Raising crops and animals takes a lot of hands on work. Workers to fill the roles of planting, cultivating, harvesting, cleaning, feeding, and so many other tasks are essential to our food production system. Some of those tasks are performed by migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
Terms to Know
Migrant: people who move to find work.
Immigrant: people who have relocated to a new home, different from their place of birth.
Migrant farmworkers may be immigrants, but the two terms are not interchangeable.
Seasonal Farmworker: An individual who is employed, or was employed in the past 12 months, in farm work of a seasonal or other temporary nature and is not required to be absent overnight from his/her permanent place of residence.
Migrant Farmworker: An individual who travels to the job site, but is not reasonably able to return to his/her permanent residence within the same day. Guest workers who temporarily live in the U.S. through the federal H2A program to work in agriculture are also described as migrant farmworkers.
Partner Organizations
Migrant Clinicians Network – https://www.migrantclinician.org/
Farmworker Justice – https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/
National Center for Farmworker Health – http://www.ncfh.org/
Great Lakes Center for Farmworker Health and Wellbeing