State legislators are hoping a sweeping new bill, headed for a full Senate vote this week, will help shore up the state’s farms.
But some say it sidesteps a glaring problem: low wages and little labor protections for farmworkers.
Massachusetts farmers have long faced financial strain, with some of the most expensive farm land in the country, disappearing at a rapid clip. Now, rising fuel and fertilizer costs are adding new pressure to an already fragile industry. It adds up to a gloomy picture for local agriculture.
The legislation, “An Act Fostering Agricultural Resilience in Massachusetts,” aims to invest in local farms, preserve farmland, and expand the use of locally grown food in public programs.
That bill includes a broad set of measures designed to both support farmers and improve food access. It creates new funding for farm infrastructure and workforce development. It offers at least $3 million to train new farmers, with a focus on low-income and underrepresented groups, veterans and those with disabilities. It would require the state to track how much locally grown food is used in programs like SNAP, school meals and senior nutrition programs.
State Sen. Jo Comerford, the bill’s co-sponsor, said recent federal funding cuts, combined with climate pressures and rising costs, have made farming even more precarious.
“So an unstable industry became less stable and then when you add on top of it, climate and tariffs and all of the other intersecting realities about the price of land in Massachusetts,” Comerford said. “It’s a perilous business being a farmer.”
A state report last year found that most of the state’s farmers operate at a loss, with the average farmer making roughly 95 cents for every dollar they have to spend. Many rely on outside income, like agritourism, to stay afloat.
But while the bill focuses heavily on supporting farms, it does not directly address the workers who sustain them.
$8-an-hour wages for farm workers
Farm workers in Massachusetts can legally be paid as little as $8 dollars an hour — well below the state’s $15 dollar minimum wage — and are not guaranteed overtime pay or paid time off. After years unsuccessfully pushing bills to try to eliminate what’s known as the “subminimum wage,” advocates are trying a new approach; they’re hoping to attach an amendment, known as “Fairness for Agricultural Laborers,” to the broader farm bill.
Advocates of an amendment to the bill say the food system is built on poor pay that keeps the people who plant, tend and harvest crops, as well as those who manage livestock, in poverty.
State Sen. Adam Gomez, the lead sponsor for the amendment, was unavailable for comment. But Patricia Lopez, a former Massachusetts farmworker now advocating for others, supports the measure.
“We really deserve fair wages, prices are going up and up — food, gas, rent,” she said. “But our wages are staying the same.”
Farm workers describe grueling conditions: long days, often 12 hours or more, without reliable access to water, bathrooms or breaks beyond lunch, regardless of the weather. And in the current immigration climate, farmworkers who are mostly immigrants are reluctant to report violations.
A 2020 UMass Amherst study found the state’s farmworkers earn less than what would be required for a “minimally decent standard of living” and extending overtime protections would increase farm production costs by less than 2%.
Competition for farm workers means some are paid far more than the subminimum wage, but agricultural experts and worker advocates say surveys have shown there are still many who make far less.
“People say ‘Oh, no one is making $8 an hour,’ but then we see people who are still earning $9 and there is nothing we can do about it because the legal minimum is $8,” said Claudia Rosales, another former farmworker.
The lack of overtime also creates a particular financial squeeze for seasonal workers who may not have work at other times of the year. Only a handful of states have addressed the low wage issue for farm workers.
Comerford said she doesn’t believe there should be a subminimum wage, but wouldn’t comment directly on the amendment, citing the “legislative process” ahead.
Roots of the subminimum wage
The roots of the “subminimum” wage trace back to the establishment of a minimum wage in the country, through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. It intentionally excluded agricultural and domestic workers, who were largely Black and immigrants, from federal minimum wage and overtime protection in order to appease members of Congress from southern states.
“They were never going to get any of the Southern representatives to agree to that if they weren’t able to maintain these racial wage differentials, which they did, using occupation as a proxy for race,” said Clare Hammonds, a professor at the UMass Amherst Labor Center.
Hammonds says farmers have historically opposed wage increases, particularly overtime mandates. Today farm labor in Massachusetts is largely performed by Latino workers, a group Hammonds and others say has lacked political power on Beacon Hill.
As a result, labor issues have been pushed aside for broader concerns about farm viability. The tension between the two issues are the challenge lawmakers face: how to support both farms and farmworkers they rely on.
Maya McCann-Som, a staff attorney at Central West Justice Center, a lead organization in the push to improve farm workers lives, said the state’s food production should not be sustained on injustice.
“We’re not valorizing the work of the people who are actually doing the planting and growing and harvesting in a way that we should, nor is the law,” said McCann-Som.
