What should happen to agriculture in the US?

[Peikko 1,575]

Link

American workers don't seem to want to do this type of seasonal work and guest worker programmes have been difficult to access which seems to have been the excuse farmers have used when employing illegals for this type of work.

Should this part of the agricultural heritage of the US be allowed to wither away because it's uneconomic? The article seems to suggest that the pay isn't the reason why US citizens don't want to engage in it, rather the seasonal nature. However, if these crops can be grown and harvested cheaper elsewhere, maybe it's time to just stop growing certain crops?

Or, would people prefer that an easy to administer guest worker programme should be implented to allow for foreign workers to continue to do this work on a legal footing?

[JODO 2]

September 5, 2007
Short on Labor, Farmers in U.S. Shift to Mexico
By JULIA PRESTON

CELAYA, Mexico — Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.

Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in the fields of California, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and many probably in the United States illegally.

But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation.

"I'm as American red-blood as it gets," Mr. Scaroni said, "but I'm tired of fighting the fight on the immigration issue."

A sense of crisis prevails among American farmers who rely on immigrant laborers, more so since immigration legislation in the United States Senate failed in June and the authorities announced a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants. An increasing number of farmers have been testing the alternative of raising crops across the border where there is a stable labor supply, growers and lawmakers in the United States and Mexico said.

Western Growers, an association representing farmers in California and Arizona, conducted an informal telephone survey of its members in the spring. Twelve large agribusinesses that acknowledged having operations in Mexico reported a total of 11,000 workers here.

"It seems there is a bigger rush to Mexico and elsewhere," said Tom Nassif, the Western Growers president, who said Americans were also farming in countries in Central America.

Precise statistics are not readily available on American farming in Mexico, because growers seek to maintain a low profile for their operations abroad. But Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, displayed a map on the Senate floor in July locating more than 46,000 acres that American growers were cultivating in just two Mexican states, Guanajuato and Baja California.

"Farmers are renting land in Mexico," Ms. Feinstein said. "They don't want us to know that."

She predicted that more American farmers would move to Mexico for the ready work force and lower wages. Ms. Feinstein favored a measure in the failed immigration bill that would have created a new guest worker program for agriculture and a special legal status for illegal immigrant farm workers.

In the past, some Americans have planted south of the border to escape spiraling land prices and to ensure year-round deliveries of crops they can produce only seasonally in the United States. But in the last three years, Mr. Nassif and other growers said, labor force uncertainties have become a major reason farmers have shifted to Mexico.

While there are benefits for Mexico, as American farmers bring the latest technology and techniques to its crop-producing regions, American farm state economists say thousands of middle-class jobs supporting agriculture are being lost in the United States. Some lawmakers in the United States also point to security risks when food for Americans is increasingly produced in foreign countries.

Tramping through one of his first lettuce crops near Celaya, an agribusiness hub in Guanajuato, Mr. Scaroni is more candid than many farmers about his move here. He had made six trips to Washington, he said, to plead with Congress to provide more legal immigrants for agriculture.

"I have a customer base that demands we produce and deliver product every day," he said. "They don't want to hear the excuses." He acknowledges that wages are much lower in Mexico; he pays $11 a day here as opposed to about $9 an hour in California. But without legal workers in California, he said, "I have no choice but to offshore my operation."

The Department of Labor has reported that 53 percent of the 2.5 million farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants; growers and labor unions say as much as 70 percent of younger field hands are illegal.

As the American authorities tightened the border in recent years, seasonal migration from Mexico has been interrupted, demographers say. Many illegal farm laborers, reluctant to leave the United States, have abandoned the arduous migrant work of agriculture for year-round construction and service jobs. Labor shortages during harvests have become common.

Some academics say warnings of a farm labor debacle are exaggerated. "By and large the most dire predictions don't come true," said Philip Martin, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. "There is no doubt that some people can't count on workers showing up as much as they used to," Professor Martin said. "But most of the places that are crying the loudest are exceptional cases."

But some recent studies suggest that strains on the farm-labor supply are real. Stephen Levy, an economist at the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, in Palo Alto, compared unemployed Americans with illegal immigrant workers in the labor market. "The bottom line," Mr. Levy said, "is that most unemployed workers are not available to replace fired, unauthorized immigrant workers," in part because very few of the unemployed are in farm work.

Mr. Scaroni said he started growing in Mexico reluctantly, after seeing risks to his American operations. At peak season his California company, Valley Harvesting and Packing, employs more than 1,000 immigrants, and all have filled out the required federal form, known as an I-9, with Social Security numbers and other identity information.

"From my perspective everyone that works for me is legal," he said. But based on farm labor statistics, he surmises that many of his workers presented false documents.

An impatient man in perpetual motion, Mr. Scaroni marches through his fields shouting orders to Mexican crew leaders in rough Spanish while he negotiates to buy new trucks in Mexico on a walkie-talkie in one hand and to sell produce in the United States on a cellphone in the other.

Frustrated with experts who say that farmers with labor problems should mechanize, he plunges his hands into side-by-side lettuce plants, pulling out one crisp green head and one that is soggy and brown. After his company invested $1 million in research, he said, "We haven't come up with a way to tell a machine what's a good head and what's a bad head."

He also dismisses arguments that he could attract workers by raising wages, saying Americans do not take the sweaty, seasonal field jobs. "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I did that I would raise my costs and I would not have a legal work force," Mr. Scaroni said.

Still, transferring to Mexico has been costly, he said. Since the greens he cuts here go to bagged salads in supermarkets in the United States, he follows the same food-safety practices as he does in California. Renting fallow Mexican land, he enclosed his fields in fences and installed drip-irrigation systems for the filtered water he uses.

He trained his Mexican field crews to wear hair nets, arm sheaths and sanitized gloves, and held drills on the correct use of portable toilets. In the clean-scrubbed cooling house, women in white caps scrutinize produce for every stray hair and dirt spot.

By now about one-fifth of Mr. Scaroni's operation is on five farms approaching 2,000 acres in Guanajuato. A few of his Mexican employees came from California, like Antonio Martínez Aguilar, a field manager who worked there for 15 years but could never get immigration documents.

"I tried everything, but there wasn't anything anyone could do to make me legal," Mr. Martínez said.

Negotiated among growers and unions over seven years, the agricultural measure in the failed immigration bill, known as AgJobs, had wider bipartisan support than the bill as a whole, lawmakers said. Its supporters have said they hope to bring it before Congress this fall, perhaps attached to the farm bill. [it was hurt by last week's resignation of Senator Larry E. Craig, the Idaho Republican who was one of its chief sponsors.]

Mr. Scaroni expects to recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages he pays here, although he says Mexican workers are less productive in their own country.

"It's not a cake walk down here," he said. "At least I know the one thing I don't have to worry about is losing my labor force because of an immigration raid."


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/05exp...amp;oref=slogin

[Jasman0717 9]

When I was a kid growing up on the western slope of Colorado the farmers working with some agency would import Navajo Indians from their reservation down by Durango. I always felt sorry for them because of the horrible living conditions they had to endur while working the fields.

[Peikko 1,575]

I was sort of interested in how people feel about this issue. It comes down to a choice of letting this type of agriculture be 'outsourced' or allow for realistic guest worker programs. Or are there other realistic alternatives? I am not sure what is the best answer, but just allowing agriculture to flounder while government grasps at straws seems a little, well shortsighted, no?

Edited October 9, 2007 by Purple_Hibiscus

[GaryC 7]

If we need to import farm workers to get it done that is fine with me, just make them here legally is all.

[Ban Hammer 13,135]

I was sort of interested in how people feel about this issue. It comes down to a choice of letting this type of agriculture be 'outsourced' or allow for realistic guest worker programs. Or are there other realistic alternatives? I am not sure what is the best answer, but just allowing agriculture to flounder while government grasps at straws seems a little, well shortsighted, no?

well on one hand it does allow for the land to be developed into more shopping malls and mcd's

[almaty 19]

i am with brother gary..have a legal basis for those seeking temp. employment in farming and let the people work..since there is a shortage here

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Welfare recipients!

[peejay 327]

How can you have a so called new "legal" guestworker program when the Federal government doesn't enforce the laws already on the books and there are already guestworker programs that these farmers refuse to use because they insist the programs are too cumbersome? Of course they are going to hire illegal aliens instead.

We still don't have the Entry/Exit program mandated by law years ago to keep track of foreigners entering our country. How can you have a guestworker when you don't know if he went home?

Instead of pressing the Federal government to enforce the law and implement a workable system and program, all these farmers just continued to hire known illegal aliens and to fight any attempt to reform this mess. The politicians are too lame to do anything except sweep their incompetence under the carpet with amnesty after amnesty because it is easy for them.

AgJobs is nothing more than a backdoor illegal alien amnesty that the American people have already decided they don't want any part of. You don't reward people by giving them what they broke the law to get.

The ag business always just wanted cheap, disposable workers that they have no responsibility for and can hire fast with no strings attached. Legal or illegal...they will do what they can get away with.

Now we see what was sown is what is reaped. It's a free market and they are darn sure free to pick up their marbles and farm down in Mexico (or elsewhere) if that is where things work out best for all concerned.

The American people are the real losers in this madness, incompetence, and corruption.

[Addie_Goodvibes 0]

If we need to import farm workers to get it done that is fine with me, just make them here legally is all.

I agree with Gary! Impliment a seasonal guest worker program where the workers enter LEGALLY on a seasonal basis, pay taxes and follow the laws of the nation ( drive ONLY with Valid liscense & Insurance , pay taxes ect..)

[Addie_Goodvibes 0]

Welfare recipients!

Guest wokrer program should not allow them to bring their whole family here.They should only be seasonal workers whoare given temporary Visaand must leave each season and renter on New Visa

[MrsAmera 41]

How can you have a so called new "legal" guestworker program when the Federal government doesn't enforce the laws already on the books and there are already guestworker programs that these farmers refuse to use because they insist the programs are too cumbersome? Of course they are going to hire illegal aliens instead.

We still don't have the Entry/Exit program mandated by law years ago to keep track of foreigners entering our country. How can you have a guestworker when you don't know if he went home?

Instead of pressing the Federal government to enforce the law and implement a workable system and program, all these farmers just continued to hire known illegal aliens and to fight any attempt to reform this mess. The politicians are too lame to do anything except sweep their incompetence under the carpet with amnesty after amnesty because it is easy for them.

AgJobs is nothing more than a backdoor illegal alien amnesty that the American people have already decided they don't want any part of. You don't reward people by giving them what they broke the law to get.

The ag business always just wanted cheap, disposable workers that they have no responsibility for and can hire fast with no strings attached. Legal or illegal...they will do what they can get away with.

Now we see what was sown is what is reaped. It's a free market and they are darn sure free to pick up their marbles and farm down in Mexico (or elsewhere) if that is where things work out best for all concerned.

The American people are the real losers in this madness, incompetence, and corruption.

The part that I have bolded is the part that I really disagree with. There might be some farmers who are looking for farm help in this way but there are a lot of farmers who really are decent (I'm talking family farmers not corporate farms) I grew up in rural Wisconsin and my dad has been involved in agriculture development for most of his life (grew up on a farm) and works for the U of WI in ag development. The majority of family owned farms really do treat their workers good, legal or not. They provide room and board for most of them as well as pay. They treat them like family and from what they say, they work harder than you can imagine side by side with any American farmhands they might have. Also much to many of your shigrin , they are not on American welfare or any other services, they try to stay as under the radar as possible - signing up for food stamps really targets you. Also those using fake SS#'s etc pay taxes just like you and I and they will most likely never see any of that money so I think that everyone should really get their facts in order before they start lambasting illegal immigrants. I used to really sympathize with illegal immigrants, and to some extent I still do, considering how difficult it was for my husband and I to be together through the legal immigration process and the number of times I thought "gee maybe I should just get him to Mexico and let him come that way it sure must be easier". We all know how confusing and expensive the immigration process was for us, so imagine being a poor rural Mexican farmer who wants to give himself and his family a better life, he probably can't read Spanish let alone English, what are the odds of him doing the paperwork correctly and then getting approved for a visa? Not much. Let's face it we need low level workers for our industries, and like it or not illegal immigrants provide it. The immigration system needs to be re-vamped and stop scapegoating the messy system on the immigrants.

[JohnK 0]

Nothing is keeping the mexicans from doing this work other than farmer greed. There is no numerical limit to the number of H2A visa's given out so the farmers have an adequate supply of workers available. But 1) they choose not to plan ahead and 2) don't want to pay the required minimum wage.

[pedroh 21]

Nothing is keeping the mexicans from doing this work other than farmer greed. There is no numerical limit to the number of H2A visa's given out so the farmers have an adequate supply of workers available. But 1) they choose not to plan ahead and 2) don't want to pay the required minimum wage.

$9 an hour is not enough?? its farm pickers, not managers or IT professionals.. besides, there's not a lot of profit to sacrifice for the wages.. yeah, big farmers or producers AKA Dole, Del Monte can afford it, but not the thousands of average farms..

[JohnK 0]

$9 an hour is not enough?? its farm pickers, not managers or IT professionals.

You need to point out where I said "$9 an hour is not enough".