ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews twentieth- and twenty-first-century national policies that continue to impact farmworkers' livelihoods and access to just working and living conditions. It reviews the major policies impacting labor relations and standards, along with those regarding health and safety, with the latter related to pesticide use and restriction. The chapter explores the impacts of immigration and trade policy on farmworkers—in its influence on who can work in agriculture in the United States, how they come to work in it, and the limitations of their rights as non-US citizens. Laws on health, safety, and worker protection also are applied in disparate ways when it comes to farmworkers. The Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA), enacted in 1970, did not specifically include farmworker and farm-related safety issues. Illegal immigration is rooted in US agriculture, which has historically had a surplus of land and capital but a lack of labor needed to cultivate it.
