Farmworkers face serious occupational risks that the pandemic has only exacerbated, and better policies are needed to protect them from exposure to heat, chemicals, and Covid-19, say two new related reports on social and health conditions in the sector.
As the pandemic enters its second year, farmworkers and the food system are vulnerable to further disruption, said Sarah Goldman, a senior research program coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) and lead author on the report, “Essential and in Crisis: A Review of the Public Health Threats Facing Farmworkers in the U.S.”
“Any future shocks to the U.S. food system could leave farmworkers further exposed to public health risks because of the social conditions [they face] and the history of immigration policies,” Goldman said.
Those social conditions include racial and language discrimination, subpar and crowded housing, isolation from family members, low pay, and lack of healthcare access. Half of farmworkers are undocumented, and the H-2A program that brings some farm laborers to the country legally limits their ability to pursue better work by requiring them to stay with one employer for the duration of their visa.
A patchwork of state and federal laws and agencies address some of the long-standing occupational risks faced by farmworkers, like heat-related illness and pesticide exposure. Some states ban specific pesticides, regulate pesticide application and related illness, and have standards to prevent dangerous heat exposure.
But “it’s all only as good as pulling through and actually doing the implementation,” said Laurie Beyranevand, a law professor and director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School and lead author on the other report, “Essentially Unprotected: A Focus on Farmworker Health Law and Policies Addressing Pesticide Exposure and Heat-Related Illness.”
“You’re relying on local or regional inspectors in a lot of these states,” Beyranevand said. “If there’s any ambiguity that leaves something open to interpretation, you’re giving flexibility to the inspectors, who are on the ground enforcing, to determine whether or not a violation has occurred. … There’s a lot at stake here depending on how the laws or regulations are being interpreted.”
Even when regulations are enforced, punishments for employers aren’t always a meaningful deterrent. “In a lot of instances, the penalties aren’t necessarily enough for people to feel afraid of a violation,” she said.
The pandemic has introduced another occupational hazard for farmworkers. FERN has tracked more than 13,000 cases of Covid-19 among farmworkers and 43 deaths since last March. More than 400 farms and production facilities have had outbreaks of Covid-19. Very few states, including many with large year-round and seasonal farmworker populations, are regularly releasing data on Covid-19 cases or deaths among agricultural workers.
Some farmworkers also face an increasingly hazardous commute to U.S. farm fields from Mexico, according to a recent FERN story. “The line for the port of entry is effectively a mass gathering of essential workers with zero enforcement of local health guidelines,” writes Esther Honig. “Mask use is spotty; people crowd together to prevent anyone from cutting in front of them; and no one is taking anyone’s temperature.”
The two reports argue that the exclusion of undocumented people from pandemic stimulus programs and the lack of an enforceable workplace safety standard for Covid-19 has put farmworkers at even graver risk as the pandemic stretches into its second year.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impacts on this essential community are an urgent call to take action to treat farmworkers with the respect and dignity they deserve,” says the CLF report.
The Biden administration has an opportunity to address some of these risks, said Vermont Law School’s Beyranevand.
“I would hope that we’re in a moment in time, especially with President Biden’s climate agenda, that thinking about climate change and agriculture and impacts on this population would be a priority for the administration,” she said.
Elected officials should turn to farmworker advocacy groups for solutions, said CLF’s Goldman. Some farmworker organizations, like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Migrant Justice, have supplemented existing regulations with market-based programs to secure better conditions and pay for farmworkers.
“The average farmworker has worked 16 years in the industry,” Goldman said. “They’re highly skilled professionals that have a lot of the solutions to these issues from their work on the ground.”