Fifteen states provide zero workers' compensation coverage to agricultural employees, meaning a farmworker who loses a hand in a combine has no guaranteed medical coverage or wage replacement

Agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries in the United States: 60 to 70 out of every 100,000 farmworkers are killed on the job annually, and 33% suffer a nonfatal injury. Despite this, 15 states — including Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas — completely exclude agricultural workers from workers' compensation requirements. A farmworker in Georgia who is crushed by a tractor, loses fingers in harvesting equipment, or suffers a disabling back injury from years of stooping has no automatic right to medical bill coverage, lost wage replacement, or disability payments. The practical consequence is catastrophic for the individual worker. An uninsured farmworker with a serious injury faces a choice: go to an emergency room and accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt that they will never be able to pay, or avoid treatment and live with the disability. Many choose the latter. Workers with chronic injuries — repetitive stress injuries to the back, knees, and shoulders that are endemic in agriculture — simply work through the pain until they physically cannot, then return to their home country broken and broke. For undocumented farmworkers, the situation is even worse. They are unlikely to seek emergency medical care due to fear of immigration enforcement, and they have no access to disability programs. Even for H-2A workers, who are technically required to be covered by federal mandate, the practical reality is that filing a claim means engaging with bureaucratic systems, potentially angering the employer who controls their visa, and navigating a process conducted in English. This persists because the agricultural exemption from workers' compensation is a relic of the New Deal era, when Southern legislators demanded that labor protections exclude farmworkers and domestic workers — occupations dominated by Black workers at the time. The exemption was explicitly racist in origin, and it has never been fully corrected. Today, agricultural industry lobbying maintains these exemptions by arguing that mandatory coverage would raise costs for small family farms, even though the workers bearing the risk are disproportionately Latino immigrants on large commercial operations.