Farm Labor In The Local Food Movement

Despite the increased attention paid to local food, both as a movement and as an economic sector, the workers who labor on these farms have remained largely invisible. Drawing on farmer survey data, in-depth interviews with farmers and farmworkers, and two years of participant observation, this dissertation makes visible the farm labor relations that undergird the local food system of Southwestern Wisconsin's Driftless Area. The survey data examined in Chapter 1 reveals a food system comprised of small-scale farms employing a predominantly white work force of volunteer and wage labor. In the second chapter, I identify three primary farming ideologies that place farmers along a continuum between high marketness and high social embeddedness, driving decisions of labor systems and farm scale. Chapter 3 draws on labor queue theories to explain the racial hierarchy behind hiring decisions on farms. Without intentional design, a racialized multi-tiered labor system has formed in the local food system providing white farmworkers with a step onto a career ladder while Southeast Asians are confined to jobs without opportunities for advancement and Latinx workers are relegated to the conventional agricultural system.