IMMIGRATION AND AGRICULTURAL LABOR POLICIES

Table 1.

Family and Hired Employment on Farms

NA = Not available.

*Employed in agriculture for wages at least one day.

**July 1982. No survey was conducted in 1981.

Source: United States Department of Agriculture

employers with only casual ties to one another are not likely to per-
form well in this new environment.

Second, over the past two decades, significant changes have been
made in the application to agriculture of safety, health, minimum
wages, and other labor standards already in force in non-agricultural
industries. Exemptions from such rules which were traditionally granted
to agriculture are disappearing.

Further change is in the offing until farmworkers have all the pro-
tections and benefits enjoyed by other workers. In some regards, ag-
riculture is coming under even stricter regulation than other industries,
as witnessed in the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Pro-
tection Act of 1982. Informal labor practices customarily used in ag-
riculture cannot meet the tests imposed by these recent laws and
regulations.

Third,, both supply and demand conditions in agricultural labor mar-
kets are undergoing significant changes. Decentralization of manu-
facturing to rural areas, the growth of other non-farm rural jobs and

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