Agribusiness

Overview

"Agribusiness" is a term used to describe the agricultural power structure in the U.S. which produces food with the goal of maximizing profits and keeping wages low. Historically, agribusiness sought to engineer an efficient yet disposable work force that could, for example, harvest an entire orchard of cherries in one day and disappear from the farm the next. This strategy for maximizing profits requires a regular pool of temporary workers who can be relied upon to perform critical labor with minimal cost and no commitment. While these workers are often classified as temporary, the practice of relying on immigrant and migrant labor has always been essential for agricultural production in the United States.

The work of harvesting crops is unstable. Farm work cycles through periods of overemployment and underemployment, and farm workers are not guaranteed job security or offered unemployment insurance. The photographs below show migrant laborers traveling to the Farm Placement Service, an agency run by the California Department of Employment, and a sign at a farm showing hiring has closed for the day. Moving multiple times each year to follow crops and find work destabilized farm workers and their families, who could not rely on access to steady work, housing, education, healthcare, or social ties.

Questions

  • What role do farm workers play in our economy and food system?
  • In what ways have the conditions of farm workers changed?  In what ways have they stayed the same?

 

Photograph showing a group of people standing in line inside the State of California Department of Employment Farm Labor Information office.

 

Photograph of two wooden crates stacked on the side of a road. One crate is soliciting farm workers for a job and the next crate says "filled up sorry."

Group of People Standing in Front of State of California Department of Employment Farm Labor Information Office in Stockton, California, Links to an external site. Henry Pope Anderson Papers, larc.ms.0422, Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University.

Stacked Wooden Crates Reading "Pickers Wanted" and "Filled Up Sorry" Links to an external site., Henry Pope Anderson Papers, larc.ms.0422, Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University.