Ripe crops languish in the fields It's harvest time in the Central Valley, but where are the farmworkers? George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, September 18, 2005 It's the middle of harvest season for California raisin grapes, and only half of the farmworkers needed are in the fields. What holds for raisin grapes is happening widely in California agriculture. In the Central Valley alone, there is a shortage of from 70,000 to 80,000 workers to bring fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables to market, according to an estimate by the trade association Western Growers. Some growers are planting fewer acres than normal as they scramble to save the season. Western Growers is worried that the lack of workers -- mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America -- could cause $1 billion in losses to California agriculture this year. Manuel Cunha Jr., president of Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, is getting 50 calls a day from growers asking where the workers are. "It's a disaster," Cunha said. "We have an immigration program that is broken." Many of the farmworkers who year after year make the trip from their homelands to California, doing the work Americans shun, have found their own ladders of success to climb. They're taking better-paying jobs in construction and landscaping in the booming Central Valley communities where they once picked a cornucopia of crops. Construction alone may be taking 40 percent of the available workforce, growers estimate. Farmworker numbers are fewer, too, because of increased border protection in the post-Sept. 11 climate, both from the authorities and private citizens who deputize themselves to try to stanch illegal immigration. According to the United Farm Workers union, the worker shortage can be laid at the feet of growers. "Cesar Chavez talked about this 40 years ago, and I continue to talk about it," said Arturo Rodriguez, the union's president. "Employers have never looked at and valued their workforce and paid wages and provided benefits that show the respect and dignity those workers deserve." Farmers say they are victims of circumstances. Vito Chiesa, a peach grower in Hughson (Stanislaus County), says the shortage is due "to losses to other industries, more than anything else." He added, "Second is the difficulty of the work and then the border thing -- that is what makes my hair stand up. I am so overcome with frustration with labor ... it makes me want to get out of peaches tomorrow." Chiesa, who works with his brother, Andrew, said his workforce is down 20 percent and his production for this year's harvest of cling peaches for canning is off from 2 to 5 percent. As a result, he and his brother are moving away from peaches to almonds and walnuts, which will reduce his demand for labor. He's down to his last 10 acres of fruit. Chiesa's farm lies along the Tuolumne River in Stanislaus County, in soil so rich that 250 agricultural commodities are grown there. It's an important farm region in a state with a $30 billion fruit and vegetable industry. And it's an industry in which immigrant workers, many of them illegal, are indispensable. The numbers of available farmworkers in California and Arizona has been declining for about five years, but the first acute shortage resulted after a U.S. Border Patrol crackdown on illegal immigrants during the November 2004 lettuce harvest in the Yuma, Ariz., area. Growers were able to harvest only 30 percent of their winter lettuce crop, and the result was $1 billion in agricultural loss, said Tom Nassif, president and chief executive of Western Growers. The Irvine-based trade association represents 3,000 members who grow, pack and ship about half of the nation's fresh produce. Nassif, a Republican who was ambassador to Morocco in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, said there probably will be a similar financial loss this year in the Central Valley. "You've got construction companies standing at the edge of the fields offering higher wages," said Nassif. "You have farmer versus farmer trying to outbid each other, to steal someone else's workers. It's very possible history could repeat itself and we could end up (in California, like Arizona in 2004) with 25 percent of the workers needed." The cries for help from growers are rekindling interest in a jobs bill by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., that would give an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants temporary worker permits and put them on a track to citizenship. The legislation was developed over eight years by some strange bedfellows, including growers, the United Farm Workers, the AFL-CIO, the Republican caucus and more than 500 liberal and conservative advocacy groups. The proponents disagree about the root causes of the labor shortage but share the view that agriculture needs a fix. The "AgJobs" bill had a vote in April when it was tied to a war appropriation. Supporters fell seven short of the 60 required to prevent a filibuster, but were heartened it got as far as it did. Now they plan to bring it back. "The bill is a product of a long process of negotiation and compromise among various interested groups," said Ana Avendaño, assistant general counsel and director of the immigrant worker program at the AFL-CIO. "They judged this to be in their best interests." Support for the AgJobs bill is not universal. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is a co-sponsor, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., voted against it, saying "it is a magnet for illegal immigration." There are about 1.25 million undocumented workers in the United States, 600,000 of whom live and work in California, said Feinstein, citing U.S. Labor Department data. The number 1.25 million represents about 50 percent of the agricultural workforce, Feinstein noted. "An influx in illegal immigration would flood the labor market, make jobs more difficult to find and drive down wages," Feinstein said on the Senate floor April 18. Other critics call it another doomed amnesty bill. "Employers have always wanted an abundant supply of the cheapest labor," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates a reduced level of immigration and enforcement of laws covering illegal immigration. "Just because people on the other side of the border are willing to be exploited is not necessarily good or beneficial," he said. Luawanna Hallstrom of Oceanside (San Diego County) has another view, developed after her farm lost $2.5 million over 45 days when federal agents rounded up 75 percent of her crew of 400 people harvesting vine-ripe tomatoes at the peak of season immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "We paid a price to show there is not enough of a domestic legal labor force to support the agriculture industry," said Hallstrom, the general manager of Harry Singh & Sons, growers that lease 600 acres from the U.S. government at Camp Pendleton. The company, after two weeks of cleaning up the ruined crop, arranged for its next crew through the government's H-2A program, which permits employers to apply for nonimmigrant alien workers to perform seasonal or temporary work if it can be shown that there are not sufficient U.S. workers available for the job and the employment of foreigners will not adversely affect U.S. workers. The H-2A program is costly because the company must provide housing for workers who are unable to return to their residences the same days they work, plus three meals a day and transportation. "All we are asking for, in immigration reform, is that we be given the mechanism to legally hire workers before they act on the enforcement side," said Hallstrom. Over in Fresno, Glen Goto, the chief executive officer of the Raisin Bargaining Association, which negotiates prices for farmers, noted that the raisin grape harvest is typically from the last week of August to Sept. 20. But this year it has been delayed two weeks because of the worker shortage and other factors, such as weather conditions. Under federal law, if raisin grapes are not harvested by Sept. 20, growers will not qualify for federal crop insurance if the harvest is damaged, although Feinstein and others in Congress have asked for an extension to Sept. 30. It's one more headache for California raisin growers, who by this weekend have completed about 50 percent of the harvest. Last year, the harvest of 265,000 tons, valued at $320 million, was nearly complete by this date. "When farmers have money, they invest in businesses in the valley, in equipment, fertilizer," said Goto. "Unless we can get Congress behind an immigration bill that provides a means for agriculture to provide a labor force, we are in deep trouble, deep trouble." Goto is a prime example. He grows grapes for raisins on 80 acres in Madera (Madera County). He said he needs 50 to 60 people over a two-week period for the harvest. Last week he had a crew of three.
Don't worry The Bush twins will pitch in and pick crops for the good of the USA. Sort of like they will chip in, and enlist if the The Surge fails in Iraq. Look, it is ok to have a bit of fun when discussing these important issues.
I have a really hard time feeling sorry for growers who are complaining that they can't take advantage of poor Mexican laborers anymore. The biggest irony of all is that the people who are looking to support these growers are the same people who are always complaining about the wealth disparity in this country. I'm sure subsidizing capital holders like the major growers' trade associations is going to really help close that gap
are you putting these growers and growers' trade associations at the same level with americas wealthiest individuals and corporations?
My point is that the growers are being hurt by a decline in the number of immigrant laborers available, which has bumped their salaries up because of the competition from construction firms and other jobs. Their interest in immigration reform is purely about being able to get workers at prices they can afford. I mentioned the income gap because it is growing every year due to the fact that wages aren't growing all that much, while people who own things (like land and buildings) are making a killing. They're not necessarily fortune 500 organizations, but from the interviewees in this piece, it's clear these guys are savvy businessmen with reasonable amounts of cash available to them. There's really no way to break into an industry like this without loads of capital in the form of cash and/or land. Most of the disdain in my post was because these industries receive a lot of federal dollars as it is. While immigration reform might be a good idea on other grounds, doing it solely to save the profit margins for growers in California is not one of them, IMO.
Sorry, my mistake. I was looking at several articles on the subject and pick the wrong one. A more recent one is: http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/10/01/money/doc451f57cf4be89400798535.txt
Raise your wages, raise your prices or shut down your farms; or sell them to banks, insurance companies, mega-food producers and real estate investors who have the capital, product development and hedging instruments necessary to manage a high-overhead, low-margin, high-risk, 200-year-old business model like commercial farming. Or maybe we can just start importing more food, which may actually bolster Latin American economies to the point of discouraging additional illegal immigration.
