At some farms that meet state standards, 15 men share a toilet or, sometimes, an outhouse. At others, groups of workers live in isolated camps with no telephone service or transportation. And at a few, sheets of cardboard stand in for mattresses.

Now, the state legislature appears ready to make at least modest changes to improve living conditions for workers.

A bill is making its way through the legislature that would begin to change some of the state's farmworker housing standards. The bill, which has the support of farm groups and advocates for workers, would add new housing inspectors and force more checks at problem farms, while requiring fewer checks at farms that consistently exceed standards. It would also force the state labor department, which oversees farm housing, to report the findings of its yearly inspections to legislators.

But the measure would make only one change in what farmers must provide for workers: Every worker would be guaranteed a mattress.

"We're looking at this as a good first step," said Carol Brooke, a lawyer with the Justice Center, a Raleigh nonprofit that advocates for farmworkers. "The idea was to get this issue in the public eye."

The bill, which passed in the Senate and is now awaiting discussion in the House, is a far cry from the proposal worker advocates put forward two years ago. In 2005, they asked the legislature to force a major overhaul of farm housing -- and the effort failed even to come up for discussion.

The 2005 bill asked for telephone lines, stoves, washers and dryers in every home. It called for deadbolts and locking windows on every house and heaters that could keep a house above 65 degrees, no matter the outside temperature. It included a ban on outhouses and said that one toilet could be shared by no more than 10 workers.

This time, advocates said, they went for a scaled-back bill to earn the support of farm interests. The N.C. Farm Bureau and the N.C. Agribusiness Council support this year's bill, and it faces no organized opposition.

Erica Peterson, executive vice president of the Agribusiness Council, a trade group that lobbies for farms, food processors, chemical companies and other businesses that profit from agriculture, said the bill will help state labor officials root out farms that fail to meet basic standards. But she said it wasn't necessary to burden farmers with expensive new requirements, such as eliminating outhouses or guaranteeing workers privacy in the bathroom.

"We're basically talking about farmers remodeling their housing, and that's expensive," Peterson said. "You start getting controversial when you do that."

Even providing phones, she said, could have caused headaches for farmers if workers stole them or racked up long-distance bills.

Regina Luginbuhl, who heads the state labor department's migrant farmworker inspections program, said the proposed changes would improve enforcement. The two new inspectors it provides would give her a total of seven, and she said she would use the extra resources to look for farms that routinely ignore state housing standards. Every farm that houses migrant workers is required to register with the labor department and have the housing inspected.

Luginbuhl said farmers register about 1,300 worker camps each year, but she suspects there are at least that many more that growers and labor contractors don't bother to register. On the rare occasions when her inspectors find those camps, living conditions are usually deplorable, she said.

In years past, labor inspectors have found workers piled into converted nightclubs or crumbling trailers, their homes crawling with roaches and without running water. But her limited staff seldom has time to ferret out more than five unregistered camps each year, Luginbuhl said.

However, Luginbuhl said the bill doesn't address some of the problems inspectors see. She said they are powerless to demand more space for workers, who are guaranteed only 50 square feet by the current law, or other amenities that many consider basic, such as privacy screens between toilets or showers.

She said other states have more stringent laws, but they face their own problems. In California, she said, standards are so high that farmers have simply stopped providing housing.

"Farmers say, 'Go live under a bridge, we don't care, just show up for work.' That happens in California," Luginbuhl said. "We're trying to take the middle road."

As North Carolina begins to upgrade its standards, she said she's hoping more farmers will take note of those such as Ron Hudler, an Ashe County Christmas tree grower who has earned the designation "Gold Star Grower" for his housing.

Hudler houses about 80 people a year in four camps, which all have telephones, cable television, large freezers, washers and dryers.

"Some people had trouble getting help last year," Hudler said. "We turned help away. And that's because we treat them right."