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Farm size and job quality: mixed-methods studies of hired farm work in California and Wisconsin

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Abstract

Agrifood scholars have long investigated the relationship between farm size and a wide variety of social and ecological outcomes. Yet neither this scholarship nor the extensive research on farmworkers has addressed the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired workers. Moreover, although this question has not been systematically investigated, many advocates, popular food writers, and documentaries appear to have the answer—portraying precarious work as common on large farms and nonexistent on small farms. In this paper, we take on this question by describing and explaining the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. To do so, we draw on data from two independently conducted, mixed-methods case studies—organic fruit and vegetable production in California, and dairy farming in Wisconsin—each of which offers a different set of insights into the farm size-job quality relationship. In both cases, larger farms fared better than or no worse than their smaller-scale counterparts for most job quality metrics investigated, though many of the advantages of working on large farms accrue disproportionately to white, U.S.-born workers. We explain that these patterns stem from economies of scale, industrialization, firm size itself, the dominant class identities and aspirations of farmers and their peers, as well as farmers’ and immigrant workers’ fears of immigration enforcement.

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Notes

  1. All uncited quotations come from our surveys and interviews.

  2. On large farms, this category includes “milkers,” “lead milkers,” and “pushers,” who work together as a team to bring cows to the parlor, get them milked, and clean the manure from the parlor. For the sake of brevity, we have combined these jobs, calling them “milkers.”.

  3. We refrained from asking any of our research participants about individual workers’ legal status because we detected high levels of anxiety about immigration enforcement in the area at the time of data collection and did not have time to establish significant rapport with the participants before meeting with them. However, other data provide insights into the legal status of these workers. Eight of the 12 immigrant workers with whom we conducted in-depth, confidential interviews voluntarily divulged their lack of legal status to us. All of the 20 farmers we interviewed expressed concerns about legal status issues, and most voluntarily divulged having employed unauthorized workers. The hired labor sessions at all major Wisconsin dairy industry meetings in the past several years have been dedicated to legal issues associated with hiring unauthorized workers. Additionally, other researchers find that approximately half of immigrant agricultural workers in the United States are unauthorized (U.S. Department of Labor 2001–2002).

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks as well to Ron Strochlic and the California Institute for Rural Studies for their collaboration in conducting the organic growers survey. We are grateful to Sandy Brown for her invaluable assistance in data analysis for the California case study. Sarah E. Lloyd, Trish O’Kane, Julia McReynolds, Brent Valentine, Brad Barham, and Jeremy Foltz provided valuable help with research design, data collection, and preliminary analysis of the Wisconsin data, and Kendra Hutchens provided additional research assistance. The Wisconsin data collection was supported by the Program on Agricultural Technology Studies at UW-Madison, USDA Hatch grant #WIS01272, and the Frederick H. Buttel Professorship funds. Special thanks to Julie Zimmerman and Bill Friedland for their reflections on the scholarship; to Julie Guthman, Lori Hunter, Stef Mollborn, Kathleen Tierney, and Amy Wilkins for insightful comments on earlier drafts; and to several anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder, 219 Ketchum, 327 UCB, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA

    Jill Lindsey Harrison

  2. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California at Berkeley, 130 Mulford Hall #3114, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Christy Getz

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Harrison, J.L., Getz, C. Farm size and job quality: mixed-methods studies of hired farm work in California and Wisconsin. Agric Hum Values 32, 617–634 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9575-6

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