dairy-farmerLabor is one of the biggest challenges facing a few sectors of agriculture right now. Recent changes like changing legislation, increased farmer efforts to align with the Fair Labor Standards Act and growing advocacy on behalf of farm workers in sectors like the dairy industry have many facing growing costs to adhere to increasing regulations. But it’s essential to balance justice for farm workers with economics, dairy farmers say. That first means connecting workforce advocacy with the costs to dairy farmers whose profitability is already strained by a challenging marketplace, making it difficult to implement costly changes to ensure greater workforce protections. Everyone involved in the discussion agrees: Farmers need to take care of their workers through competitive pay and safe working conditions, and that’s a call for industry collaboration to make that continue to happen in the future. See more from on this hot topic.