Migrant workers clean fields in California’s Salinas Valley on March 30, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

Farmworkers in the US cultivate their own heat safety standards

Fair Food Program seeks to circumvent slow regulatory process

Reading Time: 4 minutes While regulations to protect agricultural workers from the heat have been held up by political wrangling, Gonzalo and her colleagues have spearheaded an alternate strategy. They seek to sidestep the slow and increasingly politicized government machinery and instead appeal directly to consumers and large brands.

(Shaunl/E+/Getty Images)

Feds plan to ease Underused Housing Tax reporting load

New exemption also proposed for employee housing outside cities

Reading Time: 3 minutes Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s latest Fall Economic Statement offers to take some of the reporting burden off certain farmers and other Canadians when filing for exemptions from the national Underused Housing Tax (UHT). The federal finance department on Nov. 16 posted its legislative and regulatory proposals for changes to the UHT online and has […] Read more


File photo of northern Alberta farmland. (Wonganan/iStock/Getty Images)

Survey to look at farm stress from Alberta angle

Study to explore farmers' levels of resilience against stress

Reading Time: < 1 minute Researchers from the University of Alberta and AgKnow, the province’s farmer mental health network, are looking to build up Alberta-specific data on farming stress, mental health and well-being, and the ways in which farmers cope. They study team is “looking for farmers, ranchers, or anyone who works or lives on a farm” to participate, researchers […] Read more

(CBSA via YouTube)

Ontario police charge seven with trafficking, exploiting migrants

Workers provided for farms and other sites, police say

Reading Time: 2 minutes Toronto | Reuters — Ontario’s York Regional Police have charged seven people with trafficking and exploiting 64 Mexican migrants, saying the accused were part of an international labour trafficking ring operating in the Toronto region. Police in Ontario said on Friday they had obtained information in November that migrant men and women were being exploited […] Read more


File photo overlooking the marina and sea wall at Half Moon Bay, about 30 km south of San Francisco. (JasonDoiy/E+/Getty Images)

Suspect in California farm worker shootings appears in court

Early evidence suggests workplace grievance, authorities say

Reading Time: 3 minutes Redwood City, Calif. | Reuters — A California farm worker accused of shooting seven people to death near San Francisco, some of them his co-workers, made his first court appearance on Wednesday after he was charged with murder in the state’s second deadly gun rampage in recent days. Chunli Zhao, 66, the lone suspect in […] Read more

Scott and Ian Matheson credit the vision and sacrifice of their parents, Robert and Helen, pictured in 2019, for much of their success today.

Keeping the ‘busy’ in ‘business’

The Mathesons continue to diversify on a farm modelled for success

Reading Time: 5 minutes All of the clichés about sharing workloads — “Many hands make for light work” or “Two heads are better than one,” fall by the wayside when chatting with Ian and Scott Matheson. Since they took over farming from their father, they’ve increased their respective duties on the family operation near Lakeside in the northwest corner […] Read more


“It saves money when employees are happy,” says Jennifer Wright with CAHRC. Your work also gets done better and more efficiently.

Keeping workers on the farm

Scientific HR really can help ensure your farm business has the people and skills it needs

Reading Time: 8 minutes There are multiple moving parts to any busy farm, and there have to be just as many to a sound HR plan too. You can pretty quickly run out of fingers if you try to count them. There’s recruitment, retention, training, evaluation … the list goes on and on. But that doesn’t mean HR has […] Read more

File photo of an Ontario cherry orchard. (UpdogDesigns/iStock/Getty Images)

Audit finds Canada failing migrant farmworkers on COVID-19, housing inspections

Reading Time: 2 minutes Toronto | Reuters — As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, federal government inspectors frequently deemed the employers of migrant workers compliant with health and safety rules despite a lack of evidence, according to an Auditor General report released Thursday. While Canadian provinces and territories set housing standards, the federal government is responsible for ensuring tens of […] Read more


Illustration of the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons, a key stage of development of Parkinson’s disease. (Dr_Microbe/iStock/Getty Images)

Quebec to reduce onus for farm workers seeking workers’ comp for Parkinson’s

Amended rule would grant 'presumption' for pesticide exposure

Reading Time: 2 minutes Some Quebec farmers and farm workers with Parkinson’s disease may soon have an easier path to seek workers’ compensation — if they can show at least a certain amount of exposure to pesticides. Provincial Labour Minister Jean Boulet on Tuesday tabled an amendment to bill 59, draft legislation that includes updates to Quebec’s workplace health […] Read more

Agricultural workers gather on Dec. 2, 2020, whilst blocking the Panamericana Sur highway at Villacuri, Peru, during a protest over a long-standing but controversial agrarian law. (Photo: Reuters/Sebastian Castaneda)

Peru farm protests grip country, turn deadly

'There are no harvests, there is nothing'

Reading Time: 2 minutes Lima | Reuters — Protests by farm workers demanding better wages in Peru raged on for a fourth day Thursday, spreading north into key agricultural areas of the Andean nation, derailing harvests of some crops, snarling transport of produce and leaving at least one dead. Peruvian interim President Francisco Sagasti called the death of a […] Read more