Unravelling climate change impacts on migrant farmworkers in agri-food production

This project aims to examine the impacts of climate change on the migrant farm workers in Turkey and in Colombia. There is an uneasy relationship between agriculture and climate change.

Agricultural production is one of the main contributors of climate change and also the most affected from it, especially when small-scale producers and farmworkers are concerned.

While the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food production are well established, the cascading effects of climate change on already displaced and marginalized farmworkers and its consequences for global agriculture have not been as widely assessed and addressed. There are 1.1 billion farm workers in the world and 450 million of them are seasonal migrant workers.

Most of them work without any legal protection, as they are part of the so-called informal economy.

These workers are composed of refugees, minorities, children and women, who are displaced, marginalized and vulnerable to human rights violations. Moreover, they predominantly work in in export-oriented agriculture of food and cash crops. This has consequences for responsible consumption and production at the global level.

With this 4-year-long project, we aim to address this gap and focus on farmworkers’ experiences of extreme climate events.

Using a multiscalar multiple case study design, we will examine how extreme climate events interact with the already high economic and social vulnerability of the workers.