Migrant workers in agriculture

This chapter examines the employment of hired workers in agriculture in the US and other high-income countries. Agriculture employs a quarter of the world’s 3.3 billion workers, and almost half of the 825 million people employed in global agriculture are wage workers. As incomes rise, employment in agriculture shrinks, the production of farm commodities becomes concentrated on fewer and larger farms, and the share of farm work done by hired or wage workers increases. Many hired farm workers are migrants, moving from poorer to richer places within countries and from poorer to richer countries to fill seasonal farm jobs. Most countries made exceptions to otherwise closed borders during the covid pandemic to admit foreign farm workers. This chapter emphasises the growing role of international migrants who move from poorer to richer countries to fill especially seasonal jobs on farms.