ABSTRACT
Migrant farm workers are persons who move in order to do farm work. A Presidential Commission defined a migrant as a "worker whose principal income is earned from temporary farm employment and who in the course of his year's work moves one or more times, often through several States." Agriculture is considered to be the oldest and, by some measures, the largest industry in the United States. The American farming system is often considered a crown jewel of the US economy, a system which is envied around the world because it produces such an abundance of farm products that surpluses of food and fiber rather than shortages have been the major US agricultural problem for over half a century. Farm workers were recognized as a permanent feature of the US farm system only in the 1960s, and even this belated recognition often assumed that many migrant and seasonal farm workers would soon be displaced by machines.
