Harvesting Labour: Tobacco and the Global Making of Canada's Agricultural Workforce [Paperback]

In recent decades an increasing share of Canadas agricultural workforce has been made up of temporary foreign workers from the Global South. These labourers work difficult and dangerous jobs with limited legal protections and are effectively barred from permanent settlement in Canada.In Harvesting Labour Edward Dunsworth examines the history of farm work in one of Canadas underrecognized but most important crop sectors  Ontario tobacco. Dunsworth takes aim at the idea that temporary foreign worker programs emerged in response to labour shortages or the unwillingness of Canadians to work in agriculture. To the contrary, Ontarios tobacco sector was extremely popular with workers for much of the twentieth century, with high wages attracting a diverse workforce and enabling thousands to establish themselves as small farm owners. By the end of the century, however, the sector had become something entirely different: a handful of mega-farms relying on foreign guest workers to produce their crops. Taking readers from the leafy fields of Ontarios tobacco belt to rural Jamaica, Barbados, and North Carolina and on to the halls of government, Dunsworth demonstrates how the ultimate transformation of tobacco  and Canadian agriculture writ large  was fundamentally a function of the capitalist restructuring of farming.Harvesting Labour brings together the fields of labour, migration, and business history to reinterpret the historical origins of contemporary Canadian agriculture and its workforce.

A growing share of Canadas agricultural workforce is composed of temporary foreign workers from the Global South who work difficult and dangerous jobs with limited legal protections, but it was not always like this. Dunsworth shows how the restructuring of capitalist agriculture transformed the Ontario tobacco sector and Canadas farm labour force.

Harvesting Labour is a significant and timely contribution to the historiography of modern North American alÃ(