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Afarmworker is a person hired to work in the agricultural industry. This includes work on farms of all sizes, from small, family-run businesses to large industrial agriculture operations. The farmworker may or may not be related to the individuals who own or run the farm, but his or her job entails a more formal relationship than a family member or neighbor who might do occasional chores on the farm. Depending on the location and type of farm, the work may be seasonal or permanent. Seasonal, or migrant workers, are often low-wage workers, who may or may not be working in their country of origin. Permanent workers may have a particular set of skills or educational background that allow them to earn higher wages, and are often found on farms where there is year-round production, such as on dairy or beef cattle farms. Farmworkers usually earn a wage, however, the work can be done on a volunteer basis or for educational reasons. Many programs exist, such as World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) that facilitates the placement of volunteer farmworkers on specific types of farms. Additionally, farms may offer apprenticeship or internship opportunities where labor is traded for the knowledge and experience gained from a particular type of production. Farm workers may be from the country where they are employed, or may be immigrants, as is often the case in the United States.
Farmwork has been around for thousands of years. In Medieval times, 90 percent of Europeans worked on the farms of wealthy knightsornobles. A form of farmwork is peasantry, a term usually used before the Industrial Revolution. Peasants were considered the lowest class of people and had few rights.
After the Industrial Revolution, many farm workers left the countryside to large cities to work in the factories. This meant farm labourers became more sought after, so the farmers and landowners offered better pay and conditions so their workers wouldn't find factory work more appealing. Some farmers employed one or two farmworkers, while Lords could employ thousands on their land.
Usually referred to as agricultural labourers (abbreviated to ag labs), they appeared often on census returns and documents from the 19th century. However, as more and more labourers moved to cities the term became less common by the early 20th century.
The development of a particular kind of agriculture is dependent on the characteristics of the farming region. The soil type, climate, slope, and distance to markets all help in shaping the type of agriculture that thrives in any particular region. For instance, the Midwestern United States has rich, fertile soil, and so it produces corn, soybeans, cattle, hogs, and dairy products and has become known as the Corn Belt of America.[1] In contrast, agriculture in California’s Mediterranean and moderate climate produces more than half of the nation’s fruits, vegetables, and nuts, which require hand-harvesting and a large labor force.[2]
Over the last century the amount of farmland in production has remained relatively steady, but the number of operating farms has continually dropped, signifying a consolidation of farm enterprises.[1] Around the 1930s hard economic times hit the country with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era, forcing some farmers off the land.[3] From 1950 to 2001 the amount of U.S. farm land used for major commodity crop production has remained about the same while over half of the farms are gone.[4] As farm production has largely moved away from the family farms and towards an industrial agriculture model, there is an increased need for wage labor. A farm’s reliance on farmworkers greatly depends on the quantity and type of crop in production. Some crops require more labor than others, and in California many labor-intensive crops are produced such as dairy products, fruits, tree nuts and vegetables.[5] Although the domestic farm labor force has decreased in the last century, the proportion of hired workers has grown.[5] Increased competition among agricultural producers and consolidation have created a need for a large, inexpensive, temporary workforce that increasingly comes from abroad.
The agricultural labor force is largely foreign-born Hispanics of which 81% are foreign born, 77% are from Mexico,[6] and it is estimated that 98% of all farm workers immigrated to the country illegally.[7] They are usually young, married males.[8] Every year many of these farmworkers leave their homes and families to cultivate, harvest, and package fruit, nut and vegetables in the U.S., while others work in the fishing, meat packing and dairy industries.[6] In the past, the rise in immigration to the U.S., usually of unauthorized workers, has increased the population of migrant farmworkers. However, in the 1990s, a new trend began with the development of more year-round production methods resulting in a larger population of settled farmworkers.[5]
Farm workers face many challenges globally and in the United States, and are among the most marginalized labor group in the world. The increasing prevalence of multinational corporations and a consolidated agricultural supply chain puts downward pressure on producers and thus wages and working conditions for labor.[9] The International Labor Organization argues that the large scale restructuring of agriculture contributes to violations of the four fundamental worker rights: the right to join unions and bargain collectively, the elimination of forced labor, the ending of child labor, and the reduction of discriminatory hiring.[10] Farm workers are more vulnerable to these abuses because of the precarious nature of their employment.
Not all farms and agricultural systems exhibit the following abuses and may respect the dignity of farm labor. The Swanton Berry farm for example "was the first strawberry farm in the United States to sign a contract with the United Farm Workers of America/AFL-CIO. The farm workers' contract includes the highest pay scales in the industry, health care, vacation and holiday pay."[7] Nonetheless, there are many prevalent abuses within the agricultural labor industry.
Agricultural manual labor is often seasonal employment, which increases job insecurity among farm workers and can inhibit them from effectively organizing for better working conditions. For some, pursuing farm labor as a migrant worker, or following the crops, is an attempt to secure more regular employment but this incurs traveling costs that may not be made up upon arriving at the destination. Dairy farms and other animal operations require year-round, daily and around-the-clock labor which farm workers may feel unable to challenge. Farm workers in any context are additionally vulnerable to abuse when they are undocumented immigrants and isolated physically, socially, or linguistically.
The many problems with farm working around the world compel immigration, both from rural to urban areas and internationally. Global trade and the depression of crop prices across the developing world contribute to agricultural workers seeking employment outside of their home country. Undocumented workers are subject to the worst abuses since they have no recourse and may be more dependent on their current employment. Workers documented under the H-2A Visa program may also be unwilling to make demands since producers are only required to pay for their return home if the worker completes the growing season.[7]
There are many working conditions that can be of concern to farm workers and their advocates including adequate wages, housing, food, working conditions, access to health care, and the quality of life for their families. Farm wages fell by 10% between 1989 and 1998.[7] Additionally, in the agricultural sector overtime pay and minimum wage, depending on the man-hours employed by the farm, is not required in the United States. Many farm workers live below the poverty line, making an average of $10,000 per year.[11] Access to adequate food and housing compound the problem of low wages. Housing may be rented by the farmworker or provided for free; however, much of the housing provided is inadequate and overcrowded. Extremely low wages can prohibit farmworkers from buying enough food to feed their families.
Information about health hazards and access to health care is extremely important and limited for farm workers. Agricultural workers perform a dangerous job- working with animals, pesticides, heavy machinery, and doing physically demanding tasks. Safety training is required in the United States but is not always performed or may be inadequate due to the seasonal time frame and language barriers. Chronic back injuries, serious respiratory problems in Confined animal feeding operations, and pesticide poisoning are common. The problem of pesticide exposure is increasingly recognized as one which occurs not only during the employees workday, but also due to pesticide drift which exposes workers, their families and whole neighborhoods when the wind carries pesticides into nearby communities.[12] There have even been reports of farm workers drowning in manure lagoons.[13] In instances where farm workers may be hurt on the job, they may not know their right to health care or they may be reluctant to report injuries for fear of losing their jobs. Meanwhile, in the United States, 95% of farm workers have no health insurance for non-farm related injuries which makes healthcare access for the family of farm workers and for illness very difficult to obtain.[7]
While farm workers are mainly young men, the structure of farm work affects the entire family. When families do not travel together, parents, particularly fathers, are away from their children and families for long periods of time. On the farm site, many other issues confront women and children. Sexual harassment and abuse, inadequate educational opportunities, and the need for child labor for wages or for lack of childcare are serious concerns as well as exposure of pregnant women and children to many of the health hazards listed above. Women also face discriminatory hiring practices and often significantly lower wages, especially for piece-rate harvest work.[7]
The following poem shows some of the difficulties faced by farmworkers:
We have fed you all for a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share,
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We have bought it fair![14]
As compared to other workers, organization attempts on the behalf of farm-workers face a double challenge. First, labor laws that apply generally do not apply to agricultural workers. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, for example, which protects most workers who organize and form trade unions from employer retaliation (e.g., the firing of workers for trying to join a union) and sets up a framework for unions and employers to negotiate in good faith, does not extend to farm workers.[7] Similarly, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which sets minimum wage and overtime pay requirements does not apply to farm labor. In 1966, the minimum wage requirement, but not the overtime pay, was extended to apply to farm workers who worked on farms where there was over approximately 7 full-time employees in a quarter.[7] Some states, such as California, have pass laws guaranteeing the right to organize, but these apply only to the state level. A second important challenge faced by farm worker organizers is the vulnerability of the workers due to their immigration status. The non-immigrant status of guest workers as well as the lack of documentation of many other workers places them in a politically weak position to address worker injustices.[7] Despite these challenges, there has been an important history of farm worker organizing in the United-States, and farm labor organizing continues to this day both to ensure the enforcement of existing regulation and to create new regulations.
Some of the main organizations associated with the farm workers movement are the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Many of the issues around which farm workers organize relating to occupational health and safety and labor rights are also socially important issues that affect society more broadly. These include issues such as immigration rights or pesticide use in American agriculture. These leads to collaborations between farm workers organizations and other groups. United Farm Workers, Pesticide Action Network, and Earthjustice, for example, have worked together to present a petition, supported by 24 organizations in total, to the US Environmental Protection Agency to push for a ban of the pesticide endosulfan.[15]
Given the reduced right to organize and bargain as workers, two approaches are commonly used. The first is targeting regulation changes by pressuring the government. The UFW, for example, often run campaigns targeting policy by encouraging citizens to communicate with their government representatives on a variety of issues. As a recent example, on the heels of the death of a young farm worker, the UFW has been encouraging supporters to contact California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to improve the enforcement of existing regulations regarding working in the heat. Despite having the strictest heat laws in the country, heat deaths continue to occur and are largely attributed to a lack of workplace inspectors which results in a low level of compliance.[16] A second strategy involves targeting high profile businesses that are supplied through contractors and subcontractors hiring farm workers. Recently, the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, for example, has applied pressure to several companies through consumer boycotts, including McDonalds and Taco Bell. The result of these campaigns were that these companies agreed to pay an extra penny per pound to the farmworkers who picked for them, regardless of the fact that they were employed through subcontractors.[17]
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