New York Department of Agriculture partners with Departments of Labor and Health

Aug 24, 2015

Joint initiatives will help agriculture employers

New York’s Departments of Agriculture, Labor and Health are working together to give agriculture employers the tools they need to understand the law when it comes to putting together a workforce.

Handshake

“The work that our state’s farmers do is critical to the health and well-being of all New Yorkers,” said Commissioner of Health Dr. Howard Zucker. “It’s important that we do what we can to ease their workload. In this case, we are streamlining requirements for seasonal housing, which will help them focus on their main task at hand: growing produce for the state of New York.”

There are three main topics being explored:

1. Farm Worker Memorandum of Understanding
After agriculture employers demonstrated confusion about the current government standards for migrant farmworkers and their housing, the Departments of Labor and Health will streamline housing inspections for farmworkers.

2. Wage Deductions
The Department of Labor will assist agriculture employers when it comes to matters of wage deductions, employer rights and responsibilities. These will be done via a series of webinars and in-person presentations.

3. Agriculture Labor Advisory Group
The Departments of Agriculture, Labor and Health will work together to form the Agriculture Labor Advisory Group. The group will be assembled to discuss issues concerning the agricultural community when it comes to labor issues.

The group will be announced before November 1^st and the first order of business will be to reduce the high youth unemployment rate and help employers discover skilled, entry-level workers.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.