Uses first-hand accounts from Jamaican migrant workers to uncover the real conditions that temporary workers face on Canadian farms each season.

Each year, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) brings thousands of temporary migrant workers to labor on Canadian farms during subzero springs, sweltering summers, and freezing falls. In Rotten at the Root, Kristin Lozanski exposes the myths of national benevolence that underpin the SAWP by asking Jamaican workers to share their lived experiences of exploitation and exclusion under the program.

Lozanski contrasts workers’ observations with national narratives that position the SAWP as a form of development that employs happy workers who are grateful for their opportunity. Focusing on food and wine production in the Niagara Peninsula, which supports a refined form of agritourism, she challenges the assumption that local food is ethical simply because it is local.

Lozanski’s impassioned study confronts the Canadian public image of goodness, insisting that the exploitation pervading the SAWP exists precisely because narratives of benevolence obscure long-standing criticisms.