Farm Labor

California's Central Valley is home to some of the wealthiest agricultural producers in the world and counties with the highest levels of food insecurity in the United States of America. Mississippi, the birthplace of a cotton industry that built unprecedented wealth for white growers on the backs of enslaved and then sharecropping Black peoples, is what has been called 'the hungriest state in the nation'. These contradictory relationships are no accident and are not disconnected. They are together the product of intertwined geographies of capital, labour, ideas and political power. For over 200 years a flexible, distributed bloc of white settlers, farmers, investors, politicians, academics and philanthropists organized life around capital production reliant on low wage or enslaved agricultural labour. This bloc keeps a keen eye focused on disorganizing movements for agricultural labour's freedom and liberation-producing what I call a philanthroagro-state fix. As part of a larger study on agricultural justice movements across both regions, this paper introduces an exploratory analysis of the philanthro-agro-state fix and the freedom farming movements that have resisted, confronted and attempted to transform it towards justice and prosperity for those who work the land.

In this article, we compare colonias in Texas and California and evaluate the federal policy relating to them. In Texas, designated colonias are recently subdivided but unregulated housing settlements that lack infrastructure. California's designated colonias are old communities, with varying demographics, infrastructure needs, and jurisdictional authority. Because subdivisions are strongly regulated in California, we did not expect to find designated colonias there. In actuality, there are over 30. However, federal policy is based on Texas colonias, and we argue that it is too broad because it fails to distinguish between inherently distinct areas and investment needs. Paradoxically, the federal criteria for defining colonias are also too narrow. Many locally designated colonias in California do not qualify for funding because they are not close to the Mexican border or exceed the population ceiling. Ironically, some of the colonias that fail to qualify have the worst housing conditions.

iven the size of the Korean economy and the high trade barriers now being erased, the agreement with Korea is considered the most important U.S. trade agreement since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Throughout this article, we refer to the Republic of Korea simply as Korea; isolationist and communist North Korea is a separate country for which no free trade agreements could be applicable. After a brief overview of U.S. agricultural trade agreements with Panama and Colombia, this article focuses on the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS FTA) which is by far the more important agreement for California agriculture.

Agriculture is the nation's largest industry. America's farmers and hired workers produce food and fiber worth $150 billion annually, over four percent of GNP. Farmworker employment doubles from a trough of 900,000 in January to a peak of 1.8 million in July. 1 This need for one million seasonal workers-more than autos and steel combined-is the root cause of farm labor dilemmas. The Census of Agriculture defines a farm as any unit of land that sells at least $1,000 worth of farm products annually. Fifty-two percent of the nation's 2.5 million farms sold less than $10,000 worth of farm products in 1978.2 Farming is a secondary occupation for most of these farmers, who usually do their own farm work. The largest 282,000 farms (twelve percent of the total) that each sold more than $100,000 worth of farm products, account for sixty-nine percent of all farm sales and hire most of America's farmworkers. 3 Large farms that hire farmworkers tend to specialize, to produce only livestock or field crops like wheat and corn or fruits and vegetables. The annual farm wage bill of $12 billion is divided almost equally among livestock farms, field crop farms, and fruit and vegetable farms. Each kind of farm has different labor needs. Large livestock, dairy, and poultry farms usually have fewer than ten year-round "hired hands" who are paid a monthly salary and are often provided fringe benefits like housing, meals, and transportation. Commercial field crop farms that spe-

The multibillion-dollar California cannabis (Cannabis sativa, marijuana) industry employs an unknown number of seasonal workers, including many immigrants. Most production occurs in the remote, rural, far-northern counties where farms may be hours by vehicle from the nearest town. While licenses for cannabis cultivation became available following legalization in California for adult recreational use in 2016, most cannabis—about 80%—is still grown on unlicensed farms. Cannabis is a labor-intensive crop, and the skilled and time-consuming task of hand-trimming flow­ers is the most common seasonal job in the indus­try. Some immigrant workers return for multiple cannabis harvest seasons and are attracted to the work by an interest in the cannabis culture and consumption or the opportunity to earn enough money in several months to live the rest of the year in their home country. Others are farmworkers moving from work in traditional crops for the rela­tively higher pay in the cannabis in...

The Cornell Farmworker Program's mission is "to address the needs of farmworkers and their families through research, education and extension". This IPM effort explored how to assist farmworkers in safely and effectively managing pests in their living quarters. Pest management in this setting may be complicated by several factors, including poor physical infrastructure, language and literacy barriers, and constant fluctuations in the labor force. To address the pest management needs of farmworkers, we set out to identify resources that are currently available for Spanish speaking, low literacy populations. In the absence of appropriate educational materials, our goal was to develop new, highly visual outreach materials and engaging workshops to help farmworkers manage pests.

This article looks at the United States' federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Visa Program and reforms proposed by the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. In this policy analysis, we draw on media content analysis and qualitative interviews to compare the viewpoints of farmers, workers, grower and worker advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians. We find that perspectives on the program are dependent upon actors' level of direct interaction with workers. Moderate-sized farmers and regionally based worker advocacy groups tend to be the most concerned with day-to-day program operations and fair working conditions. In contrast, national-level advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians are less critical of the program and seek to broadly expand farmer access to guestworkers, justifying proposed program reforms with discourses of national food security and immigration reform. Ultimately, we suggest that engaging a food systems lens to understand these policies provides a more nuanced perspective, addressing national food security and

Focusing on various sites of an international farmer exchange program, this research examines the geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural relevance of Northern-based alternative food networks in the context of a less developed country, specifically Peru. In theory, alternative food networks (AFNs) revalorize small-scale farmers, rebuild local food systems, and strengthen ties between consumers and producers. Efforts to promote AFNs and scholarship exploring these efforts are largely confined to the global North, despite the common challenges facing small-scale farmers in both more and less developed countries. In an attempt to bridge the scholastic and geographic gap between North and South, this dissertation examines AFNs from a global perspective, focusing on the mechanisms best suited to facilitating the diffusion of ideas and practices associated with AFNs, and revealing how initiatives like farmers’ markets and community gardens may serve similar functions in diverse settings. ...

Accelerating flows of remittances are dwarfing global development aid. This study deepens our understanding of remittance impacts on the families of workers who come to Canada annually for several months under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Interviews with SAWP workers, their spouses, adult children and teachers in Mexico deepen our understanding of the impacts of these remittances. They demonstrate that the remittances are often literally a lifeline to transnational family survival, allowing them to pay for basic needs such as shelter, food, and medical care. Yet, at the same time, the raemittances do not allow most of these workers and their families to escape deep poverty and significant precarity, including new forms of precarity generated by the SAWP. Instead, SAWP remittances help reduce poverty, at least temporarily, to more moderate levels while precarious poverty expands through global neoliberal underdevelopment. ome 200 million workers around the world are working for wages outside of their countries of citizenship (Crowley and Hickman 2008). In Canada, over 300,000 temporary foreign workers (TFWs) labour under S

In Sub-Saharan Africa, women's farm labor is highest in Ethiopia. Using focus group discussions with 240 farmers and other research tools, our USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation for the Reduction of Post-Harvest Loss-Ethiopia study explores the sources of (dis)empowerment of rural farmers in Ethiopia. We find that women are disempowered across all five domains of empowerment due to cultural factors, despite government and financial institution policy changes. Women with low education tend to engage in low risk/return farming practices, including growing less nutritious crops, thereby undermining nutritional security of the household. Our findings confirm that women's role increases to as much as 80 percent in post-harvest. Poor storage technologies resulting in fungal/pest infections and chemicals in stored grains pose serious health risks for women, and poor women consume grains with up to 50 percent damage. Food security and development policies should empower women and promote improved technologies-particularly targeting women-to reduce grain losses and women's work burden while mitigating health risks.

Buried in the Stanford University Archives is an undated anonymous pamphlet entitled "The Legend of Pancho Sanchez," which offers a Catholic critique of the Bracero Program. This article puts "Legend" and its vision of the program in conversation with the church's late 1950s/early-1960s position on agriculture and its longstanding advocacy for family-based, owner-operated farms as the centerpiece of morally healthy agricultural production. I contend that the church's deep commitment to small farms as key to a healthy society shaped its hesitancy to rethink this priority, despite shifting migration patterns and increased prevalence of migrant farmworkers, domestic and non-. "Legend" suggests that official church priority could not see how the structural underpinnings of industrial agriculture affected in interrelated ways domestic farmworkers and Mexican braceros alike, exacerbating the precarity of all farmworkers.

Description
The present era is witnessing profound changes in global production and consumption of food. In some respects, this is a continuation of earlier trends. However, in several significant ways, restructuring of global agro-food systems in the contemporary moment appears to be completely new.
Concentration and centralization of capital within agriculture is now being reinforced through intensified global competition, innovations in biotechnology and transportation, and the social organization of labor. As a result, we result as daily evidence rapid transformation of agriculture, including decline of subsistence agriculture and proletarianization of independent farmers.
Call for Chapter Submissions:
With the edited volume’s aim to provide critical insights, diverse perspectives, and creative approaches about migrant farmworker resistance, we invite scholars, researchers, writers, and creative artists to contribute original works, empirically grounded studies, and theoretical essays
to the volume. We encourage non-traditional scholarly contributions that include creative performing arts, expressions of resistance such as poetry, short stories, photo essays, or participatory creative research methods such as photovoice.
Submission process and deadlines
If you are interested in contributing, please submit an abstract of 500 words, a 200-word biographical note with current affiliation and email address, and an updated CV (all as Word docs) by 15 October 2025 (instead of 30 September 2025).
Please include “migrant agricultural workers resistance CfA” submission in the subject line. The
abstract should state the research question addressed in the proposed article, outline the theoretical
framework, and state the article’s main argument.
Please email the abstract and all queries to Eriselda Shkopi ([email protected]), Reena
Kukreja ([email protected]), and Fabio Perocco ([email protected])

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant and seasonal farmworkers were deemed essential due to their central roles in US agricultural operations. However, employerprovided housing and transportation conditions increased their risks of SARS-CoV-2 Conclusions The ETS targeting all workplaces was more effective for reducing COVID-19 transmission than the ETS or executive order specifically targeting farmworkers, indicating that the design, communication, and implementation of ETSs targeting farmworkers should be re-evaluated.

eef origin traceability, cultural sustainability, rural food deserts, climate variability and adaptations, food safety regulations, urban agriculture, and food waste -the topics offered by authors of this open call edition of the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (also called JAFSCD or the Food Systems Journal) reflect the enormous diversity of the nascent field of food systems. We hold in high esteem the researchers across a broad range of disciplines working in collaboration with practitioners in the field to produce the papers contained herein. Anthropologists, economists, animal scientists, sociologists, educators, and even lawyers, are working with food policy council members, planners, and staffers from community-based organizations with increasing frequency. It is rewarding to see the transdisciplinary literature on food systems grow, and the Food Systems Journal community is very proud to be contributing to it. This issue is a testament to the remarkable depth and breadth of the emerging food systems literature. We start out this issue with John Ikerd's Economic Pamphleteer column, in which he gives us a sneak preview of what's to come in our forthcoming issue on cooperatives and food alternative food systems initiatives. And in his Global Views of Local Food Systems column, Rami Zuryak reveals the devastating impact of civil war in Syria on that country's food system. Next we share a provocative viewpoint prepared by Alan Hallsworth and Alfred Wong entitled Urban Gardening: A Valuable Activity, But…" Four teams of previous authors offer their responses, including

Agriculture is big business in New York State, particularly the dairy sector, which contributed an estimated US$14.8 billion to the state economy in 2014.1 Increasingly, dairy farms rely on workers from Mexico and Guatemala, many of whom are believed to be unauthorized. While nearly all immigrant workers present social security cards upon applying for employment, these documents can be purchased for a nominal fee along the border or in any major U.S. city. Although federal law generally protects employers of undocumented immigrants from liability, farmers still worry about the possibility of an immigration audit or raid. This article focuses on the work of the Cornell Farmworker Program (CFp) to improve workplace relations within this often tense space, where employers rely on a workforce that may not be properly documented and workers are afraid to make waves for fear of reprisals. The Cornell Farmworker program

This document reports on a survey regarding the needs and concerns of 51 members of grower associations, 35 seasonal farmworkers, and 74 migrant farmworkers in Michigan. The survey was conducted during the conference "Building Partnerships: Growers, Farmworkers, and Agencies United," held on December 10, 1994, in Lansing, Michigan. The age and work history of the survey participants varied: growers' mean age was 49.2 years with an average of 26.8 years of farm work, seasonal workers reported a mean age of 31.8 and averaged 15.5 years of farm work, and migrant farmworkers had an average age of 30.8 years and averaged 16.9 years of farm work. Growers reported the highest level of education with more than 50 percent having at least a 4-year college degree. Both migrants and seasonal farmworkers reported very low educational levels: 83.6 percent of migrants and 71 percent of seasonal farmworkers had not graduated from high school. The majority of the report consists of figures illustrating survey data and comments from survey participants regarding issues related to health care, housing, Head Start and day care, migrant education, adult education, employment and training, social services, employment services, availability of farm labor, labor laws, migrant legal services, civil rights, discrimination, and law enforcement. Opinions on the need for services varied widely, both between and within groups. Nevertheless, this report stresses the importance of encouraging harmonious relationships between farmers and hired farmworkers and the need for agencies to address common interests and concerns of these groups. (LP)

v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the Department of Sociology for providing me with an abundance of resourcesits faculty. I have been fortunate enough to work with many of these professors, some as a graduate assistant and some as a student. Through these interactions, I have gained invaluable knowledge, training, and support. Specifically, I want to thank my advisor, Dr. Patti Giuffre, for her insight and sincerity. She has been an excellent mentor, both professionally and academically. I also want to thank Dr. Smith, who reinvigorated my interest in environmental sociology and introduced me to the theoretical perspective utilized in this project. I would like to thank Dr. McKinney for inspiring me to explore the more hopeful side of environmental ethics. I am indebted to my colleagues and fellow graduate students, who have enriched my understanding of the world through shared critical analyses of empirical and theoretical ideas. I would also like to thank my family, both immediate and extended, for their continuing support. It is, perhaps, unusual to grow up in a milieu where Thanksgiving break means a time for listening to each other"s research presentations and where my mother"s red pen has graced almost every paper written by a member of my family. I recognize that my interest in learning is rooted in these experiences. From my mom, I have tried to learn compassion, and from my dad, strength of conviction. I would like to thank my sister, Tracy, who has always impressed me with her juxtaposed brilliance and humility. I am thankful for my grandparents, on both sides, and especially for my vi grandma Edwards, whose feistiness I"ve admired for years and years. Finally, I would like to thank my partner, Matt Glass, who makes me laugh and calms me down. Thank you for being my closest companion.

The research problem of this study is the jurisprudential inconsistency in the application of the right in section 26(3) of the South African Constitution's Bill of Rights. The inconsistency is due to inadequate conceptualisation of the substantive requirements of meaningful engagement (ME) by the South African Constitutional Court (ConCourt). The central argument is that the development of a community engagement model based on the substantive requirements of ME will enhance the application of section 26(3). This study commences by illustrating the disempowering nature to the squatters of the apartheid evictions in South Africa. To tighten influx control, the apartheid regime introduced a battery of laws that disempowered the squatters. The apartheid-induced disempowerment of the squatters penetrated into the democratic dispensation. In the examination of the normative context of evictions post-1994, this study identifies six primary drivers for substantive involvement of the occupiers during evictions. The six primary drivers seek to address the disempowering trajectory during evictions. The study demonstrates that the collective impact of these primary drivers gave rise to the adoption of the notion of 'meaningful engagement' by the ConCourt in Occupiers of 51 Olivia Road. Delivering the unanimous judgment of the Court, Yacoob J elaborated on what ME entailed and held that courts should not issue an eviction order if it is not preceded by ME. In his conceptualisation, Yacoob J correctly highlighted both the substantive and procedural aspects of ME. It is demonstrated in this study that despite the explanation by xx This study demonstrates that in eviction cases in which the application of ME was closely related to the objectives of the Transformative Empowerment Model the outcomes were 'progressive' and enhanced the protection offered by section 26(3) of the Constitution. Conversely, in eviction cases in which the application of ME by the ConCourt was at variance with the objectives of the Model the outcomes were 'regressive' and weakened the protection in section 26(3) of the Constitution. This study further shows that the values of human dignity, equality, freedom and democracy are pre-eminent in the ConCourt's conceptualisation of ME. Hence, this study interrogates whether the Transformative Empowerment Model promotes these values. In so doing, this study examines each of these values and concludes that the Model is aligned to human dignity, equality and freedom. With regard to democracy, this study demonstrates that the Model is more inclined to deliberative democracy.

Since capital is not evenly distributed across the world geography, each geography has different ways of life. Likewise, capitalism prevails within nation-states, which are the governorships of capital, and this is the main cause of inequalities. These inequalities lead to the consumption of a different industry in areas where industry or consumer culture cannot spread: The arms industry. For this, the conflict of elements with the necessary ethnic or sectarian distinctions is triggered and encouraged by the nation-state's and corporations' policies. The state, as the governorship of capitalism and the companies behind it, supports the consumption of the products of the arms industry, one of the most important economic factors of capitalism, precisely in these areas. Conflicts between armies and so-called "terrorist" groups are very convenient and functional points for the arms industry to find new markets. In this study, the reality of "stone-throwing children", which is a part of the Kurdish people's struggle for existence, has been going on in various grammars for nearly a hundred years, and the representation of this reality in mainstream newspapers in Turkey will be shown. The Diyarbakır branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey and eleven nongovernmental organizations have reported that between 2006 and 2010, 4,000 children between the ages of 12-18 were detained or imprisoned for periods ranging from 2 months to 4 years. The findings of academic articles on the representation of stone-throwing children in the media will be summarized.

Servants were an important part of the northwestern European household economy in the preindustrial past. This study examines household-level characteristics that are predictive of the presence of rural servants using data from Orkney, Scotland. The number of servants present in a household is related to household composition, landholding size, and the marital status of the household head. In addition, the sex of the particular servant hired reveals that the labor of male and female servants is not fungible. The sex of the servant hired is related to the ratio of male and female household members of working age, the occupation of the head, household composition, and the size of the household's landholding.

SummaryEvery year, 30,000 agricultural migrant workers arrive in Canada as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Low Skill Pilot Project. Although the TFWP is intended to address short-term labour demands, most of these workers return to the same communities year after year, sometimes for more than 25 years. As a result, growing numbers of migrant farm workers are permanently temporary.The increased presence of temporary workers will most certainly have an impact on Canadian communities and workplaces for years to come. Is there a way to conceptualize integration in the context of these migration patterns? How does the TFWP fit into Canada's multicultural landscape and its goals of integration and social cohesion? In this study, Jenna Hennebry draws on experience with agricultural workers to address some of these questions.The author uses empirical data, interviews and research on the situation in Ontario, the provi...

This article looks at the United States' federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Visa Program and reforms proposed by the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. In this policy analysis, we draw on media content analysis and qualitative interviews to compare the viewpoints of farmers, workers, grower and worker advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians. We find that perspectives on the program are dependent upon actors' level of direct interaction with workers. Moderate-sized farmers and regionally based worker advocacy groups tend to be the most concerned with day-today program operations and fair working conditions. In contrast, national-level advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians are less critical of the program and seek to broadly expand farmer access to guestworkers, justifying proposed program reforms with discourses of national food security and immigration reform. Ultimately, we suggest that engaging a food systems lens to understand these policies provides a more nuanced perspective, addressing national food security and immigration as related issues.

There is limited information about the contribution of peasant migration to household food security in Tanzania because many studies conducted in the country have put less emphasis on this aspect. This study assessed the contribution of peasant migration to household food security using Kidea Village of Kigoma Rural District. Land ownership status; types of crops grown; food availability and access; post-harvest food management practices; the amount of food harvested and length of time it lasted were used as determinants of food security. Household questionnaire, focus group discussion, physical observation and key informant interviews were used in data collection. The findings show that all respondents had security of land tenure. This enabled more food production. Investment in multiple cropping helped to accommodate risks and uncertainties from unforeseen poor climatic conditions. The reported post-harvest food management practices including food donations and brewing did not contribute to food insecurity since their frequencies and amounts were occasional and small, respectively. A high proportion of respondents reporting adequate and affordable food in the village market imply that exchange between food-surplus and fooddeficit households was made possible. In addition, majority of respondents reporting better production of crops at destination than in their places of origin and which lasted to the next harvest imply that households were food secure. However, it was noted that migration to Kidea is more of subsistence than long term investment in economic development.

is a family physician and epidemiologist whose work focuses on the impacts of racism on the health and wellbeing of the nation. As a methodologist, she has developed new methods for comparing full distributions of data (rather than means or proportions) in order to investigate population-level risk factors and propose population-level interventions. As a social epidemiologist, her work on "race"-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on "race" and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss. She hopes through her work to initiate a national conversation on racism that will eventually lead to a National Campaign Against Racism.

This article reports on a metamorphosis. As a participant in a Marie Curie project called ‘Trans-Making’, the author spent three weeks in Istanbul to see which of three abstract ideas he had considered in advance might match, challenge or subvert existing depictions of one of the most complex metropolitan cities in the world. In clarifying his project proposal, he not only had to face his own private orientalism, but also found that, to come to a basic understanding of the unique metropolis that is Istanbul, he had to observe the anxious present political and cultural changes in everyday life through the longue durée historical lens.