Page 33 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

While estimates vary widely in terms of how many U.S. farmworkers have issues with their
documentation, Martin says, “about 70% of hired workers on crop farms were born in Mexico,
and 70% of these Mexican-born workers are unauthorized, so half of crop workers are working
illegally. California has a higher share of unauthorized workers because more of its workers were
born in Mexico, 90% versus less than 70% in other states.”

Even with the large number of workers here illegally, U.S. farmers have been having a difficult
time finding enough workers, which has had a negative impact on U.S. agriculture. In 2008, a
Texas A&M study noted that 77% of vegetable farmers reported scaling back operations due to
lack of labor. And according to the Ag Workforce Coalition (AWC), a group of nearly 70
organizations representing U.S. farmers, growers, livestock and poultry producers, dairies, and
ranchers, “more than 80,000 acres of fresh produce that used to be grown in California have been
moved to other countries.” The coalition further states that if the labor shortage continues to
worsen, thousands of farms could fail, and farm income could drop by an estimated $5 billion to
$9 billion.

A study by Texas A&M conducted in 2015 found 51% of all dairy laborers are foreign-born, and
dairies that employ immigrant labor supplied more than 79 % of the nation’s milk supply.

“Dairy farmers are not going out of business because of a lack of workers, but they are not
expanding because of the difficulty in finding labor,” says Jaime Castaneda, senior vice president
of policy, strategy, and international trade for the National Milk Producers Federation.

Enforcement of current immigration law has only added to the difficulty in finding and keeping
farm laborers, and the issue reaches across sectors and farm size. “If you are a farmer with a
significant amount of labor, or a small farmer with one laborer, and something happens to those
people, you run into trouble,” says Castaneda. He adds that dairy farmers, while concerned about
enforcement, aren’t opposed to enforcement as long as there is meaningful reform and a supply
of workers.

Some foreign-born farm laborers with documentation issues have been on the same farm for
more than a decade, according to sources.

“We have a very nervous agricultural community. As fear of enforcement gets worse, the
nervousness also gets worse...Rumors of enforcement, threats of enforcement are creating a
nervous atmosphere,” says Chuck Connor, CEO of National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
and chair of AWC.

Regardless of whether food is produced here or in other countries, Connor notes the chance that
food will be handled by a foreign-born worker is extremely high. He argues that buying products
grown in the United States rather than in another country—when both have been handled by
foreign-born workers—is best for both U.S. consumers and U.S. farmers and necessary to keep
U.S. agriculture competitive.

Sources note that despite the best efforts of farm interests and Congress, the worker shortage is
getting worse. “If this problem doesn’t get solved, the price of strawberries and other produce in
grocery stores will go up tremendously,” says Bissett. “If the problem isn’t solved, fresh fruits
and vegetables will become a luxury item in this country.”

www.Agri-Pulse.com 31