Search

This paper examines the effects of changes in housing demand on H‐2A employment within commuting zones from 2001 to 2017. Agricultural employers who demonstrate that no workers in the domestic labor market are willing or able to perform a seasonal or temporary farm job can apply for certification to hire guest workers through the H‐2A visa program. H‐2A employment grew more than 450% between 2001 and 2019 from 45,000 to 258,000. This is one of the first papers to econometrically examine causal factors that contributed to the growth of H‐2A employment. We find that a 1% increase in housing demand leads to a 0.40%–0.97% increase in H‐2A employment. We also show suggestive evidence that changes in housing demand affect H‐2A employment through shifts in the demand for workers in nonfarm industries that pull workers from the agricultural sector. Consistent with previous literature, we show that positive housing demand shocks lead to increased employment in construction and other nontradable sectors that traditionally hire immigrant workers. We also find positive effects of housing demand on local farm wages, consistent with an inward shift in the local farm labor supply during housing booms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020 caused unprecedented shocks to agricultural food systems, including increased risk to worker health, labor‐related input costs, and production uncertainty. Despite employer precautions, there were numerous worksite outbreaks of COVID‐19. This paper examines the relationship between month‐to‐month variation in historical agricultural employment and changes in the incidence of confirmed COVID‐19 cases and deaths within U.S. counties from April to August 2020. The results show that employment of 100 additional workers in fruit, vegetable, and horticultural production was associated with 4.5% more COVID‐19 cases within counties or an additional 18.65 COVID‐19 cases and 0.34 additional COVID‐19 deaths per 100,000 individuals in the county workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outdoor agricultural workers often work in harsh environmental conditions, including high temperatures and poor air quality. This paper studies how these factors impact worker productivity, which can have implications for worker health, well‐being, and income as well as farm payroll, production, and profitability. Our analysis uses 6 years of payroll records of harvesters on two large farms combined with pollution and weather monitor data from multiple sources. We address simultaneity issues by exploring pollution measurements from nearby upwind and downwind monitors and incorporating an alternative PM2.5 measure that better captures ambient or regional concentration. Across all specifications, results suggest that heightened concentrations of ground‐level ozone and PM2.5 are associated with reduced productivity. In our main specification, we find that one standard deviation increases in ozone and PM2.5 are associated with reductions in productivity of 2% and 1.1%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legacies of Chile's democratic crisis pose challenges for workplace gender equity. This paper brings together scholarly debates on gender regimes and factory regimes to examine the gendered labor practices in a high‐tech, transnational agricultural sector. Specifically, I ask how gender regimes and regulatory practices entrenched in Chile's authoritarian past shape labor dynamics in this industry today. I argue that we must look to the past to understand how firms benefit from unequal social relations embedded in institutions and for identifying mechanisms of change. I document how the neoliberal and authoritarian policies of the democratic crisis in Chile (1973–90) became the baseline conditions in democracy, leaving stark gender and labor inequalities that persist today. The resulting neoliberal pact continues to privilege elites and marginalize the working poor, especially women, contributing to the slow‐brewing inequality crisis that came to a head in 2019. Based on ethnographic observation and semi‐structured interviews in Arica, Chile, a major hub for corn seed development, I show how these legacies enable firms to benefit from Chile's unequal gender relations to develop high‐value products without paying the price associated with the skill needed to produce them. I find that conservative gender norms together with labor relations inherent in Chile's neoliberal model, rooted in a 17‐year dictatorship, create obstacles to efforts to address gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community health workers are responsible for finding, processing, and transferring health information to communities with limited access to health‐related resources, including farmworkers. This paper is the culmination of an undergraduate student research project to explore the learning processes and preferences of farmworker‐serving community health workers in the USA. The project was designed for students from farmworker or agricultural backgrounds at two North Carolina universities and was supported by a North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services workforce development grant. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted, in person and virtually, with a convenience sample of 17 current and former community health workers. The interview data were analysed thematically and identified a preference for a combination of learning styles, with visual and hands‐on learning being the most preferred. Community health workers also identified the importance of learning preferences in relation to their responsibilities as health educators. This study provides librarians, along with public health and medical professionals, with useful information about learning preferences to inform the creation of new and varied learning materials for community health workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial inclusion has received widespread attention from policymakers and researchers in recent years and is viewed in most macroeconomic studies as an engine of economic growth. By contrast, analyses at the micro‐level have largely focused on microcredit rather than microfinance and reached more ambiguous conclusions. In particular, the literature concurs on the modesty of the impact of such programmes on poverty, if any. In this paper, we examine the effect of access to microfinance rather than microcredit only, as other financial services, such as savings for instance, can be put to the same use as credit by loosening constraints on investment or helping poor households to withstand shocks. Using nationally representative micro‐data from Pakistan, we provide evidence that having geographical access to a microfinance institution raises the likelihood for an individual to move from a low‐earning occupation such as being a salaried employee, farm worker or even a housewife to a more profitable entrepreneurship status. The effect is stronger in poorer regions, even after accounting for the nonrandom opening of financial branches. We conclude that financial inclusion should be further regarded as an effective ally in the fight against poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on long‐term ethnographic fieldwork with Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) workers in south‐east Australia, I reflect in this paper on the experience of interminable temporariness and on its implications for the structural conditions underpinning contemporary horticultural labour in Australia. Although in many ways reflective of the specificities of a unique historical moment, the interminable temporariness experienced through the COVID‐19 pandemic also speaks to broader, enduring conditions produced within contemporary Australian agriculture. Here, the restructuring of the agri‐industry produces for many what Lauren Berlant describes as the "impasse" or "crisis ordinariness" of life under neoliberalism. At the same time, logics of development—including racialized imaginaries and border regimes—articulate with agricultural guest worker schemes in ways that seek to fix whole populations and regions in relations of suspended hope. In this context, I argue, the pandemic exposed and intensified structural vulnerabilities and unequal distributions of risk, which are encoded in the political economy of farm work in Australia, while also cleaving open new, if tentative, possibilities for agency and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As farmworkers were reframed as "essential" workers during the COVID‐19 pandemic, US growers demanded unfettered access to foreign farm labor. After initially announcing a freeze on all immigration processing, the Trump administration bowed to farmers' demands, granting a single exception for agricultural guestworkers under the H‐2A visa program. Through a focus on H‐2A farmworkers in Georgia, this paper highlights how the pandemic exacerbated farm labor conditions in the US South. The author interrogates these conditions through the lens of racial capitalism, exposing the legacies of plantation political economies and a longstanding agricultural labor system premised on devaluing racialized labor. These histories are obscured by the myth of agricultural exceptionalism—the idea that agriculture is too different and important to be subject to the same rules and regulations as other industries. Agricultural exceptionalism naturalizes the racial capitalist system and informs state responses that privilege agricultural production through the exploitation of farmworkers, remaking "essential" farmworkers as sacrificial labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Farmers face a range of factors that negatively influence their mental health and suicide risk, yet have limited access to appropriate support. Behavioural activation (BA) is an evidence‐based therapy that can be effectively delivered by nonclinical workers. Working with members of farming communities to deliver BA to their peers has the potential to overcome many well‐established barriers to mental health help‐seeking and improve outcomes for this at‐risk group. Objective: This paper describes the findings of a co‐design phase informing the development of a peer (farmer)‐led approach for delivering BA for farmers living with depression or low mood. Design: This qualitative study used a co‐design approach involving members of the target community. Focus groups were transcribed and analysed using Thematic Analysis and the Framework approach. Findings: Ten online focus groups with 22 participants were held over 3 months. Four overarching, interlinked themes were identified: (i) filling the gap in rural mental health support; (ii) alignment with the farming context—tailoring how, where and when we engage about mental health; (iii) the 'messenger' is as important as the message; and (iv) sustainability, governance and support. Discussion: Findings suggest BA could be a contextually appropriate model of support for the farming community—given its practical and solution‐focused approach—and could help improve access to support. Having peer workers deliver the intervention was viewed as appropriate. Ensuring governance structures are developed to support peers to deliver the intervention will be essential to facilitate effectiveness, safety and sustainability. Conclusion: Insights gained through co‐design have been critical to the success of developing this new model of support for members of farming communities experiencing depression or low mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative design (co‐design) is a design strategy for generating relevant and socially acceptable technologies, and is inherently political by nature of its inclusion of particular groups and interests. This paper explores how to ethically and responsibly prepare for, notice and overcome barriers to including agricultural workers in the co‐design of new agricultural technologies. Drawing from feminist science and technology studies (STS), we offer response‐able mattering as an analytic tool to explore how the COVID‐19 pandemic caused and illuminated existing barriers to inclusion within an Aotearoa New Zealand‐based co‐design project. We argue that addressing barriers to inclusion requires prioritizing relationships and relationship building in technology design projects. This prioritization must account for a multiplicity of relationship building tempos (e.g., the time/pace necessary to ethically establish and maintain research relationships), temporal tensions (e.g., the pace of technology development versus the ability to meaningfully include collaborators), and un/intended relational cuts (e.g., boundaries or barriers affecting relationship building). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pacific Island workers contribute significantly to Australiaʼs agriculture and food security through the Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP). Previous studies show the economic benefits of the SWP to both Australian agro‐industries and Pacific workers. However, there are limited studies about the agricultural knowledge exchange that occurs via the circular migration enabled by the SWP, and the experiences of workers and employers as agricultural knowledge holders. With the SWP merged into the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme, there is an opportunity to help define how circular migration is both an economic and agricultural development policy. In this paper, we present findings from interviews with 63 workers (from Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu) about agricultural knowledge and skills acquired and exchanged via SWP participation. We provide a discussion of opportunities for knowledge exchange in international labour mobility, and areas of future research in circular migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first to provide estimates of how minimum wages affect worker flows and employment growth rates in an employment scarce developing country context. We investigate the effects of a large, exogenous increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa. We find that changes occurred primarily among non‐seasonal workers. Non‐seasonal agricultural employment growth decreased in the initial periods after the minimum wage hike. This was mainly driven by slower rates of entry. The effect on the rate of entry decreases over time. While farms also responded by shedding non‐seasonal workers at higher rates, this negative effect was limited to 1 year directly after the minimum wage hike. Employment growth recovers 4 years after the policy shock, indicating that firms adjusted relatively quickly despite the large legislated minimum wage increase. Seasonal employment growth and rates of entry and exit of seasonal workers were for the most part unaffected. Descriptive statistics, however, suggest a slight compositional change among seasonal workers: Farms replaced the worst paid seasonal workers with other low‐income workers who were slightly better paid and presumably more productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence on the labor‐market effect of immigration focuses on permanent migrants, though a large share of international labor mobility is temporary and seasonal. This paper estimates the marginal native employment effect of policy restrictions on foreign seasonal farm workers in the United States. It exploits two natural experiments: a legal requirement to give hiring preference to natives, and an exogenous change in natives' next‐best employment options during the Great Recession of 2007–2008. The local elasticity of natives' occupational labor supply is 0.0015, implying a minimal marginal effect of seasonal work visa restrictions on native employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an outline of a new interdisciplinary project called FixOurFood, funded through UKRI's 'Transforming UK food systems' programme. FixOurFood aims to transform the Yorkshire food system to a regenerative food system and will work to answer two main questions: (1) What do regenerative food systems look like? (2) How can transformations be enabled so that we can achieve a regenerative food system? To answer these questions, FixOurFood will work with diverse stakeholders to change the Yorkshire food system and use the learning to inform change efforts in other parts of the UK and beyond. Our work will focus on shifting trajectories towards regenerative dynamics in three inter‐related systems of: healthy eating for young children, hybrid food economies and regenerative farming. We do this by a set of action‐orientated interventions in schools and the food economy, metrics, policies and deliverables that can be applied in Yorkshire and across the UK. This article introduces the FixOurFood project and concludes by assessing the potential impact of these interventions and the importance we attach to working with stakeholders in government, business, third sector and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As with many academic fields in the United States, white male faculty have historically been the norm in the agricultural and applied economics profession, but demographics in the field have started to shift over the past several decades. This paper presents descriptive evidence of the current and historical status of underrepresented and historically underserved groups in our profession, including white women and racial and ethnic minorities of all genders. It also provides a snapshot of perceptions of departmental climate, data on incidents of harassment and discrimination in our profession, motivations for switching academic institutions, and finally, data on strategies for retaining faculty from diverse groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant farmworkers are a ubiquitous but invisibilised, expropriated and exploited component of the global agricultural economy. Their conditions took centre‐stage during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Fear of production disruption in the migrant labour‐intensive sectors led to foreign workers being deemed 'essential' in many countries, and exceptional procedures and regulations were instituted that further increased their exploitation, illnesses and deaths. However, the pandemic has not merely exposed the long‐established structures of racialised exploitation and expropriation in the domain of farm work. Although it exacerbated the precariousness of the living and working conditions defining the reality of migrant farm workers, there is evidence that the pandemic also strengthened farmworkers' individual and collective consciousness, along with forms of organisation and resistance. The symposium 'Migrant Farmworkers: Resisting and Organizing before, during and after COVID‐19' explores two dimensions reflected in migrant farmworkers' realities during the pandemic. First, the contributions look at the general conditions defining power structures and material outcomes within the political economy of agriculture before and during the pandemic. Second, they explore the conditions under which resistance and solidarity emerged to question established structures of exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After nearly two and a half decades with a Land Law widely considered progressive, Mozambique is preparing to revise its legal framework for land. Land activists accuse the government of pursuing an authoritarian approach, excluding civil society participation, and falsifying public consultations. The revision would mark a major shift in Mozambique's land policy towards an even more neoliberal framework to allow the transfer of individual land titles. This turning point is a crucial moment for popular movements to mobilize against the consolidation of agrarian neoliberalism and fight for pro‐poor land policy that benefits small‐scale food producers and rural communities at large. While recognizing different rural and agrarian class formations and interests in Mozambique, I argue that embryonic forms of a cross‐class alliance are becoming apparent. As deagrarianization proceeds, the National Union of Peasants (UNAC) plays a key role in mobilizing the rural poor — petty commodity producers, farm workers, fishermen, small agrarian capitalists, and agrarian civil society at large — using left‐wing populism to oppose agrarian neoliberalism, which takes authoritarian forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has become a key issue for agricultural systems. In this context, sustainability assessment implies considering different aspects of agricultural activities, including environmental, economic and social issues, and it is usually based on practice‐based indicators. However, proposed methods and applications are still rare due to the difficulty to build a strong general framework and to find appropriate data. The present work develops a performance indicator framework using farm accounting data from the Italian Agricultural Accounting Information Network and proposes a multi‐criteria approach based on the multiple reference point weak‐strong composite indicators (MRP‐WSCI) method to assess the degree of sustainability at the farm level. This method, widely applied to sustainability assessment, calculates the relative rankings including the weak and strong approaches to sustainability and facilitates an understanding of the different indices used, but it is still unused in the agricultural sector. The proposed evaluation framework shows that MRP‐WSCI can handle a holistic set of indicators and rank the farms according to their level of sustainability, making it suitable for the agricultural farm sustainability assessment. Our results show that none of the farms in the case study sample can be classified as "good," according to some of the indices produced, that is, the strong–strong and strong–weak index, while just two of them are good for the weak–weak index. Although the size of the sample used is small, the methodological approach proposed can be straightforwardly extended to larger samples. This methodology can provide information regarding the sustainability of farms to regional and/or national agricultural offices, agricultural extension workers, and farmers themselves, helping in understanding issues in specific dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of E‐Verify adoption on the total number of farm workers, total acres of operated farmland, and farm wages. This article finds that states with a high E‐Verify enforcement level experiences a decrease in the total number of farm workers and the total acres of operated farmland, suggesting that farms reduced their production scales after E‐Verify. However, this study finds no E‐Verify impact on farm weekly wages. This result could be a result of crop mix shift. States that adopt more stringent immigration policies should prepare the farm sector for a variety of negative shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore the influences of rurality on small business owner mental well‐being and approaches to managing stress and mental well‐being. Design: Semistructured interviews with small businesspeople. Concepts of salutogenesis and pathogenesis were used to interpret rurality influences on business and mental well‐being. A stress‐coping framework was used to categorise approaches to managing mental well‐being. Setting: Central Western New South Wales. Participants: Eleven female and male rural small businesspeople across sectors, including farming, allied health, beauty care and retail businesses. Main Outcome Measures: Interviewee descriptions of experiences of small business and rurality and approaches to managing mental well‐being. Findings: Rurality influenced mental well‐being in four main ways: Business integration with community and owner identity; Visibility and being known; Different financial pressures; and Options for specialised support and casual relief. Rurality can be salutogenic and pathogenic, depending on circumstances, and pressures arising from rurality may differ for 'locals' and recent arrivals. High visibility in a small community can lead to a satisfying sense of belonging and connection. It can also create unwanted feelings of obligation and being watched. Most commonly the interviewees used emotional supports or distraction to adapt to stressors. This may be due to limited options to change or disengage from stressors in rural contexts. Conclusion: Rurality brings its own benefits and challenges to small businesspeople's mental well‐being. Given the immense contributions of small business to rural society and economies, investments in understanding and supporting the mental well‐being of rural small businesspeople should be a high priority for communities and all levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides econometric estimates of the effects of reductions in farm labor supply on the production of hand‐harvested fruits and vegetables. Using crop production and employment data from California counties, we estimate panel regressions linking farm employment to crop production outcomes. Because we exploit variation in equilibrium employment, as opposed to exogenous variation in the labor supply curve, we use an equilibrium displacement model to identify the most likely sources of estimation bias and conclude that our regression estimates should be interpreted as upper bounds for the effect of interest. Our results indicate that a 10% decrease in the farm labor supply (in terms of the number of workers) causes at most a 4.2% reduction in production in the top 10 fruit and vegetable producing counties. Production effects are channeled primarily through a reduction in harvested acreage, although we also uncover some effects on yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Exposure of agricultural workers in rice paddies to the insecticide chlorantraniliprole and its subsequent potential health risks were investigated during two scenarios (mixing/loading and hand-held spraying). The exposure factors, such as the outer dosimeter, inner dosimeter, gauze, and nitrile gloves, were calculated using whole-body dosimetry to measure dermal exposure. The inhalation exposure was determined using a fiberglass filter which is set with an Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) sampler. A recovery test was performed to evaluate the accuracy of the analytical method. RESULTS: The exposure amounts of various matrices were calculated from extraction volume and concentration of the target compound. The dermal exposure to chlorantraniliprole was 0.6 mg [0.001% of the total active ingredient (a.i.)] for mixing and loading, and 28.6 mg (0.066% of the total a.i.) for application. The inhalation exposure to chlorantraniliprole was 7.2 μg (1.3%, 1.2 × 10−5% of the total applied a.i.) for mixing and loading, and 1.9 μg (0.006%, 4.4 × 10−6% of the total applied a.i.) for application. The most exposed part of the body was the hand (90.4%) during mixing and loading, whereas the primary sites during application were the thighs (32.8%) and shins (22.6%). For mixing and loading, the amount of actual dermal exposure was 5.5 μg day−1 and that of actual inhalation exposure was 21.9 μg day−1. By contrast, in the application, the amounts of actual dermal and actual inhalation exposures were 34 178.7 and 5.9 μg day−1, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The risk assessment results demonstrated that the risk of chlorantraniliprole exposure in rice paddies was low during application than during mixing and loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological change in production processes with gendered division of labor across tasks, such as agriculture, can have a differential impact on women's and men's labor. Using exogenous variation in the extent of loamy soil, which is more amenable to deep tillage than clayey soil and therefore more likely to see adoption of tractor‐driven equipment for primary tilling, we show that mechanization led to significantly greater decline in women's than men's labor on Indian farms during 1999–2011. Reduced demand for labor in weeding, a task often undertaken by women, explains our findings. The estimates suggest that a 10% increase in mechanized tilling led to a 5% fall in women's farm labor use, with no accompanying increase in their non‐farm sector employment. Our results highlight the gendered impact of technological change in contexts where there is task based gender division of labor with limited opportunities for women to diversify their workforce participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensified livestock production is considered as a promising pathway for smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, this pathway may entail prohibitive investment requirements of labour, capital or trade‐offs at farm level that preclude sustainable intensification. We used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to assess farmers' perceptions of changes in the farm household system resulting from adding livestock to their mixed farms. Farmers identified trade‐offs between the increased income and farmyard manure production versus increases in labour requirements for fodder imports. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis performed on the FCMs showed that an increase in milk market demand could have strong positive effects on livestock production and income. We conclude that FCM is a good tool to rapidly identify trade‐offs and analyse perceptions of farmers which revealed that although they consider intensification a promising strategy, the perceived deepening of labour constraints and increasing dependency on fodder import makes a concurrent (sustainable) intensification of these farm systems unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three forms of agrarian populism in Thailand: the "grassroots populism" of the Assembly of the Poor, the "reactionary populism" of the yellow shirts, and the "capitalist populism" of the red shirts. We examine how these three strands of populism are embedded within dynamics of agrarian change in Thailand and how the intellectual and activist orientation towards agrarian populism led to the neglect of labour, particularly agricultural migrant workers. We show how key ideological underpinnings of the Assembly's grassroots populism (Brass's "agrarian myth") could be appropriated for the agrarian component of both reactionary and capitalist populism. Rather than a new populism, we argue that a broad and popular challenge to right‐wing authoritarianism should develop inclusive class politics that embrace the rural–urban linkages that already define the social fabric of the new, rural, and agrarian precarious working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Investigating how co‐designed knowledge can be translated to co‐produce a public health capacity‐building solution for difficult‐to‐engage population groups drawing on the co‐production experience of a prevention‐focused, capacity‐building mental health solution targeting primary producers. Design: A qualitative study undertaken in rural and regional Victoria involving members of the design working group including project team (7px), digital design team (5px), marketing team (3px), and funding partner representatives. The study design involved reflective practice to collect data to identify the phases of co‐production and assess the design working group members' experiences. The analysis involved inductive coding using Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis. Objective: Identifying major points of divergence and/or convergence; enablers and/or constraints; and ways to better navigate and strengthen the co‐production process. Finding: Given members of the design working group, diverse skills sets divergence was experienced in all co‐production phases. Divergence was also experienced between the project team and the funding partner given the uniqueness of working conditions and requirements of workers in the primary production industry. The project team applied an iterative development process to project management; encouraging iterative cycles to create/test/revise among the teams, and with the funding partner, until each was satisfied with the end result (convergence). Discussion & Conclusion: When developing a co‐created public health prevention campaign it is critical that the project team focuses on relationship building among the members of the design working group and ensures adequate resourcing, development of shared understanding of project goals and target audience, ongoing communication, and a commitment to working iteratively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore participant experiences of an online co‐design process to develop a web‐based preventative mental health and well‐being intervention targeting primary producers in rural Australia. Setting: Rural Victoria, Australia. Participants: Participants from a primary producer background, including horticulture, fisheries, animal cultivation and farm consultancy, were eligible for the study if they had participated in both the co‐design and beta testing processes for a primary producer platform. Design: A qualitative study using semi‐structured phone‐based interviews was undertaken. A reflexive inductive approach to data analysis was employed to develop themes. Results: Eleven participants were interviewed, with an average age of 51 years, of which 7 were female. Five main themes were developed. These included: (1) participant diversity, (2) impact of online delivery on co‐design participation, (3) experiences of the co‐design process, (4) maintaining a shared vision and goals and (5) acting on the co‐design recommendations. Use of online methods was a clear enabler to engage participants who were geographically dispersed and offers an alternative to more conventional approaches to co‐design using face‐to‐face methods. Some aspects of participant engagement may need a greater focus when conducted online compared with face‐to‐face. Conclusions: Using an online co‐design method to develop a preventative mental health and well‐being web‐based platform for primary producers was novel. Findings address a gap in the literature around the experience of participants engaging in a co‐design process and identify opportunities to improve participant engagement and experience with the online format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a critical reflexive process (An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 1992; Theory, Culture & Society, 13, 1996, 17), this article identifies and examines issues of power, complicity and knowledge production as they emerged in the first author's master's research on migrant women farmers' economic and reproductive health experiences in the middle belt of Ghana. We examine the ambivalent positionality of the international graduate student researcher as "other of the other" (Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30, 2005, 2017, p. 2025), and how diverse fields of power, including the researcher's educational institution and cultural norms regarding gender relations, mediated interactions among various actors in the research process. Specifically, we examine how the student researcher was complicit in reinforcing patriarchal standards, perpetuating western saviourism and committing symbolic violence. Situating these reflexive findings in relation to insights from feminist postcolonial theories, we highlight how power relations, gender and social class informed these ambivalent complicities. Rather than erase/silence these tensions in the research process, we argue that such ambivalences may be an inevitable dimension of transnational knowledge creation, and thus, it is imperative that researchers consider how their ambivalent positionalities and complicities may be navigated and leveraged most productively and with the least harm to research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use nationally representative data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey to assess gender‐based differences in wages and benefits of hired farmworkers. Decomposition and matching results indicate that, compared to men, women make 5% to 6% less in hourly wages and are less likely to receive a bonus or have health insurance paid by their employer. These gender gaps are partly explained by differences between female and male farmworkers in farming experience, hours worked, farm tasks, and crops cultivated. Sizable proportions of the gender gaps are unexplained and the result of discrimination, unmeasured differences between women and men, or both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlamydia psittaci is a recognised cause of late‐term equine foetal loss and poses a zoonotic risk in Australia. However, a management strategy is lacking to protect at‐risk humans handling infected aborted material and pregnant mares. This study proposes a protocol for approaching C. psittaci foetal loss after investigating four foetal losses that occurred on a horse stud in the Hunter Valley, Australia in 2021. Swabs from the foetal loss cases (n = 4), close contact mares (n = 59), and foals of the close contact mares (n = 33) were collected and tested for C. psittaci using both isothermal points of care and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) laboratory‐based testing. Genotyping was performed utilising C. psittaci multilocus sequence typing and ompA sequencing from C. psittaci positive pooled foetal and placental (n = 3) DNA. Foetal and placental samples from the four foetal loss cases were all positive for C. psittaci with 100% agreement between the isothermal swab testing on the farm and qPCR DNA testing at an external laboratory. Genotyping revealed the clonal and identical sequence type 24 (ST24) C. psittaci strains in all samples. C. psittaci was not detected in close contact with mares or their foals. There was no statistically significant difference in foal survival between the close contact mare groups that did and did not receive antimicrobial intervention (P > 0.05). The proposed protocol is intended to raise awareness and begin a discussion for guidelines around handling of chlamydial foetal loss cases in late pregnant mares which pose a zoonotic threat to farm workers and veterinarians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry (AgFF) workers often work extremely long hours during peak production seasons, resulting in sleep deprivation and fatigue. The National Occupational Research Agenda has classified fatigue as a "significant safety issue" and area of concern for many industry sectors, including AgFF. This review explores current research and practice in AgFF and proposes next steps. Methods: We conducted a scoping literature review to examine the extent and nature of research in this area. Article inclusion criteria included peer‐reviewed journal articles written in English; published after 1989; covering AgFF workers in high‐income countries; with data on working hours/schedules and sleep related to safety and health. Results: Limited research has addressed long hours and sleep deprivation among AgFF workers. We identified 8350 articles for title and abstract review. Among those, 407 underwent full‐text review and 96 met all inclusion criteria (67% agriculture, 25% fishing/seafood processing, 8% forestry). The literature provided some evidence fatigue contributes to fatalities, injuries, and illnesses in AgFF. Older, new, young, foreign‐born, and female workers, as well as those who work in small organizations or longer hours (40+) may be at higher risk for fatigue‐related injury and illness. Few studies have developed or evaluated interventions to control risks. Discussion: Given that fatigue is a factor in injury and illness for this sector, future AgFF surveillance and research should increase efforts to capture fatigue and sleep data, directly investigate the role of long hours and nonstandard work schedules in the sector, and most importantly, create practical interventions to manage fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farm transfer is increasingly seen as fundamental to the development of agriculture. One of the major challenges is to assess farm value in the context of an opaque market for farms. We contribute to the scarce literature on farm valuation by empirically applying three valuation methods to the Farm Accountancy Data Network database for France in 2017 and 2018 and for five types of farming. The three methods—the fundamental method, the patrimonial method, and the financial method—are well known for the valuation of companies, but have yet to be implemented widely for farms in the empirical literature. The results show that wine‐growing farms have the highest values on average. Pig and beef farms have high average patrimonial values, reflecting their high capital intensity, but beef farms have the lowest average values calculated with methods based on cash flows, revealing unfavorable market conditions for these farms. The results further reveal that total farm output drives the value upward, but that high farm labor, indebtedness, and age contribute to reducing value. Our findings also highlight that, in practice, the differences in values across methods may be substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Data management is the key to the success of all projects and research. The ability to safely store, manipulate, and decipher data in real time is invaluable. Currently data management standards in public health are non-existent. Since the invention of computers real-time data retrieval and analysis has been possible but underutilized by researchers in the field. Historically, most small research studies and field-based projects have utilized spreadsheets for data management, which often proves problematic as the project grows. However, a viable and superior alternative exists in relational databases, such as REDCap. Relational databases allow for easier concatenation of multiple legacy datasets, facilitate data entry with surveys that incorporate branching logic, and allow for real time data entry in the field without the need for WIFI. Methods: One example of a public health project being transitioned from spreadsheet data management to a relational database is the Farmworker Family Health Program based out of the Lillian Carter Center for Global Health & Social Responsibility at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. The data management transition from spreadsheets to REDCap has provided the team with unique insight into the data that has been collected in the 30 years the program has been running. Conclusion: Through this case study, we identify the need for and recommend that those in public health nursing utilize relational databases when collecting data during research studies or as electronic medical records for field clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows: the primary objective of this review is to synthesise evidence of the effectiveness of interventions to promote climate‐smart agriculture to enhance agricultural outcomes and resilience of women farmers in low‐and‐middle‐income countries (research question 1). The secondary objective is to examine evidence along the causal pathway from access to interventions to promote climate‐smart agriculture to empowering women so that they can use climate‐smart technology. And such outcomes include knowledge sharing, agency improvement, resource access and decision‐making (research question 2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a chronic shortage of agricultural labor in the US. Although growers increasingly turn to guest‐worker programs to meet their labor needs, few regard immigrant workers as a viable long‐term solution. Many producers of labor‐intensive agricultural commodities regard mechanization as a clear long‐term solution, making the slow rate of adoption of mechanized harvesting equipment in the US an empirical puzzle. In this article, we demonstrate that wage‐setting farmers have an incentive to "overmechanize," or employ more than the cost‐minimizing level of capital when capital and labor are substitutes, but "undermechanize" when labor and capital are technical complements. This outcome can cause agricultural labor problems to persist under complementarity. To assess the potential role of farm under investment in labor augmenting capital equipment, we examine labor market outcomes following the adoption of non‐autonomous harvesting aids on a large strawberry farm in Central California. We develop an econometric model of peer‐affected productivity that controls for the group performance of farm workers operating in crews and find that mechanical aids complement labor in strawberry production, a finding that helps explain not only the relative lack of mechanized harvesting in strawberry production but, more generally, the persistent productivity gap in agricultural industries. We examine the broader implications of our theory for the slow rate of adoption of mechanical harvesting technologies in US agriculture by comparing general wage trends across several labor‐intensive and non‐labor‐intensive industries in California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the 2008 Legal Arizona Workers Act on farm wage, production mix, farm capital use, and agricultural innovation using the synthetic control method. The findings indicate that the law significantly reduced farm worker population in Arizona. Farm wage is not affected by the decreased supply of farm labor because farms in Arizona reduced labor‐intensive crop production. The agricultural sector does not increase the use of farm capital and experiences a decrease in profits. Moreover, this study finds no impact on agricultural patents and research funding in Arizona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consistent finding in the development literature is that average non‐farm labor productivity is higher than average farm labor productivity. These differences in average productivity are sometimes used to promote policies which advance the non‐farm sector. In this article, we analyze the importance of two specification choices when comparing productivity gaps, using detailed household panel data from Malawi. Importantly, we are able to calculate both average revenue products (ARPLs)—similar to most of the sectoral productivity gap literature—as well as marginal revenue products (MRPLs). We show that the choice of productivity measure combined with the choice of production function specification can lead to different sectoral productivity rankings. MRPLs from translog production functions suggest the household farm sector is more productive than the household non‐farm sector, while MRPLs from a Cobb‐Douglas and ARPLs from both a translog and a Cobb‐Douglas find the opposite ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration enforcement policies, such as E‐Verify, have a negative effect on the US supply of farm labor. A growing literature finds that agricultural producers in the United States are facing a shrinking labor supply, while only a few studies examine how agricultural producers are adjusting to having less labor. This study examines how a shrinking labor force affects agricultural production decisions, specifically in terms of labor‐intensive and capital‐intensive crops. With less labor it is more challenging for agricultural producers to produce labor‐intensive crops when there is no available technology to substitute for labor. We use E‐Verify enforcement laws as a quasi‐natural negative labor shock and data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey to examine this issue. We find a decline in the production of labor‐intensive crops and an increase in the production of capital‐intensive crops in the states that have enforced "strong" E‐Verify laws. Based on our results, the opposite is true for "weak" E‐Verify states. [EconLit Citations: Q12, Q18, J6, K37]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmworkers in the United States support the billion‐dollar agriculture industry, but they and their work are largely undervalued and ignored. While workplace research has thoroughly examined mistreatment at work, there is little research that delves into non‐traditional workplaces–like those that employ farmworkers. Moreover, a focus on women farmworkers is even rarer, given that farmwork is a field dominated by men. However, an intersectional approach reveals Latina farmworkers' position in the U.S. in terms of the multiple hierarchies of status, power and privilege that affect them. Our study used thematic analysis to examine Latina farmworker experiences. Interviews with 14 Latina farmworkers revealed that they experience an oppressive workplace where discrimination and harassment are present. Despite these indignities, women still name positive aspects of their place of employment and ways in which they maintain their dignity in these challenging work settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Physical and natural environments might strongly influence mental health and well‐being. Many studies have examined this relationship in urban environments, with fewer focused on rural settings. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise quantitative evidence for the relationship between environmental factors (drought, climate and extreme weather events, land use/environmental degradation, green space/vegetation, engagement in natural resource management activities) and mental health or well‐being in rural areas. Design: Following a systematic search of three databases (PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Web of Science), 4368 articles were identified, of which 28 met eligibility criteria for inclusion in the review. Results: Poorer mental health and well‐being was typically found to have an association with extreme climate or weather events and environmental degradation. The observed relationships were largely assessed at area‐wide or community levels. Conclusions: Studies examining the relationship between the environmental condition of land and mental health at an individual level, particularly within farms, are lacking. Addressing this gap in research requires interdisciplinary expertise and diverse methodology. Few studies examined the effects of natural resource management practices/principles or biodiversity on mental health. While there is evidence that extreme climate or weather events have a negative impact on mental health in rural areas, there remain considerable gaps in our knowledge of how rural environments influence mental health and well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: A partir de datos etnográficos de los proyectos SyrianFoodFutures (2019) y From the FIELD (2020), se proporciona evidencia sobre los primeros efectos de la pandemia de COVID‐19 en el trabajo agrícola de refugiadas y refugiados en Iraq, Jordania, el Líbano, Siria y Turquía. En la primavera de 2020, las restricciones de movimientos y las interrupciones de la cadena de suministro hicieron que las y los trabajadores agrícolas sirios desplazados perdieran sus empleos y se enfrentaran a una mayor inseguridad alimentaria. Los autores destacan el uso de la ambigüedad legal por parte de los países de acogida hacia la población refugiada, la dependencia de la agricultura de Oriente Medio de la mano de obra migrante y la prolongada inseguridad alimentaria de la región. Llegan a la conclusión de que la formalización del trabajo de la población refugiada no es suficiente para hacer frente a la explotación. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly 30% of documented agricultural workers, that is, those who are authorized to work in the U.S. and may be eligible for government‐sponsored Medicaid coverage, lacked health insurance coverage in 2016. We estimate the impact of the 2014 state‐level Medicaid expansions that were part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on farm workers' health insurance coverage, health care utilization, and labor supply. Using confidential individual‐level data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) for the decade between 2007 and 2016, we employ a difference‐in‐differences econometric model to compare workers in states that expanded Medicaid in 2014 to workers in states that did not. We find that, following the ACA Medicaid expansions, documented agricultural workers experience a 12‐percentage point (24%) increase in the likelihood of having health insurance, which is entirely driven by an increase in the likelihood of having a government‐sponsored health insurance plan. We do not detect a decrease in private (employer‐sponsored or worker‐acquired) health insurance coverage. Further, we find no evidence that the ACA Medicaid expansions led to a decline in farm workers' labor supply; in fact, our results imply that there was a small increase in farm workers' hours. In a number of falsification tests, we also show that the Medicaid expansions do not appear to have an impact on undocumented (unauthorized) farm workers' health care utilization, and there was no increase in Medicaid payments for health services among this group of farm workers who were largely ineligible for Medicaid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic data from Ghana suggest aging population among cocoa farmers. Based on this evidence, youth participation in the cocoa sector has become a subject of interest to stakeholders including Solidaridad. This study employed both qualitative analysis and parametric regression models that addresses observed and unobserved errors, to estimate the determinants of youth attrition from cocoa training programmes; and the possible impact of attrition on youth engagement in cocoa farming in Ghana. The empirical results reveal that younger and male youth, the unmarried, persons without mobile phone, youth who do not participate in community development initiatives, and youth without leadership roles have a higher propensity of attrition from agricultural training programmes. Attrition was also found to be significantly driven by youth not having savings, non‐business ownership, and having higher formal education. There is therefore the need for various stakeholders including COCOBOD in Ghana, to employ various mechanisms aimed at encouraging the youth to save. This could be done especially through the formation of Youth Savings and Loan Associations (YSLAs) which could reduce attrition rates from training programmes. Moreover, married and female youth should be prioritised by future cocoa‐training programmes, and encouraged to take up leadership roles in the communitiessince they have a lower probability of attrition from training programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to standard economic theory, households should equate the marginal revenue product of an input across activities within the household. However, this prediction may not hold in the presence of risk. Using data on farm plots and non‐farm enterprises in Malawi, we examine the impact of risk on the allocation decisions of agricultural households as they allocate labor across farm and non‐farm production. We control for many household and production characteristics, including household fixed effects, and find farm marginal revenue product of labor (MRPL) to be consistently higher than non‐farm MRPL. These results are consistent with farm production being riskier than non‐farm production for most households in Malawi. These findings suggest that improved access to insurance of farming activities and wage employment opportunities could increase total household income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this scoping review is to summarize the current knowledge base in order to make recommendations for prevention and treatment of substance use disorders among the farming populations. Methods: We conducted a scoping review of peer‐reviewed articles published between January 1989 and September 2019. The search yielded 3,426 citations and the final review was conducted on 42 articles. The full review was conducted by 4 authors to extract information about the target population, data collection methods, and main results. Findings: There were 21 articles on farmers and 21 articles on farmworkers. The majority of the articles were about alcohol. Overall, farmers had higher prevalence of risky alcohol consumption patterns than nonfarmers. The prevalence of risky alcohol consumption was also high among farmworkers compared to the general population. Risk factors for risky alcohol consumption included male gender, lower socioeconomic status, and psychological problems (eg, depression). Recommendations for prevention and intervention of alcohol disorders included policy development and implementation to curb alcohol access by taxation, screening of alcohol‐related problems, and alternative means of recreation instead of alcohol consumption. Conclusions: This review confirmed that alcohol‐related problems are prevalent among farmers and farmworkers. More population‐based research is called for to understand the additional risk factors of alcohol disorders and the prevalence of other substance‐related disorders. Also, interventions should be tailored to the unique culture of farmers and farmworkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Suicide prevention remains a priority in rural and remote Australia, where suicide rates continue to be higher than those in urban communities. This commentary describes the Good SPACE suicide prevention program, and the lessons learned from delivering this program over a 14‐year period. Context: The Good SPACE program has been operating in rural New South Wales since 2007. The program focuses on educating rural community members to recognise the signs of suicide vulnerability, and how to take appropriate action if they encounter someone considering suicide. Approach: Communities are selected to receive Good SPACE training in consultation with key stakeholder organisations, or by request from communities. Across the life of the program, key challenges in its administration have included short‐term funding arrangements and staff turnover. Strengths have included the ability to adapt content to meet the needs of rural communities (eg from an initial focus on helping farmers during periods of drought, to a broader focus on all rural residents and a wider range of adversities). As the program moves forward, emphasis will be placed on harder‐to‐reach populations, including males and those with lower mental health literacy. Conclusion: The Good SPACE program has ongoing funding to adapt its content and continue administration through the Rural Adversity Mental Health Program (https://www.ramhp.com.au/). The lessons learned throughout the life of the program might be of use to other organisations aiming to provide community‐based education programs in rural and remote communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmworkers in US agriculture encounter structural vulnerability. They are economic refugees, fleeing starvation. After risking their lives to cross the border and find work, they continue to be marginalized in society, and constantly fear deportation. Although farmwork is hazardous, it is necessary to be able to support themselves and their families. Research has found that although farmworkers are aware of the health side effects that result from exposure to pesticides, they continue to labor in conventional fields because not working is viewed as a larger risk. This study adds to that literature by asking farmworkers about preference for working in organic or conventional production. Even when organic is an option, farmworkers prefer conventional production when they earn more money in conventional. Because of their extreme economic vulnerability, the possibility of earning less income to work in a safer environment is viewed as undesirable. Rather than changing wage structure to incentivize working in organic agriculture, what is needed, in addition to more political protection for farmworkers, is increased regulation of pesticides. All agricultural workplaces should be made less toxic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fair Food Program (FFP) provides a mechanism through which agricultural workers' collective voice is expressed, heard and responded to within global value chains. The FFP's model of worker‐driven social responsibility presents an alternative to traditional corporate social responsibility. This article identifies the FFP's key components and demonstrates its resilience by identifying the ways in which the issues faced by a new group of migrant workers – recruited through a "guest‐worker" scheme – were incorporated and dealt with. This case study highlights the important potential presented by the programme to address labour abuses across transnationalized labour markets while considering early replication possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent changes in agricultural labor supply have created renewed interest in the market for farm labor. This study estimates the supply of farm labor using 1989–2016 data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey. In the preferred specification a $1 rise in wage is associated with workers supplying 0.538 more hours, all else held constant. This estimate masks changes in this relationship over time, however, as workers responded positively to wages before 2001, and reversed this relationship after 2001. Other results highlight the role of illegality, education, experience, gender, and other characteristics with respect to labor supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]