Page 31 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

Likewise, in California last year, a tomato farmer had three trucks loaded with tomato plants but
no workers, says David Slaughter, a leading research expert in agricultural robotics and machine
learning at the University of California Davis.

“Typically, you need six people per transplanter, so he needed 16 to 18 people. They
couldn’t plant that day,” Slaughter said.

The ongoing labor shortage in agriculture is acute, spanning the nation from coast to coast and
from the Rio Grande to the northernmost border with Canada, impacting all sectors of the
industry. A 2012 survey by the California Farm
Bureau found 71% of fruit tree growers and
80% of raisin and berry growers were unable to
find enough help to prune their trees or vines
or harvest their crops.

These scenarios are typical of what’s occurring
across the country today. When labor is in
short supply, farmers can respond in one of
several ways:

• Scale back their operation
• Raise wages and improve benefits to

find new workers
• Try to secure more guest workers
• Adopt mechanization technologies
• Retain existing but aging workers through adopting mechanical aids
• Put expansion plans on hold
• Switch to less labor-intensive crops
• Exit the business

All of this is already occurring throughout U.S. agriculture. According to USDA’s Economic
Research Service’s Farm Labor Markets in the United States and Mexico Pose Challenges for
U.S. Agriculture report: “Over the last decade, wages for hired farmworkers have risen, the gap
between agricultural and nonagricultural compensation has narrowed, and use of the H-2A
program has more than doubled.” And in California, almond and walnut groves, which are
machine harvested, are replacing orchards of hand-picked fruit.

The declining ag workforce

Most of the foreign-born farmworkers in the United States are from Mexico, and the number of
native Mexicans working in the United States—documented and undocumented—began to

decline in 2007, according to the ERS report. The trend toward fewer foreign-born young
workers—those typically most willing to move to the United States to engage in hard, physical
labor—being available to fill jobs in U.S. agriculture has been driven by:

• Reverse migration 29
• Rising opportunities in Mexico’s farm and service industries
• A better educated populace in Mexico
• Declining birthrates in Mexico
• Heightened risks involved with crossing the border illegally

www.Agri-Pulse.com