JUST SHY OF THREE decades ago when I was a single mother looking for side gigs, I answered an ad for farm labor at a fruit packing plant. The job was for rapid picking and packing of cherries in the heat of July on the western slope of Colorado. Being fairly fit and outdoorsy, I thought it might be interesting. But after a day in full sun, with only a 15-minute break allowed at a blistering, unshaded picnic table, I went home sick with heat exhaustion. I never returned.

I was lucky: I could quit and find better work elsewhere. Few seasonal farmworkers have that luxury. What’s more, at the time of my one-day stint, climate-related heat extremes had not yet hit with our current magnitude and frequency. I try to bear that previous experience in mind when hiring workers for my own Colorado goat farm, which I started 19 years ago. Mid-summer temperatures here can be brutal, and I insist my workers take a hydration and cooling break every two hours or less.

Farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die from heat related causes than those working in other industries.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 1.98°F (1.1°C) since 1901, with 19 of the 20 warmest years on record occurring since 2000. Extreme events such as heat waves and heat domes are becoming longer and more deadly. The number of heat-related fatalities in the United States has increased threefold in the last four years, with 2,032 heat-related deaths recorded in 2023. The actual number may be much higher.

We know that the preponderance of climate models predict that the situation will worsen. We also know that this will have a profound effect on the safety and productivity of the nearly 3 million agricultural workers in the US, and the estimated 857 million who work in agriculture around the world: Farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die from heat related causes than those working in other industries.

WHEN IT COMES to protecting farmworkers from heat, experts have identified a key threshold: According to physiological standards recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the World Health Organization, and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, among others, heat-related illness can be prevented by maintaining workers’ core body temperatures below 100.4°F (38°C). Apparently easier said than done. Currently, farm field workers’ core body temperatures (CBTs) regularly surpass that limit. For instance, a study of Florida fernery workers found that participants’ core body temperatures exceeded the safe limit on 57 percent of summer workdays examined. Other studies and surveys indicate that in the southern regions of the US, 49 percent of farmworkers’ CBTs exceeded 100.4°F by 10:30 AM. Another Florida study found that 84 percent of farmworkers reported at least one symptom of heat-related illness during the surveyed week, while 49 percent reported three or more symptoms. Similar findings for Europe, Australia, India, and Africa have been reported.

When a person’s CBT exceeds 100, an exhaustive number of symptoms arise, depending upon the worker’s gender and age. (The worst effects are for middle-aged males.) The brain is affected, with memory, balance, coordination, and judgment all impaired. Kidney damage can occur after only three continuous days of excessive heat exposure. For some people working in extreme heat, acute renal injury occurs with 24 hours of overexposure to temperatures over 100°F.

Lee Newman, director of the Center for Health, Work and Environment and professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, has been studying the increase in chronic and acute renal failure in farmworker populations. Heat stress and persistent dehydration turn out to be the likely culprits. Reports indicated that the disease is increasing among agricultural workers in Florida, California’s Central Valley, and Colorado’s San Luis Valley. “The common factors were heat exposure and heavy labor,” Newman told a Science Daily reporter.

These serious impacts on farmworker well-being also have implications for productivity, as well as for farmworker wages, given that many are paid per pound or piece of produce harvested. Studies have shown that temperatures over 90°F result in field workers carrying less and less poundage per hour. It’s the body’s way of trying to preserve its integrity. At 93°F (34°C), workers in full sun will reduce their energy expenditure by 50 percent. Heat stress is projected to cost the global GDP $2,400 billion in productivity losses by 2030, according to a 2019 report by International Labor Organization.

Despite all this, only a handful of US states have instituted meaningful protections. That handful includes my own, Colorado, as well as California, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota (which protects indoor workers only). Unfortunately, other states in some of the most vulnerable regions with some of the most vulnerable workers are actively shooting down heat protection efforts. These include Florida and Texas, where the state legislatures have actually enacted bans on local safety measures.

“It’s morally repulsive, and it will kill farmworkers,” Erik Nicholson, a farmworker advocate and the former vice president of United Farm Workers, told Civil Eats after Florida banned heat protections for workers earlier this year. “I have accompanied the families of too many farmworkers who have needlessly died due to heat stress.”

It’s not just the US that is behind on the issue. Europe, usually renowned for environmental and labor protections, isn’t doing much better. Only six European Union member states have a current and comprehensive heat management protocol for agricultural workers. The other 21 nations do not. This despite the fact that in 2021, 62,000 EU citizens died of heat-related complications. A handful of other countries, too, have started implementing certain protections for workers, including China, Gabon, Mozambique, Costa Rica, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

THE SOLUTIONS AVAILABLE are actually simple and cost-effective, like providing workers with an hourly wage, mandatory breaks, midday work bans, and education on self-protection measures.

Take education. Some workers inaccurately believe that multiple layers of clothing will protect them from pesticides. Heavy clothing is actually fairly useless for chemical protection and harmful for human temperature regulation. Pesticide residues from heavy field applications can penetrate overalls in 10 to 11 minutes. In fact, when it comes to minimizing pesticide exposure, masking is more important. In a continually warming climate, unmasked workers will be exposed to increasing quantities of aerosolized carcinogenic chemicals. The higher the field temperatures, the greater worker exposure via the air they breathe.

The simple act of acclimatizing workers can also save lives.

Offering educational materials about such matters in relevant languages through social media as well as in-the-field advocacy from trusted sources has helped workers adopt inexpensive and low-tech solutions for heat-related issues, like dressing in single layers, which can reduce thermal distress by 50 percent or more. Cooling bandanas — which are made of special fabrics that absorb water and help cool through evaporation — are also cheap and effective.

The simple act of acclimatizing workers can also save lives. Surveys show that most hospitalizations for heat stress occur within the first three days on the job. Most fatalities occur on day one. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, allowing workers to ease into a routine in full sun over the course of seven days can greatly reduce fatalities.

Increasing the frequency of breaks during hotter weather is also a simple, and essential, intervention. When temperatures exceed 95°F, experts advise that workers receive one minute of rest in the shade for every minute of labor, and no more than 30 minutes of labor at one stretch. (Several countries in the Middle East have taken this a step further, instituting midday work bans to ensure workers avoid the hottest part of the day.)

Offering an hourly wage goes hand-in-hand with breaks: If workers are paid a fair hourly rate, they will not feel that regular breaks will eat into their paychecks. And despite what the American Farm Bureau Federation (of which I am a member) claims, an hourly wage does not reduce farm profitability or cause food prices to skyrocket. In fact, economists have calculated that raising farmworker wages from their current average of around $14 per hour to $20.00 per hour would cost the American consumer about the price of a case of beer annually.

I am glad to report that the bad old days are mostly gone in Colorado, where farmworkers now make an hourly wage of $14.42 (or $590.61 per week for workers out on the range), have a legal right to drinking water, shade, and rest in extreme heat, and are treated like a valuable human resource and not a disposable commodity. Our workers come back year after year, often as families. They often become like family. Together, we celebrate the end of the season at annual going away parties called despedidas, organized to celebrate workers from Mexico and Central America before they return home in the fall. In a warming world, warmer treatment of farmworkers that helps them stay cool is more than overdue.