US agriculture dependent on migrant workers

MISSION (Texas): Driving through the Lower Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas, it is clear that whatever labour is being done on a farm — be it driving a tractor or weeding a field — Latinos are doing it.

This is especially true for labour-intensive crops such as citrus fruits, which require unskilled but physically demanding harvesting under a blazing sky, and the mind-numbing task of sorting produce on a conveyor.

As the United States grapples with the fallout of a failed attempt to overhaul immigration policy and set up a migrant worker programme, one thing is clear: US agriculture is utterly dependent on migrant labour.

“If the Mexican farm labourers all went back tomorrow, the US farm system would collapse,” said Bobbie Brown, a crop farmer in the lower Rio Grande Valley along the Texas/Mexico border.

Of 17 workers sorting limes from 40 pound bags into 2 pound bags on a conveyor belt in Mission, Texas, all were Latino and almost none could speak English. The limes were grown in Mexico and will be distributed in US grocery stores.

“I'll soon go to Oklahoma and Colorado to pick watermelons. Then I'll be back here in September,” one of them, who declined to give his name said. Crops ranging from cotton to corn are grown in the area, much of it in the cooler winter months. Fields of sugar cane and some hardy corn were growing under a blazing July sun.

William Kandel, a sociologist with the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, said it was difficult to estimate the numbers of farm workers and the percentage of the labour force which came from south of the border.

“Government surveys suggest that there are roughly 700,000 to 850,000 hired farm workers, on average, at any given point during the year in the United States. There are academic estimates that put the figures substantially higher at between 1 and 1.4 million,” he said.

A recent National Agricultural Workers Study (NAWS) by the department of labor which surveys crop workers in the field found that 75 per cent of hired hands in the sector were from Mexico and five percent were born in other foreign countries.

It also found that about half were “undocumented.”

IMMIGRATION REFORM SOUGHT: Texas Produce Association president John McClung said that the industry wanted a legal workforce and was on President George W. Bush's attempt to formalize the status of millions of illegal migrant workers, which was killed in June by the US Senate.

“We need immigration reform, not a wall,” he said, in reference to a planned security fence that would run for hundreds of miles along the US/Mexico border.

Critics of the current system contend that their illegal status makes it easy for the farming industry to exploit many migrants.

McClung said that while some painted the industry as exploitative, the average wage for a field labourer was $9.50 an hour, not great for hard work, but higher than the minimum wage.The industry view is that Mexico has the labour, Mexicans need the work, and Americans don't want to do these jobs. So some kind of immigration reform is required. For obvious reasons, farmers did not admit on the record to hiring illegal workers.

One valley farmer said the vast majority of the Mexicans working the land in south Texas at least had documents but admitted that forged papers were not uncommon.

Go to any grocery store or restaurant in America in the summertime and you will see students stocking shelves or waiting tables. But you won't see them picking crops.

But American students in search of summer work simply do not want to do the hard labour in the fields or the sorting on conveyor belts.

“It's hard work in the hot sun. Americans just don't want to do it anymore,” said Betty Perez, a local rancher.

Industry officials maintain that the labour shortage is worsening because the children of migrant workers are enjoying the life their parents toiled for.

“Our labour situation is getting more difficult. More sons and daughters of our workers are getting educated and acquiring skills,” said Jeff Brechler, a sales representative.—Reuters