Twin Island Cider Q&A with researcher/migrant farmworker rights advocate Dr. Anelyse Weiler about her journal article Seeing the workers for the trees: exalted and devalued manual labour in the Pacific Northwest craft cider industry

TIC: What got you into food system/farmworker justice?

AW: While I was living in Vancouver during my undergrad in about 2008, I became heavily involved in sustainable food initiatives and local agriculture. During class field trips to commercial greenhouses, I took note of some of the statements people made to explain why specific groups of workers were staffing the lower-paid jobs at those sites--things like "women are just more delicate with their hands." That led me to read a report from the CCPA (this one!) explaining some of the inequalities facing migrant and immigrant farm workers in B.C. It struck me that there was an important opportunity to funnel some of the excitement about system sustainability into addressing concerns about labour rights and immigration conditions that were being raised by workers in the very same local food system. I started volunteering to support the Umbrella Mobile Health Clinic, began Master's research on farm labour, and became involved in policy advocacy with the B.C. Employment Standards Coalition.

During COVID, I've read many articles about farmers (including in the Okanagan) arbitrarily restricting migrant workers from leaving their farms in order to keep nearby “communities" safe. That blew my mind--first that these workers who feed and fund BC through their labour were being framed as "outside threats" rather than integral members of rural communities, and also that the government puts so much power in the hands of employers. With this increase in public scrutiny, has COVID spurred the government to make any changes/improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker programs?

Besides policies focused specifically on the pandemic (e.g. quarantine, inspections), the federal government has made disappointingly few major changes to the basic design of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for agricultural workers. Employer-provided housing amplified workers' risk of exposure to COVID-19, largely because there are often many workers who live together in a single house. Even before the pandemic, researchers had long documented housing issues like inconsistent quality, pest infestations, and employer surveillance, but agricultural groups previously lobbied against developing a national housing standard. After widespread outbreaks among agricultural workers during the pandemic, in 2020 the federal government launched a consultation on how to improve agricultural worker housing through a national standard. The pace of change has been slower than molasses, and no standard has been announced. Even a few preliminary changes could have made a significant difference this year - which has been even deadlier than last year for farm workers - such as a policy that grown adults should not be required to sleep in bunk beds for eight months.

Another change was the introduction of a time-limited program to apply for permanent residency for a capped number of international students and temporary foreign workers. Many agricultural workers, however, faced enormous barriers to even applying for the program, given the language requirements and legal fees (e.g. this recent story about Luis Mendoza de la Cruz). A Vulnerable Open Work Permit program has been similarly inadequate in dealing with how the very design of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program creates vulnerability for workers, and initiatives like a federal tip line place the burden of reporting on workers. Funding for community-based organizations that support migrant workers has been constrained and temporary, and funding for housing improvements has been mediated through employers. Finally, the federal government has recently proposed new regulations to help prevent abuse of migrant workers. These are a starting point but are still extremely limited in dealing with core issues such as deportability, precariousness, and lack of freedom of mobility in Canada.

Five years ago in the BC cider market, "craft" was a useful term for differentiating small land-based cideries from the big players who used juice concentrate. But as the land-based industry has grown, there is an increasing range of scales--from 5,000 to 300,000 liters--and there will be an increasing reliance on seasonal farmworkers as the cider industry grows. Given the idea of "craft" as denoting small-scale/"the labour of expert artisans" do you think the term should be retired to allow for a more complex understanding of cider production in BC?

I think with the influx of larger and more commercial players in the cider industry, smaller and independent businesses will continue to find new ways to describe what they are doing, and why it matters to them. Personally, I think the term "craft" can open up a bigger conversation. For example, some of the cidermakers I spoke to during my research felt that agricultural workers should receive more recognition for their manual skills and expertise in contributing to cider (along with more substantive changes to improve the quality of their livelihoods).

When cidermakers are purchasing apples/juice from a commercial orchard, what questions do you think they should be asking the farmers?

A cidermaker could ask a long list of questions related to an individual farm's employment and immigration conditions (e.g. wages, job security, opportunities for upward mobility, examples of how the employer handles workplaces grievances, number of workers per room/per house, etc.). But ultimately, a lot of this relies on employer self-reporting, and it might make a supplier respond in a defensive rather than an open way. Another route might be to ask about organizations a farm belongs to, and their role in supporting or impeding policy changes workers have said they would like to see. For example, the National Farmers Union has been outspoken in amplifying campaigns and policy demands from the migrant justice movement.

On top of fair material compensation, you list "social recognition" as an important piece for farmworkers. Do you have any ideas of what that might look like within a cidery's marketing/social media narrative? Beyond this, do you have any thoughts on what the cider industry specifically can do to create a more equitable industry for migrant farmworkers?

One way that a cidery could provide social recognition for agricultural workers in a meaningful way is to support their campaigns and organizing. For example, posting links on social media for customers to learn more and sign petitions, donating or fundraising, showing up to demonstrations, and building racial justice literacy within the cider community at large. It's been heartening to see the appetite among many people within the cider community to build solidarity with working-class people, and to support food workers' demands for safe, dignified conditions and greater bargaining power.

Have you seen any examples of cideries successfully highlighting the farmworkers who are integral to their production without exploiting or stereotyping them (or do you have some ideas of what that might look like)?

I don't have a great answer to this question. I've seen some farm-based cideries highlight mainly white Canadian orchard workers in a way that seems thoughtful and non-exploitative. In the case of workers who face more precarious circumstances, however, I think it's really tricky to do this in a way that allows workers to be fully in control of how they are represented.

I think some growers might feel defensive about this topic as a whole because even farmers who treat their seasonal workers with respect are limited in what they can financially provide by the co-op controlled, rock-bottom market pricing of BC fruit. Many consumers would be outraged (or unable) to pay the actual price required to run a profitable and ethical commercial farm. Would something like a domestic "fair trade" certification make sense as a response to this?

This is definitely a topic that comes up perennially. I think one of the challenges with domestic fair trade certification is that it typically depends on a price premium and a niche market, which limits the number of growers who could feasibly use this as a tool to get past the 'cost-price-squeeze' issue. This kind of certification might benefit a small number of workers who happen to be employed on fair trade farms. But it can also depoliticize broader grassroots and labour movement demands for changes to policies and enforcement that affect all agricultural workers. Worldwide, workers' involvement in democratically leading and shaping fair trade initiatives has been mixed; in some cases the benefits flow mainly to employers.

My perspective is that a more difficult, but potentially more transformative conversation would be around ways to deal with nodes of concentrated ownership across the food chain. For example, a tiny number of corporate retailers are amassing a huge amount of power to shape not only fruit pricing but growing conditions, aesthetics, timing, varieties, and volume requirements. This kind of concentrated power undermines everyday people's capacity to have a democratic say in issues like labour and environmental practices. What are we going to do about this, collectively?

Read Anelyse’s full journal article on farmworkers and the PNW craft cider industry here

Learn about, follow & donate to organizations who are supporting migrant farmworkers in Canada and engaging with them in political advocacy:

RAMA (Radical Action with Migrants in Agricultural) (Okanagan-based)

Harvesting Freedom / Justicia for Migrant Workers (Toronto-based)

Dignidad Migrante (Okanagan-based)

—>Return to Cider Folk Issue 2 here