This document summarizes a roundtable discussion about the implications of unpaid labor on farms. It notes that many young people gain farming skills through unpaid internships, while farmers rely on this labor for their businesses. However, interns may legally be considered employees. The laws around unpaid internships are unclear and case law is limited. Farmers want to support the next generation but also survive financially. Participants discussed finding respectful solutions within legal frameworks that support both farmers and young farmers.

1. 2014 ACORN Conference
Halifax Harbourfront Marriott Hotel, NS
Farm Interns and Volunteers: The Implications of Unpaid Labour for
Farmers, Workers and the Food Movement
Presentations & mediation by :
Alison Scott Butler - Director and founding member of Farm Works Cooperative,
Director of Friends of Agriculture in NS and member of Canadian Association of
Physicians for the Environment
Lucia Stephen - Discussion facilitator with ACORN and Director of the Grow A Farmer
program.
Charles Levkoe - Research Associate at the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems,
adjunct professor at Carleton University and a postdoctoral fellow at Wilfred Laurier
University.
Attendees :
Sarah Crocker, Newfoundland
Jude Major, Nova Scotia
Jude has been involved in many unique work/trade agreements since the 1960's.
She is interested in establishing successors on her farm and in discussing the
relationships between new and experienced farmers.
Colleen Freake, Nova Scotia
Colleen expressed the challenges that face young seasonal workers in the
maritimes in terms of the inability to find stable, year-round work and the diminishing
support from programs like EI.
Patricia Bishop, Taproot Farm, Anaapolis Valley,Nova Scotia
Having hosted many employees and interns simultaeneously, Patricia has had
difficulty distinguishing between tasks that are educational in nature and those that she
could be paying to have accomplished.
Amy, Heart Beet Organics, PEI
Amy discussed her interest in diferentiating between interns, apprentices and
employees, having hosted both an intern and apprentice at the same time on her farm.
Becky Sooksom, Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture
Bernard Soubry, Four Seasons Farm, Nova Scotia
As an intern and wwoofer, Bernard is interested in building his own farm
someday and expressed his thoughts about the difficulties of seasonal work and
establishing relationships with older farmers.
Jim Turner, Eastern Shore, Nova Scotia
Margaret Graves, FarmStart, Ontario
Maragaret works in supporting and training young farmers and spoke to some of
the legal implications around having non-wage labour on the farm
Owen Roberts, Four Seasons Farm, Nova Scotia
Owen is specifically interested in the legal implications and liability associated
with hosting interns or entering into alterative work/trade relationships on his farm
Jenn Greenburg, Abundant Acres Farm

2. 2011 NS ACORN Conference
Holiday Inn Halifax Harbourview
Jenn has hosted farm employees and interns and is interested in the difference
between the two in terms of providing worker's compensation and liability insurance.
Silvia Mangalam
Executive Summary :
This session was a round-table discussion focussing on the benefits and set-backs
that face farmers and young people who enter into non-wage agreements and
unique work/trade relationships. Currently, in the Ecological food movement, new
entrants are accessing skills and eductaion through ''internships'' or ''apprenticeships''.
They may be doing the work of employees, but are not necessarily treated as such.
Similarly farmers may be hosting ''interns'' who, by legal definition, should be treated as
employees based on their contributions to the farm business. Farmers are often
dependant on this non-wage labour to maintain their farm business and new -entrants
are also dependant on the invaluable experiencial learning that is unique to the farming
trade. Alison Scott Butler, Lucia Stephen, Charles Levkoe and the participants of the
discussion stressed that this issue is legal, ethical, educational and economic and that
there are no easy answers in terms of creating widespread or generalised policy. Our
new generation of domestic farmers and our aging farmers alike must build respectful
relationships with one another if they are to move forward through the legal grey-areas
and into formal working contracts.
The disussion began with Charles Levkoe :
Charles started a research project six months ago, probing the specific legalities
and ethics around interns on farms. This trend of non-wage labour in not new ;
however, we must ask, are internships on farms, which are for-profit businesses,
essentially exploitation ? In light of the current food movement, so many young people
are looking for practical and applied experience and training such as an internship.
And, farming is an experiential skill and a dying trade that is central to the movement
building around local, sustainable food systems.
Interships are taking the place of wage-labour for several reasons : Many young
people are not only looking for work in these difficult economid times, but, are looking
for meaningful work. And where farmers used to be able to depend on family members
to fill the rôle of non-wage labour on the farm, they now have to look outside of ther
families to find skilled employment even though they are still not equipped to pay full-time
wages. Similarly, the nature of farming is seasonal, so full-time is difficult to offer.
These details, in conjuction with the high price of aerable land and increasing debt
loads make it difficult for farmers to support employees and for young people to find
stable work in the field.
Instead, wages are being replaced by compensation. In exchange for hourly
work, ''interns'' may be offered one or all of the following, non-wage, benefits : informal
knowledge, skills-training, education, meals, housing, hands-on technical training,
resources and otherwise inaccesible opportunities such as renting or leasing land or
starting a small business.
In terms of the legality of these arrangements, the laws are unclear. The current
laws are only as good as the case studies that inform them, and currently there are very
few case studies that effectively demonstrate the non-wage labour issue.

3. 2014 ACORN Conference
Halifax Harbourfront Marriott Hotel, NS
In the past few years, the issue of interns doing the jobs of employees without
being monetarily compensated, has come into the spotlight. A case in British Columbia
in 2013, where wwoofers sued their hosts, saw the farmers ordered to pay $10,000 in
back-wages. And, regardless of the contract that is drawn between a farmer and an
''intern'' or unpaid volunteer, there is no legal prescedant for unpaid interns.
Each province, however, has its own labour laws in relation to working on farms.
In Ontario, for example, there is no required minimum wage, with the exception of
seasonal harvesters, no vacation pay for farm employees and no maximum hours .
Nova Scotia has similar criteria. Added to that, is the inability of farms to meet the
criteria that would make an internship legal in both the United States and in Canada. To
enter into a legal internship, the intern must not be displacing an employee by doing a
job that the farmer could hire for, and, there must be no net benefit for the farmer.
There are certain cases that would be considered exempt, like in Washington,
DC, where farms making below a certain gross income can hire interns without meeting
the legal criteria stated above.
There have been many subtle changes taking place in response to the possibility
that interns might be considered ''exploited workers''. Conscerned about labour laws,
WWOOF international has changed their title from ''Willing Workers On Organic Farms'',
to ''World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms''.
To understand who is involved, most directly, with this issue, an Ontario survey
gives us a profile of 471 workers from 106 farms and found that:
77% of eco-oriented, non conventional farms have unpaid labour.
58% of these farms are dependant on theses laborers.
The vast majority of these farms self-identified as being unprofitable
The worker profile consisted of 58% female, 91% white, 80% aged between 16
and 30 and with 54% having a college degree
Charles closes his comments by saying that it is obvious, through these findings,
that farmers are aware of the ''internship problem''. But, farmers, as well as new
entrants in the field, are also aware that interns are pivitol to the survival of small-scale,
eco-oriented farms ; they are the ones who are preserving the traditions.
Alison Scott Butler followed Charles Levkoe and began by discussing the Nova
Scotia labour standards.
The labour code in Nova Scotia does apply to all employers, though certain
exemptions are allowable for farmers, holiday pay being one. Agriculture is also exempt
from having to provide Worker's Compensation, though this is only applicable if the
employee is engaged in purely ''farm'' labour. This tends to exclude any kind of
secondary processing or packaging.
An agricultral employer could voluntarily pay a compensation premium, but this
would not necessarily protect the farmer from being charged under Occupational Health
and Safety. As well, at the federal level, employers are responsible for paying into CPP
and EI and submitting income tax deductions if their workers fit the criteria of an
''employee''. Casual employment and employment that is below a certain wage
threshold (like a day-laborour or harvester) are exempt.

4. 2011 NS ACORN Conference
Holiday Inn Halifax Harbourview
In order to protect themselves, farmers must determine whether or not their
''intern'' fits the criteria of an employee. A contractor who supplies services is not
considered an employee, nor is worker who is not under direct supervision, who must
provide his or her own tools or who sets his or her own hours. Similarly, a contractor is
considered to be someone who is expected to provide an outcome rather than a worker
who is expected to adhere to a daily work schedule or to complete a certain amount of
hours.
If a farmer and worker can create a relationship where the worker could be
considered a contractor, then the farmer can be exempt from having to pay into CPP
and EI. However, a non-employee should not make the mistake of trying to claim
employment benefits such as EI. The current government could use this sort of claim
as the foundation for an investigation and because of the need for case studies to
exemplify and clarify the legalities around farm workers, the government could easily
make an examle of anyone who is disobeying the rules.
Alison warns against the idea that an individual can take on the government and
urges farmers and farm workers to protect themselves as much as possible by
becomng familiar with their rights and the legal details of their unique work
arrangements.
Lucia Stephen continues this thread of discussion by making a note that liability
insurance has been put in place for the Grow A Farmer program in order to avoid some
of these employee/intern issues and to protect the host farmers and the program itself.
Interns and farmers involved in the Grow A Farmer program must also sign
waivers that define the program as solely educational. This allows the program to move
beyond the issue of work and set itself up to be a training program where tuition is
charged and a curriculum is set.
Alison noted that Grow A Farmer must remove themselves from the threat that
these interns might think that they are employees and have the rights of employees.
Though, most likely, they do meet the criteria of being an employee because they will
be contributing to the productivity and profitability of their host farm. It was on these
grounds, that the wwoofers in the 2013 BC case, were victorious. They were able to
prove that they had been contributing to the productivity of the farm business.
It is possible that, with pressure from large Ag, who may feel threatened by the
eco-oriented, organic food movement, the government could be lobbied to create laws
making it illegal for farms to use unpaid labour, interns, apprentices or even casual
workers.
If a large Ag company feels threatened by this Food Movement then they could
pressure the gov't to make more intense laws to make it illegal for farms to have unpaid
labour, under the table labour, interns, apprentices, casual workers etc....
Charles responds by bringing attention to the possibility of different models of
internships. Even if farms are not paying a wage, they may still opt to pay into CPP so
they can be transluscent.
There are also benefits to the internship model of non-wage labour, even if the
intern would be legally considered an employee. Through his research, Charles has
acknowledged that interns or apprentices have reported enjoying programs that most

5. 2014 ACORN Conference
Halifax Harbourfront Marriott Hotel, NS
resembled routine farm labour. This type of scheduled work was said to provide the
most valuable education if one was to consider farming as a viable career option.
It is also possible for a farm to take advantage of the expense that is incurred
through the paying our of wages. One farm in the US justified raising the price of their
products by including ''we pay fair wages'' on their labels. In Ontario and Manitoba,
Local Food Plus includes an equitable labour category in their certifying criteria and in
Europe, being certified Fair Trade can be seen as the equivalent of being certified fair
labour.
The panel hears questions from several of the workshop participants, including
queries about specific work/trade relationships and the legal implications of setting up
these unique contracts.
Charles notes, in a response to Owen Roberts' question about paying a wage but
charging rent for room and board, that the farmer would still have to incure the costs of
paying into CPP and EI as well as having to claim all of the rental income as revenue. It
was also noted, however, that the farmer would have the opportunity to write-off the
room and board and claim these as business expenses. Furthermore, both Charles and
Alison note the importance of clarifying any mutual agreement in writing in the form of a
contract and is a necessary step in avoiding potential legal repercussions. There are
two tiers of law could affect the farmer : If the farmer, as employer, is found guilty of
crime on a federal level then this could mean criminal charges. However, if an intern or
worker files a personal action against a farmer this does not necessarily mean that the
farmer has ''broken the law'', but would be considered under civil law.
Patricia from Taproot Farm asked for clarification in situations where an intern, as
part of their training, is doing a task that an employee could be hired to do. Charles
responds with the reminder that, when it comes to defining an intern, as soon as that
person is providing benefit to your farm, they are no longer an intern. How then, would
it be possible to keep track of tasks that are purely educational, when very few, if any,
non-work-related tasks exist on a working farm ?
Because interns, if they are doing the work of employees, are treated as
employees by the law, product prices have to reflect this increased need for skilled
wage-labour.
Alison moves on to address the domestic skilled labour shortage and points to
the option of hiring foreign workers who do comply with all employee criteria. Interns
are considered to be more high maintenance than a migrant or temporary worker who
sole role is to work as many hours as possible during their seasonal stay in order to
bring income back to their home-countries. Canadian or American youth or new-entrants
into the trade, especially those coming through a program like wwoof, do not
come close to providing the farm with the same amount of production that a migrant
worker could offer, simply because of differing cultural expectations.

6. 2011 NS ACORN Conference
Holiday Inn Halifax Harbourview
So the question arises, is the farmer looking for highly effecient seasonal wage-labour
or is the farmer seeking to pass on the knowledge of the trade and train future-farmers,
or both ?
The session closes with questions from participants addressing possible
solutions and ideas for the mitigation of this complex issue.
In terms of the issue of succession, could there be programs that would promote
loyalty and partnership between farmers and new-entrants ? This could provide farmers
with the dependable labour that is needed to keep the farm in operation and it could
provide new farmers with job security and possibilities for the future. Details that would
have to be considered would be the availability of long-term housing as seasonal labour
is not viable for young Canadians without the support of the EI program or the financial
security that comes from full-time work.
Will growing new farmers always mean making special considerations and
spelling out special contracts ? The current labour laws are in place as a result of
dedicated action against large businesses in order to protect workers against
exploitation. These laws, however, we not designed for the small scale, eco-oriented
farms of today.
Instead, could there be a model where we recognize the value of the experiential
education and training that is the core component of these internships ? It is even
possible to create laws that would attempt to govern such complex and contextually
specific situations ?