Amid coronavirus-induced stockpiling and empty supermarket shelves, politicians have been quick to assure us of the reliability of Australia’s food supply systems.
Writing for the Guardian last week, agriculture minister David Littleproud slammed “ridiculous” panic-buying, saying: “It is important to understand that Australian farmers produce enough food for 75 million people: three times what we need”. Farmers, he continued, are “calmly going about the business of food production”, “preparing to sow and pick their crops and making sure their produce makes it to market”.
But the reality is that the business of food production relies upon tens of thousands of workers, a huge proportion of which are seasonal workers and migrants.
As borders close and social distancing increases in order to flatten the curve of infection rates, we need to think urgently about the workforce on whom our food supply chains rely.
Neither Littleproud nor the agricultural industry are oblivious to the reliance on migrant workers. The agriculture minister described the need to “secure labour”, promising “minor tweaking” to the visa system with the implication being that the some of the 140,000 working holiday makers and 7,000 seasonal workers currently in the country may have their visas extended to enable them to continue working here. The National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) is seeking assurances of a continuous supply of overseas workers, particularly for the horticultural sector.
Both the NFF and federal government talk about securing a supply of agricultural labour as if it were akin to securing a reliable supply of engine parts. But the agricultural workforce is not a collection of supply chain inputs, it is hundreds of thousands of workers — people with families, with communities, with livelihoods to sustain, and bodies as vulnerable to infections and ill-health (and in some cases more so) as any others.
In horticulture, the challenges are significant. The industry is in the middle of the harvest season, a critical point in the production cycle when demands for labour are at their peak. Temporary migrant and local seasonal workers are picking fruit, harvesting vegetables, and sorting and packing crops in packing sheds across the country.
Thousands of these workers are Pacific Islanders, working here under the Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) which provides strictly curtailed visas intended to fill demands for, particularly, seasonal horticultural labour. Many groups of workers are due to return to their home countries in the coming weeks and months. I have spoken to one labour contractor who has a group of SWP workers due to fly home within days. Their flights are now cancelled with their visas currently due to expire the next day. Other groups of workers, due to arrive in Australia now to perform critical harvest labour, are unable to leave their homes as Pacific nations close their borders.
“Minor tweaking” to the visa system may address part of their problem, enabling them to stay and work for longer (although, at the time we spoke, the contractor had not received any direction from the department of employment which manages the program) but it will not address the much bigger human and political challenges.
What if Pacific Islanders (or backpackers, or other temporary migrant workers) don’t want to be used as an ongoing source of labour beyond what they have already contracted to provide? If the present situation continues for six or twelve months, or longer, what kinds of incentives or coercions are going to be employed to sustain the agricultural workforce?
For those who do continue working, what are the health implications and risks of doing so? Workers in packing sheds work in close proximity for long hours, and pickers often live in crowded, shared accommodation. These jobs, like so many low-paid manual and service industry jobs, cannot be worked from home, a fact that highlights the dramatically unequal levels of risk and vulnerability for different, often racialised, groups of workers.
If sheds, orchards, and other food production sites shut down amid health concerns, what will be the financial impacts on agricultural sector workers – both temporary and local – who are overwhelmingly casual and without sick leave and other entitlements? Is the federal government prepared to commit to covering the costs of healthcare and any lost income due to infection of the labour force whose supply it is seeking to secure? It should.
If and when workers do return home, how will we ensure that we are not sending potentially infected people back to countries and communities across the region whose health systems are ill-equipped to manage the crises that widespread Covid-19 infection would produce? Pacific nations have begun to see their first cases of the virus, and the impacts of widening infection could be catastrophic. Our responsibilities to the region demand that we do not endanger it.
David Littleproud ended his piece with a call to his “fellow Australians” to work together and to support “our farmers”. One of the many, very real dangers of this epidemic is that it will amplify an inward-looking nationalism, and an intensification of all kinds of borders (physical, political, social, cultural) long after the Covid-19 threat has diminished.
Let’s by all means think about the business of food production. But let’s do that in ways that do not fall back on ill-conceived notions of national self-sufficiency. What the Covid-19 pandemic and its impacts on our food systems should highlight for us is our deep enmeshment in regional and global networks, and our responsibilities to all of those who feed us.
