Stable farm labor seems elusive in global economy
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/stable_farm_labor.html
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian
Photos by Faith Cathcart and Ross William Hamilton, The Oregonian
November 07, 2009
Labor has always been the Achilles heel of U.S. agriculture. But today, globalization is causing the ultimate strain.
In the past two decades, U.S. producers of labor intensive crops have not kept up with the growth in the market. They have lost both global and domestic market share to foreign competitors, primarily because of cheap labor and lower production costs overseas.
That's particularly true in regions that produce fruits, vegetables, and nursery products. Six states -- Oregon, California, Florida, Texas, Washington and North Carolina -- account for half of all hired and contracted farmworkers. Growers depend on them to increase productivity and get fruits and vegetables to our plates.
And yet, the people vital to our diet and to our nation's economic vigor have rarely been a stable labor force. Foreign-born immigrants, most without legal status, make up the majority of those working in the fields. Critics of illegal immigration say they should be deported, replaced with legal American workers, and shut off from re-entering by a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
But stabilizing the agricultural labor force is not as simple as putting up a wall. Everywhere policy makers have turned for the past 50 years -- guest worker programs, legalization -- they have encountered roadblocks. And most agriculture experts agree that U.S.-born workers are not likely to ever fill those jobs.
Due to industrialization, Americans have left farm work in droves. Now most won't work for minimum wage doing some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the nation. And if growers paid more, trying to attract local workers, the low-cost global marketplace would quickly put them out of business.
The question remains, how to secure a stable, agricultural labor force?
A defining societal shift
When Bob Terry, owner of Fisher Farms near Gaston, advertised for entry-level field work positions a few months ago, he expected at least a few white, Anglo job seekers.
"With unemployment being as high as it is, we thought we'd have at least some Caucasians," Terry said. "But we had none."
Several hundred job seekers showed up, all Latino, Terry said, and most spoke broken English. The company, which produces more than 3.5 million plants on 300 acres at three sites, hired 80.
This is how it's always been, said Terry, who has worked with the company for 16 years.
"We always hear, 'You don't hire Americans, you hire the others, immigrants, because they're cheaper,'" Terry said. "And it's just not true. We don't discriminate, we just take them as they come in."
Monumental changes in the structure of agriculture have affected who works in the fields and how Americans feel about agricultural jobs, experts and data show.
Family farms, passed down through generations, were once the agricultural engine. But technology led to increased production and pushed farms to consolidate into large, industrial-sized operations. Although small family farms still exist, the bulk of production has shifted to large-scale family and corporate operations, which hire more non-family workers.
At the same time, millions of American farmworkers left rural areas for industrial and commercial jobs and the lure of the city. Farm wages were too low to compete, plus farmworkers were excluded from most labor protections, then and now. According to the 2006 Current Population Survey, crop farmworkers earn less than workers in similar low-skilled occupations, such as maids and janitors.
The societal shift away from farm work means that working in the fields is no longer part of American culture and is not a job most U.S.-born Americans are skilled in or find desirable, even during a recession, experts and growers say.
Even farmers and their families have been driven away from farm work by expanding nonfarm economic opportunities, said William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.
"We have a market where you can find alternatives," Kandel said. "Some pay less than agriculture, but are easier work and transportation-wise, and don't require the ability to move and follow the crops."
Lessons learned, forgotten
To fill entry-level farm jobs, agribusinesses and policymakers have turned to a variety of solutions, but many proved problematic.
One solution was to bring in immigrants to work the fields. But the Bracero Program, a guest worker program instituted by the government as the United States entered World War II, established a new instability.
Nearly five million Mexican farmworkers came on temporary contracts to the United States, including 15,000 to Oregon. Braceros brought with them large numbers of unauthorized workers, whom U.S. growers recruited and gladly hired. During the peak of the Bracero Program, in 1954, apprehensions of illegal border crossers by the U.S. Border Patrol sky-rocketed. Apprehensions fell as the program ended in 1964, amid reports of worker abuse. But the pattern was set.
From the mid-'70's on, under the U.S. government's tacit approval, illegal border crossings ballooned and U.S. growers continued to hire undocumented workers.
In 1986, immigration reform tried to legalize undocumented farmworkers and proffer farmers a stable, legal workforce. But it failed to deter illegal immigration.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) granted legal status to more than a million agricultural workers. It also introduced sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers and increased border enforcement.
But as the unauthorized workforce turned legal and gained job mobility, there was substantial "leakage" of legal workers away from agriculture to better paying, or more stable, employment, the National Agricultural Workers Survey shows. Ten years after IRCA, half of all farmworkers were again illegal, the survey shows.
The farmworkers who had gained amnesty left farm work, Kandel said, just as American farmworkers had done before. They were replaced with others crossing in illegally. While sanctions threatened to penalize employers for "knowingly" hiring undocumented workers, the law turned out to be obsolete. It requires employers to inspect identity documents and complete I-9 forms, but not to verify the authenticity of those documents.
"The cycle started all over again," said Robert Emerson, professor emeritus of Food & Resource Economics at the University of Florida.
Globalization brings uncertainty
According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, more than 90 percent of today's farmworkers are Latino, and only about 20 percent are U.S.-born. Over half don't have legal status, both nationally and in Oregon.
The question, Emerson said, is how to prevent the illegal immigration cycle from reoccurring when another reform is passed. Some experts, worker advocates and immigration critics say it's time to mechanize harvests and raise farm wages to attract and retain U.S.-born and legal immigrant workers.
"Growers may have to increase wages, mechanize, or use other kinds of agricultural methods to reduce reliance on hired farmworkers," Kandel said.
But globalization could impede that effort.
Employers can't afford to invest in mechanization or raise wages, because "costs of production are going up," said Gary Furr, general manager of J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., a large nursery based in Boring. Companies must remain competitive in a global marketplace, Furr said, or "you go out of business and push production to Third World countries."
That shift to other countries is already happening, Emerson said, especially among producers of labor-intensive crops. Since 1990, U.S. producers have lost a substantial chunk of the domestic fruits and vegetables market, data show.
In 1999, the United States became a net importer of fruits and vegetables for the first time in history. The import-export gap widened to a nearly $8 billion deficit in 2007, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Paradoxically, loss of competitiveness comes at a time of increased demand year-round from consumers for fresh fruits and vegetables, Emerson said.
Shifting the costs of higher farmworker wages onto U.S. consumers -- who spend less of their income on food than anyone else in the world -- is also not viable, Emerson said. Growers have little control over prices, he said, and suppliers can simply bring cheaper goods from overseas.
"There's no silver bullet to this problem," Emerson said.
With competition from cheap wages overseas, it's unclear how to retain legal workers in low-paid U.S. farm jobs, he said, because U.S. agriculture has become a revolving door even for immigrants. Once they learn English, understand the job market and are legal, they, too, leave for jobs with better pay and conditions.
"The majority of workers stay in agriculture only for a few years," Emerson said. "Most people don't look at it as a permanent job."
The existing guest worker program, called H2A, is wrought with bureaucratic red tape and used by a scant number of growers. But it may the future of U.S. agriculture, experts like Emerson and Kandel say, because it's unlikely U.S.-born workers will return to the fields.
"When you have an industry that's reliant on a set of conditions distinct from all others," Kandel said, "it's difficult to turn around as an employer and say, I'm going to up my wages so I can attract native-born workers."
--Gosia Wozniacka
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