Eva Longoria on film 'Food Chains': Helping migrant farmers is a 'human rights issue'

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Eva Longoria highlights food revolution in new documentary

Eva Longoria talks about her new documentary

The agricultural industry generates billions of dollars in revenue for some of the largest corporations in the United States.

It is an industry lifted on the backs of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who in return see very little of those profits.

This is the message in the upcoming film “Food Chains,” produced by actress and activist Eva Longoria – her second documentary on the issue.

“I’ve been a farmer advocate for many, many years,” Longoria told Fox News Latino at the documentary’s New York premiere Tuesday night. “This one is about the food chain and how as a consumer you are part of this and knowing where your food comes from and what the human cost is.”

The former “Desperate Housewives” actress said that these days, people are very interested in what they are putting into their bodies when it comes to their food – if it’s gluten-free or soy-free or lactose-free. But she and the other producers believe people also should be concerned about the human cost of getting that food from the farm to the supermarket.

“There is a great interest in food," Longoria said. "We are buying organic and paying more for specialty foods, but I think it’s important to humanize this issue and put a face to it."

“Food Chains,” directed by Sanjay Rawal, follows the battle of a group of tomato pickers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), who are asking supermarket and fast food titans to pay just a penny more per pound for their Florida tomatoes.

Doing so, they say, would nearly double the wages of these workers, who are among the poorest laborers in the U.S.

According to the film, farmworkers in the U.S. average about $12,000 per year in wages.

“When you see this organization in Florida, the CIW, and what they’ve done, it’s totally scalable outside of tomatoes and outside of Florida,” Longoria said. “We would love to apply this all over the country.”

The issue of migrant farmworkers is a human rights issue because they are emotionally, physically and sexually abused and many times not paid, Longoria said.

“Human rights are being violated,” she said. “These people feed the most well fed nation in the world and they go to bed hungry.”

“Food Chains” hits theaters on Nov. 21 with a digital release on Nov. 28.

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