To Anelyse Weiler, crops rotting in the fields and alleged violations of migrant workers’ rights are just two sides of the same coin.

That relationship is essential to modern food production in Canada, explained the professor of sociology at the University of Victoria, and one that puts farmers and their foreign employees in difficult positions — but for different reasons.

“The food system has positioned producers, including farmers and farm workers, in a pinch point,” said Weiler.

“It’s one of the expected outcomes of a globalized, capitalist food system. That’s one of the directions that we could predict from the system that we’ve adopted to feed ourselves, and it’s one we take for granted.”

Full story at the National Observer.