is possible to control greenhouse conditions, and many companies include greenhouses in their pitches for the promise of indoor agriculture, workers and researchers want protections and to have them enforced.

In those suffocating conditions, workers who don’t get enough time for breaks outside or in cooler environments, whose shifts are not pushed earlier or later in the summer and whose managers ignore their concerns are the most at risk.