Workers vanish when inspectors arrive. Drones are the answer.
In the valleys and coastal fields where Peru's agricultural export economy takes root, tens of thousands of workers labor beyond the reach of the law — not by accident, but by design. Peru's labor enforcement agency, Sunafil, can only inspect one in four registered agro-export companies, leaving a vast gray zone where informal arrangements, hidden payrolls, and labor trafficking networks operate with near impunity. Faced with this structural gap between mandate and capacity, the agency is turning to drones, algorithmic auditing, and worker-facing software to find those who have been deliberately made invisible. The deeper question — whether visibility alone can deliver justice to workers whose vulnerability is seasonal, structural, and systemic — remains unanswered.
- Three out of every four agro-export companies in Peru have never been inspected, creating a sprawling shadow economy where labor violations are not the exception but the operating model.
- When regulators do arrive, workers vanish — companies deploy informal labor brokers and family plot arrangements specifically to ensure no formal employment relationship can be traced.
- Sunafil is deploying drones to spot hidden workers during inspections, building software to flag farms reporting suspiciously few employees for their size, and giving workers a way to check if they even appear on their employer's payroll.
- Even when violations are found and fines issued, only 3.5 in 10 companies actually pay — the rest litigate indefinitely or dissolve, turning enforcement into a slow procedural theater with no consequence.
- New regional offices in agricultural hubs like Virú, Olmos, and Sullana signal a push toward presence on the ground, but the agency's own leadership concedes the ambition far outpaces current capacity.
- The same informal labor patterns are spreading across fishing, construction, mining, and retail — suggesting this is not an agricultural anomaly but a national architecture of evasion.
Peru's labor enforcement agency, Sunafil, is confronting a crisis of its own scale. Its director, Juan Carlos Requejo, has acknowledged publicly what the numbers make plain: of the 4,000 agro-export companies registered with the state, inspectors visited only around 1,000 between 2019 and 2020. The remaining three-quarters operate in a gray zone where informal labor arrangements are not incidental but structural.
The agricultural sector has become a testing ground for labor evasion. Companies route workers through informal brokers — a driver with a van, a family plot feeding into a larger operation — ensuring no formal employment relationship is ever recorded. When inspectors arrive, workers disappear. Sunafil has had to ask itself a fundamental question: how do you protect people who are being deliberately hidden?
The agency's answer is technological. Drones will be used to spot workers on farms during inspections. New software will calculate how many employees a company should have based on its cultivated hectares, flagging those with suspiciously low payroll numbers. A third tool will allow workers themselves to verify whether they appear on their employer's official records — a crowdsourced layer of detection built on the assumption that workers, if given the means, will expose their own invisibility.
Yet technology cannot substitute for resources or political will. Sunafil has opened smaller offices in labor-dense regions like Virú, Olmos, and Sullana, and is forming a task force to pursue companies whose registered payrolls bear no resemblance to their actual production. These are meaningful steps, but Requejo himself admits the sector needs far more oversight than the agency can currently provide.
The enforcement problem is compounded by a legal one. Companies that receive fines routinely challenge them in court, delaying payment indefinitely. Only 3.5 in 10 sanctioned companies ever actually pay. Requejo is pushing for a bond requirement before appeals can proceed — a mechanism used in other sectors — to prevent wealthy firms from simply outlasting the state through litigation.
Beyond agriculture, the same patterns appear in fishing, manufacturing, construction, mining, and retail: workers hired through third parties for permanent roles, wages paid informally, legal protections nonexistent. Sunafil plans to intensify enforcement across all these sectors in 2021, though its record suggests the gap between intention and capacity will not close easily.
For the workers at the center of this story, the stakes are immediate and human. They are moved through informal networks, removed from payrolls, and subjected to conditions that would be illegal if anyone were watching. New tools may make them visible. Whether visibility translates into protection — especially for workers whose employment ends when the harvest does — is the question that policy has not yet answered.
Peru's labor watchdog is barely keeping pace with the scale of its own crisis. Juan Carlos Requejo, who runs Sunafil—the government agency tasked with policing workplace violations—sat down recently to explain why his office manages to inspect only about one-quarter of the country's agro-export companies. The numbers tell the story plainly: Sunafil has 4,000 registered agricultural exporters on its books. Between 2019 and 2020, inspectors visited roughly 1,000 of them. The rest operate in a gray zone where labor violations flourish almost invisibly.
The agricultural sector has become a laboratory for labor evasion. Companies use what Requejo calls "de facto services"—essentially a driver with a van who picks up workers and drops them at farms, with no formal employment relationship recorded. Families run small plots that feed into larger operations. Entire enterprises stay deliberately obscure, hidden from official view. When Sunafil does show up to inspect, workers vanish. The agency has begun asking itself a straightforward question: how do you find people who are deliberately being concealed?
The answer, Requejo suggests, lies in technology. Sunafil is exploring drone surveillance to spot workers on farms during inspections—a direct response to the practice of hiding laborers when regulators arrive. The agency is also building software that calculates how many workers a company should employ based on the hectares it operates, then flags those reporting suspiciously low numbers. A third tool will let workers themselves check whether they appear on their employer's official payroll, creating a crowdsourced detection system for informal employment.
But technology alone cannot solve what is fundamentally a resource problem. Requejo acknowledged that budget constraints prevented fuller enforcement in 2020, and promised expanded inspections in 2021. Sunafil has opened smaller regional offices in labor-heavy areas like Virú, Olmos, and Sullana—places where seasonal agricultural workers concentrate. The agency is also launching a specialized task force to pursue companies with obvious discrepancies between their registered payrolls and actual production levels. These are incremental moves in a sector that Requejo himself admits needs "much more" oversight.
The informal labor problem extends well beyond agriculture. Fishing for human consumption, manufacturing, construction, mining, and retail all show similar patterns: workers hired through third parties for permanent positions, wages paid under the table, no legal protections. Sunafil intends to intensify enforcement across all these sectors, though the agency's track record suggests the ambition may exceed its capacity.
There is also the matter of punishment that doesn't stick. Many companies challenge Sunafil's fines in court and succeed in delaying payment indefinitely, creating what Requejo calls a situation of "impunity." He is pushing for new rules that would require companies to post a bond before appealing sanctions—a mechanism already used in other sectors—to prevent wealthy firms from simply outlasting enforcement actions through litigation. Currently, only 3.5 of every 10 companies actually pay their fines; the rest either subsume violations into their operating costs or disappear before consequences arrive.
The human dimension remains largely absent from these policy discussions. Workers in Peru's agricultural export sector are systematically removed from payrolls, moved through informal labor networks, and subjected to conditions that would be illegal if they were formally employed. Sunafil's new tools may help detect them. Whether detection leads to actual protection remains an open question—especially in a sector where the temporary nature of agricultural work means that even workers who do get formalized may find themselves without employment once the season ends.
Notable Quotes
Our level of inspection is not sufficient. We must and will inspect all companies.— Juan Carlos Requejo, Sunafil superintendent
Many companies use the courts to evade fines, creating a situation of impunity.— Juan Carlos Requejo, Sunafil superintendent
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does Sunafil only inspect a quarter of the companies it's supposed to oversee?
Budget. They didn't have the resources in 2020 to reach beyond that 1,000 companies. But there's also a structural problem—the sector is designed to hide itself. Small family plots, informal labor contractors, companies that deliberately stay off the radar.
And when inspectors do show up, the workers are gone?
Exactly. That's why they're considering drones. It's a direct response to the fact that by the time Sunafil arrives at a farm, the workers have been moved or hidden. The agency is essentially saying: we can't rely on what we see when we walk through the gate.
What about the workers themselves? Can't they report violations?
They could, in theory. But Sunafil only recently achieved national coverage. Workers don't trust the system yet. They fear retaliation. And the agency knows it—they're opening smaller offices in agricultural regions specifically to build that trust.
So technology is the answer?
It's part of it. The software that calculates how many workers a company should have based on land size—that's clever. And letting workers check their own payroll status could expose a lot of hidden employment. But you can't technology your way out of a fundamentally under-resourced enforcement system.
What about companies that just ignore fines?
That's the real problem. They appeal in court, delay payment indefinitely, and Sunafil can't force collection. Requejo wants to change that—require a bond before appeal, like other sectors do. Right now only 3.5 of every 10 companies actually pay what they owe.
Does this extend beyond agriculture?
Fishing, construction, manufacturing, mining, retail—they all use the same playbook. Temporary workers, third-party contractors, no formal employment. Sunafil knows it and is planning to intensify enforcement across all of them. The question is whether they'll have the budget to actually do it.