You really have to be willfully ignorant to not notice that it mathematically impossible to deliver food at the prices we pay while paying a decent wage.
The fruit I and friends picked and packed during a gap year in New Zealand for minimum wage (at that time around 6€) are sold here in Europe for 2€/kg. (And the place basically gave us a free place to live and free access to the fields for food.) It might not have been the most amazing job ever, but it was ok enough.
For a small and non-poor economy like New Zealand and Australia I find it a good compromise to take the adventure-minded youths of rich countries and have them work a few months of their lives, since there is no shortage of those and less people do the job all their lives or try to raise a family on it.
It's also interesting to see there was labour travel of poorer countries such as Chile and China. A few people came over, basically to have an opportunity to see the world (most surplus of earning was eaten by higher costs and travel), and they didn't even know English. I still admire them.
TL;DR: If you buy New Zealand fruit - most has been picked by some priviledged kid from a rich country (for fun and acceptable pay).
To support your point, the Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural produce [1], and, to draw a direct parallel with the article under discussion, the worlds largest exporter of tomatoes [2].
There is no way that agricultural workers in the Netherlands are treated as badly as those described in the OP.
We (Americans and Canadians) used to pay a much higher part of our income towards food than we are now. We would still eat if prices were higher and workers were paid fairly.
The problem is "fair" is hard to measure, but "cheapest" is very easy. Trying to determine what is "fairest" for all of the thousands of products we buy every year is impossible
We can demand that suppliers respect the labour laws along the whole production chain. That would go a long way. And when that's not enough, we can write stronger labour laws, and enforce them too.
Most of the population in Mexico earn about 750 pesos weekly at Maquilas, making car parts and clothes (about 50 dollars) If you're lucky you can earn about 950.
Earning your entire monthly cost of living in a single week, and earning 1/4th of your apartment's monthly rent in a week, isn't uncommon in the US. They get a roommate.
My point is that there are terrible conditions in Mexico, and we should be careful to focus on the ones that are true, lest people start to believe that there isn't really a problem.
Cost of living is quite uniform in the world. Instead of getting a roommate, they get a crappy small room, maybe running water, maybe not that many rats but probably not.
Well, considering that drug cartels capture immigrants for use as mules and drug cultivation without pay and they execute them at the end. They live like angels.
