Improving Precarious Working Conditions in Agriculture in Lower-Income Countries

Food production around the world relies fundamentally on human labor — the efforts of farmers and agricultural workers who cultivate, harvest, and process our food. Agriculture employs roughly one in eight workers globally, making it one of the largest employers across lower-income regions and a key sector for livelihoods, food security, and poverty reduction.

Yet despite labor’s crucial role, working conditions in agriculture can be very precarious. Scientific research and media reports consistently document serious labor rights violations: child labor in cocoa and coffee production, forced labor in sugarcane harvesting, discrimination and sexual harassment in strawberry fields, and widespread exposure to extreme heat, hazardous chemicals, and dangerous machinery. These risks translate into high rates of occupational injuries and chronic health problems.

Around 400 million hired farm workers worldwide — especially those who are migrants, seasonal, or informally employed — are particularly vulnerable. They often lack written contracts, social protection, or collective bargaining power, and are rarely unionized. Weak labor inspection systems, fragmented employment relationships, and the informal nature of much agricultural work exacerbate these challenges, leaving millions of workers without effective recourse against exploitation.

Rising awareness and expanding standards

In recent years, the lack of social sustainability in global agrifood systems has gained growing public and political attention. Governments, international organizations, civil society, and private companies are all seeking to raise labor standards through laws, policies, and voluntary certification schemes.

Most countries have formal labor standards — such as bans on child labor and minimum wage laws. Private initiatives like Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, and other sustainability certifications have gone further by prohibiting child and forced labor, promoting gender equality, and requiring formal contracts or the right to organize. These schemes also often demand that workers receive at least the national minimum wage, if not a minimum income to meet a basic standard of living.

At the same time, labor and human rights standards are increasingly embedded in international trade agreements and supply chain laws. These developments are helping to put labor conditions in agriculture higher on the political and business agenda.

Certification aids laborers

The evidence that standards and certifications can improve labor conditions is mixed so far — but encouraging in parts.

Public minimum wages generally succeed in raising average wages, as intended, though the evidence for the agricultural sector is limited. Available studies suggest that higher wages may however lead some farmers to reduce hiring, highlighting a potential trade-off between the quality and quantity of jobs. In many countries, minimum wages have not kept pace with inflation or productivity growth, so that they do little to lift workers out of poverty, raising the question of whether private standards can fill the gap.

A large body of research has examined how smallholder farmers benefit from certification in terms of higher prices, yields, and incomes — often finding positive results. Far less attention, however, has been paid to the question of whether hired workers on smallholder farms, plantations, or within cooperatives benefit. Evidence suggests that certification can improve employment conditions, raise wages, and enhance job security — especially on larger farms and cooperatives that are easier to monitor. Smaller farms, particularly those in remote areas or informal settings, see little improvements, though the evidence is limited. This reflects a broader challenge facing all public and private initiatives in this field: monitoring and enforcement.

Monitoring working conditions is often difficult and expensive

Monitoring compliance with labor standards — whether governmental or private — is resource-intensive and logistically difficult. Agriculture involves millions of farms, often small and dispersed, employing seasonal or migrant laborers who move frequently. National labor inspectorates in many lower-income countries are underfunded, and inspections in the informal sector are rare.

Certification bodies such as Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance face similar limitations. Auditors can only visit a fraction of the farms in a cooperative, which may include hundreds or even thousands of farmer members. As a result, compliance is more reliably enforced on large, organized units (cooperatives, planatations) than on smallholder farms.

Digital monitoring offers promising new tools — such as remote sensing, mobile data collection, and digital worker reporting systems — that could extend oversight and reduce costs. However, most current applications focus on environmental issues, like deforestation, rather than social conditions. Expanding these technologies to monitor labor practices will require investment, innovation, and cooperation between governments, companies, and civil society. The growing number of supply chain laws and trade provisions could accelerate this transition by creating stronger incentives for digital transparency.

Poverty is the root cause

Even perfect monitoring would not solve the deeper, structural causes of poor working conditions in agriculture. Many violations — from child labor to unpaid overtime — stem from poverty itself. When smallholder farmers struggle to earn a living income, they may depend on family labor, including children, or lack the means to pay fair wages to hired workers.

This reflects a fundamental tension between farmers’ economic survival and workers’ welfare. Farmers face pressure from volatile markets and powerful buyers to keep prices low, which can drive cost-cutting at the expense of decent labor conditions. Addressing this imbalance requires not only stricter standards but also a more equitable distribution of value along the supply chain.

Creating jobs and and improving worker welfare

From an economic perspective, wages rise when labor markets tighten — that is, when workers have better or alternative job opportunities. Yet many low-income countries face slow job creation outside agriculture, high population growth, and rising youth unemployment. Strengthening labor markets, therefore, depends on broader economic development, education, and infrastructure policies that expand employment opportunities beyond subsistence farming.

Public works programs are one proven tool to create jobs and provide income during the agricultural lean season. When well-designed, they can also contribute to rural development — for example, through building irrigation systems, roads, or flood protection that enhance agricultural productivity.

Social protection systems such as cash transfers, unemployment insurance, and pensions can reduce households’ vulnerability to income shocks, allowing families to avoid negative coping strategies like child labor. Technical and vocational training programs can further improve employability and mobility, helping workers transition into better-paying and less hazardous jobs.

Opportunities and risks of technology

Technological change offers both risks and opportunities for agricultural labor. Mechanization and digitalization can reduce the need for physically demanding manual labor and increase productivity, but they also require new skills. Tractors, for instance, replace physical work but create demand for operators, mechanics, and technicians. Similarly, digital services for extension, payments, and credit access can boost farm performance while generating new, higher-skilled employment — from app developers to local service agents.

To benefit from these opportunities, much higher investment in rural education and digital literacy is essential. Empowering young people and women with technical and entrepreneurial skills can help them seize new roles in evolving agrifood systems, ensuring that technological progress translates into social progress.

Moving forward

Improving working conditions in agriculture is not only a moral imperative but also an economic and social necessity. Decent work contributes to productivity, stability, and sustainable development — all core goals of the global 2030 Agenda.

Achieving this requires shared responsibility:

• Governments should strengthen and enforce labor laws and support the development of farm worker organizations to enable political participation and collective bargaining. They should also support social protection, and invest in education and infrastructure.
• Private companies must commit to fair purchasing practices, minimum wages, humane labor standards and transparent supply chains.
• NGOs and trade unions play a critical role in worker organization, advocacy, and monitoring.
• Consumers and journalists can help maintain public pressure for ethically produced food.
• More research and systematic data on agricultural labor conditions are needed to guide evidence-based policymaking and track progress over time.

The path forward lies not in a single solution but in combining strong institutions, fair trade relations, empowered workers, and inclusive economic growth. Only then can the people who feed the world do so under safe, fair, and dignified conditions.

References:

_{Meemken, E.-M., Aremu, O.,  Fabry, A., Heepen, C., Illien, P., Laitha, A., and Kammer, M. (2025). Policy for decent work in agriculture. Agricultural Economics. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.70009}

_{Aremu, O., Fabry, A., and Meemken, E.-M., 2024. Farm size and the quality and quantity of jobs—Insights from Nigeria. Food Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102731}

_{Meemken, E.-M., Charlton, D., Maertens, M., Oya, C., Reardon, T., Christiaensen, L., Stemmler, H., 2024. Better data for decent work in the global food system. Nature Food. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-01002-0}