“It is the beginning of an apocalypse!,” remarks a character in Sergio Arau’s 2004 mockumentary “A Day Without A Mexican.” Set in California, where all the Mexicans strangely disappear one morning, it captures the critical importance of Hispanic migrant labour in the United States. On that day, Californians find to their horror that kitchens are shut down, streets are not swept, homes and offices are not cleaned, garbage is not picked up, babysitters do not report, grocery shelves are empty, laundry workers cannot be found and so on. The film brought home two messages: one, the enormity and significance of migrant labour; and two, the sheer lack of appreciation of the contribution of migrant labour by the locals. A provocative billboard of the film read: “All the Mexicans will be missing and the Gringos will be crying.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has, in real life, made the world recognise and appreciate the value of migrant labour. After the lockdown began, the mobility of migrant workers has been severely restricted and large numbers of migrant workers have returned home. Multiple sectors of the economy have been affected by this phenomenon. The one sector that has been most severely affected is agriculture; farms across the world are reeling under the impact, and prospect, of labour shortages. These labour shortages have not just upset systems of cultivation, but also disrupted flows of remittances in large parts of the globe.

The Global Scene

The Covid-19 pandemic has opened the eyes of the world to the extent of dependence of developed country agricultures and their supply chains on cross-country migrant labour (see Exhibit 1). In the United States of America (USA), Canada, Europe, and Australia, fears have heightened about how the absence of seasonal migrant inflows would disrupt impending harvests.

Exhibit 1 Meet The Undocumented Coachella Farmworkers Feeding America (Source: AJ+)

The USA is estimated to have about 2.5 million farm workers. Within this 2.5 million workers, more than half are immigrants with no work authorisation. In addition, more workers are annually brought into the country from South America, primarily Mexico, from March-April onwards. These workers come in on an H-2A temporary agricultural visa. Such H-2A visa workers constitute about 10 per cent of the total farmworkers in the USA. Though Donald Trump viciously opposes migrant workers in his speeches, his own government increased the number of H-2A visas from about 130,000 in 2016 to about 200,000 in 2019.

With the spread of Covid-19, the USA initially indicated that it would restrict the number of H-2A visas for 2020. Visa interviews were terminated. Visas were issued only to those workers who were previously recipients of the visa. As a result, a large number of first-time applicants were turned away. However, in the last week of March 2020, these rules were relaxed. Even first-time applicants were allowed visas without an interview. Trump himself stated that if this was not done, “we’re not going to have any farmers.” It is unclear if this measure would resolve the stalemate. If the lockdown continues till May-June 2020, which is the peak season of labour demand, agricultural operations may just come to a halt. The extent of shortfall of H-2A workers is estimated to be about 60,000. In nearby Canada, the shortage of workers is estimated at about 60,000.

Europe is estimated to have a shortage of one million workers, who usually migrate from North Africa and Eastern Europe. Norbert Lins, the Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture, has exhorted its member countries to allow the safe passage of seasonal migrant workers. According to a news report, Lins “called on the Agriculture Ministers and the Commission to introduce ‘laissez passer’ [access passes] for seasonal workers’ to ensure the right to travel to seasonal workers using special busses or trains or even planes.”

In France, it is estimated that about 200,000 agricultural workers would be needed in the next three months to compensate for the absence of migrant seasonal labour. The French Minister of Agriculture, Didier Guillaume, was quoted as saying: “I am calling on the men and women who are not working and locked indoors to join the great army of French agriculture,” because “we need to produce to feed the French population.” Germany faces a shortage of about 300,000 seasonal workers who annually migrate to the country to harvest fruits and vegetables. The German government has arranged special flights from Romania to fly in migrant workers, and hopes that 80,000 Romanian and Bulgarian workers would be in the country soon. In Poland, Ukranian workers undertake much of the agricultural work; unions of Polish farmers have requested their government to allow these workers to stay back in Poland.

In the United Kingdom (UK), the shortfall of seasonal workers is estimated to be 80,000. Farm unions in the UK have demanded that the government grant them a £9.3 million support package in order to help pay for a “land army” of workers in fruit and vegetable production. Others have demanded that the government encourage workers thrown out of other jobs to shift to agricultural seasonal labour on farms.

The Indian Scene

As in the West, farmers in India too face the threat of severe labour shortages. The key driver of the current labour shortage in India was the ill-planned announcement of the nation-wide lockdown on March 24 2020. This announcement set off a panic reaction among millions of migrant workers across India, who began to return to the safety of their home States (see Exhibit 2). There is no accurate estimate of the number of migrant workers residing in Indian States.

Exhibit 2 Amid lockdown, migrant workers swamp Delhi bus terminal, desperate to go home (Source: Hindustan Times)

The Census of 2011 data reports on migration are incomplete even nine long years after the Census. What we know for 2011 is that there were about 142 million “migrant workers” (a subset within the category of “migrants”) in India. Of them, about 30 million migrant workers were located in other districts of their own State, while another about 19 million migrant workers were located in a different State. If we consider migration from anywhere in India to the rural areas of a different State in India, there were about 7.1 million such migrant workers in India in 2011. If we consider only migrations from the rural area of one State to the rural area of another State, there were about 5.9 million such migrant workers in India.

These numbers are likely to be underestimates for two reasons: first, they are for the year 2011 and migration is likely to have increased and, secondly, Census data are well-known for undercounting seasonal migrants. Nevertheless, they give an idea about the quantum of migrant workers in the country and the extent of dependence of rural production systems on migrant labourers.

April is the month when India’s rabi crops, especially wheat and pulses, are harvested. Farming in India is less mechanised than in the West, and harvest is a peak season of labour demand. Even when a farmer is using a mechanical harvester, three or four skilled labourers are needed to operate the harvesters and service the machines. In Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, migrant labourers from eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand are employed in large numbers. An assessment by the Punjab government in 2004 put the total number of migrant workers in the State’s agricultural sector alone at about 700,000.

There are permanent and short-term migrants in every village. Permanent migrants attach themselves to a landowner for a period, like one year, and return to their native village once a year for a few weeks. Short-term migrants travel to the State only during the peak season and return soon after the tasks are completed. This year, migrant workers have either returned home or have not arrived yet due to the lockdown, fear of infections and the threat of police harassment. In many regions, farmers are now soliciting the services of native village workers who have returned to the village from a nearby city or town due to the lockdown.

In many States, a labour shortage has forced farmers to either not harvest at all, or to harvest and abandon the product. In some Southern States, on account of shortage of migrant workers, rice mills are not buying paddy from farmers. Labour shortages are also being experienced in milk processing plants, cold storage units, and warehouses. According to AMUL, most milk processing plants are currently operating with half the regular labour force.

Conditions of Work

Across the globe and in India, migrant agricultural workers face extremely poor conditions at the workplace. They face multiple occupational and health hazards. They are brought to the workplace in crowded jeeps, trucks or buses. In Romania, where more than a million jobs have been lost, when Eurowings announced special flights for migrant workers to fly to Baden, Berlin and Dusseldorf, labour contractors bussed more than 2000 workers to the Cluj airport raising panic and serious fears of infections (see Exhibit 3). At the destination, these workers are provided with poor housing facilities; sometimes even housed in unventilated shipping containers, their settlements are mostly overcrowded with many workers forced to share a single room (see Exhibits 4 and 5). They are not provided with hygienic toilet facilities. Levels of sanitation are also woefully poor. A report from the tobacco fields of North Carolina puts it thus:

“After long, hot days in the fields, many tobacco farmworkers return to labour camps that are deplorable, cramped and uncomfortable, and that pose many hazards and health risks, including sleeping on bare bunks or moldy mattresses on the floor, poor ventilation, leaky roofs, hazardous wiring, poorly maintained plumbing and showers, poor ventilation, infestations of flies, mosquitoes, and other bugs, and inadequate facilities for washing clothes contaminated by pesticides and tobacco residue.”

Exhibit 3 Seasonal workers heading to Germany outside Cluj airport, Romania (Source: DW News)

Even at the height of infection, protective gears or face masks are not made available to migrant farm workers. They are deprived of most forms of social protection cover. For instance, in the USA, about half of the migrant workers do not have health insurance.

In India too, migrant workers are regularly transported across villages and towns in overcrowded jeeps and trucks. Most migrant workers are denied minimum wages. They cannot access the local public food distribution system. In most States except Kerala, they do not have any pension cover. They have poor access to television or internet so as to gain awareness about the spread of Covid-19 and measures to be taken to reduce the spread of infections.

Migrant workers everywhere also regularly face hostility and discrimination at the destination. Local populations treat migrants as outsiders, and regularly humiliate them with racist or casteist overtones. Most petty thefts at the destination lead to finger-pointing at the migrant workers, thus branding them as potential criminals. They are relegated to the periphery of the village, geographically and socially. With the onset of Covid19, migrants are also stigmatised as carriers of infections and this has exacerbated the extent of socioeconomic exclusion they face in villages.

Covid Guidelines for Farm Workers

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has released a set of guidelines for migrant workers in agriculture. It states:

“Personal protective equipment and related items should be distributed to all workers employed in indispensable services, including those working in the food and agricultural sector. Ensure adequate hygiene and sanitation is provided and physical distancing is respected at the workplace (e.g. fishing vessels, farms, fish/farm markets), in housing for migrant agricultural workers (when provided by employers or the state), and on the means of transportation required to reach the fields/workplaces in remote rural areas. Information and awareness-raising campaigns on how to protect oneself and others from the risk of infection need to be made accessible in languages and communication channels/formats that are understandable and accessible to all migrant workers.”

In India, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has issued a set of guidelines for farm workers. It states:

“…farmers need to follow precautions and safety measures to be taken to prevent the disease spread. Simple measures include social distancing, maintaining personal hygiene by washing of hands with soap, wearing of face mask, protective clothing and cleaning of implements and machinery. Workers to follow safety measures and social distancing at each and every step in the entire process of field operations…

Measures of personal hygiene and social distancing [have] to be followed by those engaged in harvesting of all field crops, fruits, vegetables, eggs and fishes before, during and after executing the field operation…

In case of manual field operations of harvesting, picking, accomplish the operation in 4-5 feet spaced strips assigning one strip to one person. This will ensure adequate spacing between the engaged labourers. All the persons engaged should use masks and ensure hand washing with soaps at reasonable intervals. Maintain safe distance of 3-4 feet during rest, taking of meals, transfer of produce at collection point, loading and offloading. Stagger the field operations wherever possible and avoid engaging more number of persons on the same day….

All transport vehicles, gunny bags or other packaging material should also be sanitised. The collection of the produce may be done in small heaps spaced at 3-4 feet and field level processing should be assigned to 1-2 persons to avoid crowding…

While performing drying, threshing, winnowing, cleaning, grading, sorting and packaging operations at the farm level, wearing of protective face mask may help against aerosols and dust particles to prevent respiratory difficulties.”

To what extent these measures will be followed on the field is doubtful, given the historically poor track record of countries in ensuring occupational safety on the farm.

Migrant farm workers everywhere present a special case. They are inevitable for the production process in rural areas. Without them, rural production will collapse in most regions. Yet, they are poorly paid, treated with disdain and denied multiple rights. The onset of Covid-19 has exposed the hypocrisy of different stakeholders, including large farmers and the government, in this regard. It remains to be seen if the continued flow of migrant farm workers across the globe, with little focus on their safety and security, will be followed by, or associated with, any serious health hazard. But to be sure, their conditions are as precarious as always. Lila Rodriguez, the lead journalist in “A Day Without a Mexican,” asks at one point: “how do we make the invisible visible?” That, unfortunately, is a task for a post-Covid-19 world as well.

R. Ramakumar is NABARD Chair Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai