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US ag labour has rarely functioned in a free-market fashion. Through 1864, roughly half of the ag states used slave labour. California, nominally a free state, had developed (under Spanish and Mexican rule) using what was effectively slave native labour. Following statehood, ag labour was largely imported: from China in the 19th century, from Mexico and Japan in the 20th, with the Bracero programme (established in WWII), and of course Oakies during the dustbowl as immortalised in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, all of whom were at best severely politically marginalised. Conditions in the antebellum former Confederacy long disadvantaged labour as well. The US National Labour Relations Act (NLRA, 1935) explicitly excluded farm labor from its protections (wages, hours, conditions, unions). California eventually pased the Agricultural Labour Relations Act (ALRA) forty years later, which provided for the right to unionise (Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association features strongly in promoting this), and ... even it is fairly weak sauce despite being the only significant ag labour law in the US. Farming itself is a marginal business, and farm labour gets the short side of that stick. The underlying economic reasons are complex, and not readily solved. It's not that the present situation is fair to farm workers at all, but a sudden shift would likely be catastrophic across the board. I'd like to see a far fairer system, but it would take significant governance and management to roll out smoothly. |