Foreign workers continue the cycle in agriculture

You see them in the fields of commercial market garden operations, greenhouses, food processing operations, meat-packing plants, some feedlots and other intensive agricultural operations.

They are foreign agricultural workers and they have a long history in Canada. In some parts of the country, these folks have been around for more than 100 years, and interestingly they aren’t always foreign.

There’s something of a cycle as different ethnic groups go through the farm-worker process as they assimilate into the Canadian economy.

Most countries that have agricultural production that require intensive labour tend to have foreign workers as part of the production process. The reasons for outside or foreign labour are always the same: wages are lower; local, domestic labour is unwilling to do difficult and tedious work; and local labour is unreliable.

On the whole, foreign ag workers fill a key need and tend to be the opposite of local labour. They are willing to work hard for lower wages and are reliable.

Of course, it’s not always what it seems. Foreign workers accept lower wages because they are generally higher than what they could make at home. They work harder because they are somewhat beholden to the employer — if they don’t work, they can be sent home.

They are also more reliable because they are isolated from the general community by language or culture, and therefore work because they have no other recourse. Besides, many live on ag operations, so they are available at all times. It does put foreign workers at a disadvantage, but it works for them as long as they have a personal goal in mind. They do have choices.

Working conditions have evolved over time, reflecting what is acceptable by society. Compared to 100 years ago, farm workers today are pretty well-off, but they might not seem that way compared to workers in other sectors. Certainly, those in processing and meat-packing are different, being they are subject to WCB, OHS, labour regulations and union agreements.

Those on farming operations in Alberta don’t always get the same protections. Foreign workers have something of an advantage over local labour on farming operations as their employment is governed by federal immigration regulations that set out minimum standards and employer responsibilities.

For some ethnic groups, farm work was a steppingstone to a better life.

For some of them, in time, the workers acquired land and they in turn became employers who hired other ethnic groups to work for them. This was the case with the Japanese who were interned in southern Alberta during the Second World War and worked as farm labour.

A few generations later, the descendants of some of those workers now own large scale commercial farming and ranching operations and are an integral part of the community. The same for those of Dutch descent, many immigrated from the Netherlands after the war, worked as farm labourers, became farm operators and expanded into large scale intensive agriculture, particularly in the feedlot and dairy business in Alberta.

The ethnic labour cycle continued, during the 1960s to 1990s, Vietnamese and south Asian people worked the fields and greenhouses.

Today, people from central America and the Philippines have become the dominant groups in the farm labour sector. It’s in the meat-packing sector that the greatest ethnic diversity has occurred. Some plants have dozens of ethnic groups working in them — which creates its own tensions, as employers have found out.

What has changed for farm labour is the continuous advancement in mechanization. The days of weeding sugar beets by hand are long gone, for instance, and commercial vegetable production is pretty well all done by machinery with minimal people involvement.

Only in greenhouse production is there a continuing need for extensive hand labour. However, with an ever-increasing population, food production will need to be expanded and even with technology, people will be needed.

I expect foreign farm workers will always be with us, unless employers are able to compete with the wages of the rest of the economy. There always seems to be people who are economically disadvantaged and are willing to work hard to improve their lives.

There is a philosophical discussion in that human reality from different perspectives, of course, and that also is 100 years old.