Farmworker

Farmworkers in the United States have unique demographics, wages, working conditions, organizing, and environmental aspects.

According to The National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health in Agricultural Safety, approximately 2,112,626 full-time workers were employed in production agriculture in the US in 2019 and approximately 1.4 to 2.1 million hired crop workers are employed annually on crop farms in the US.

[12] Analysis published in 2000 indicated that "Of the 5,000 workers employed by the over 100 licensed Farm Labour Contractors in British Columbia, two-thirds were recent immigrants who entered Canada less than 3 years ago.

[15] Prior to social changes in the 1960s, the all-important Cuban sugar-the growing economy had an integrated rural-urban workforce — each season, town-dwellers helped to bring in the harvest.

There is much use of seasonal and migrant agricultural labor in northwestern Mexico, because of the considerable fruit and vegetable production occurring in that region.

Rough estimates of peak seasonal labor requirements for Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California Norte and Sur are 400,000 to 600,000.

[12] Several issues, particularly low pay, and harsh working conditions have been identified that pertain to some farmworkers in Mexico.

[19][20] Over the past quarter-century, water quality and pesticide issues affecting farmworkers in Mexico have been identified in peer-reviewed literature.

A study of the implications found that important outcomes were diarrheal disease and parasitic infections in farmworkers and their families.

Additionally, farms may offer apprenticeship or internship opportunities where labor is traded for the knowledge and experience gained from a particular type of production.

In the United States, formal, or registered, apprenticeships offer competitive wages as well as classroom education in addition to on-the-job training, and are governed by state regulations that ensure minimum standards for wages, education, and training programs are met, in contrast with many informal farm internships which may only offer room and board as compensation and may not primarily benefit the intern.