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Countries have been acting wierd about their farm protectionism for years, and I still don't understand it. The United States subsidizes corn to a massive degree, making it incredibly cheap, and an easy filler ingredient to add to most foods, and whoa hey look, everyone's fat now.
It should come as no surprise that "Organic" has become commodified and is now subject to the same price pressures as everything else in this world. Of course it has -- people have signalled they're willing to pay a lot more for something that costs a little more to make. It's an easy choice.
I think a system of low trade barriers, no farm subsidies, and informed consumers (more on that in a minute) would be better for farmers, better for food eaters, and better for the environment. This margin is not large enough to contain the entirety of the argument for this.
As to what's better for migrant workers... I can't say I care. I mean, yeah, I care about Mexico, and wish it well, but I don't consider it my explicit job to find something for unskilled Mexicans to do. I have noticed that Canada's "guest worker" program, where people come over, work at a farm picking tomatoes at a farm in Leamington for a few months, then go home, seems to work well to everyone's benefit.
About informed consumers. This is related to the claim that the nutritional value of food has dropped precipitously since the earlier part of this century. Why would it have? It's the same reason that gas is cheap -- the externalities, of noise pollution, of ruin to our lungs, of un-human suburbs, aren't priced in. Ask yourself this: can you tell by looking at two tomatoes which one has greater nutritional value? I sure can't. Rationality means you buy the cheaper one. So fertilizer becomes optimized to punching out tomatoes year after year on the same land, and things that nobody is rewarded to care about (like enhancing the nutrient content of the tomato) are eliminated.
I would love to get a way of learning the nutritional content of produce, and have it right up on the wall or the produce box alongside where it came from. I would also love to find a way to penalize farmers (all farmers in the world) for not using sustainable farming methods. All of this would be accomplished with trade agreements, and my dirty leftist little secret, is I hope they sort that shit out one of these decades.
My personal soluiton to buy local; at least it's on the vine/tree longer. I'll trade an organic peach from California over an inorganic peach from Ontario any time.
