Paper rebuts reports of farm labor shortage

A new paper issued by a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist challenges recent media reports suggesting that farmers are suffering from escalating labor shortages.

Farm industry groups have cited the reported shortages as evidence that immigration policy changes are urgently needed.

The paper – by UC Davis economist Phil Martin – was presented Monday by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank that favors reducing legal immigration and dismisses arguments that U.S. farms need foreign workers. Farm groups and labor advocates – often adversaries – joined in questioning the substance and relevance of Martin's paper.

Growers and advocates both argue that the United States needs immigration changes because most farm laborers are probably undocumented. They say that foreign workers have been filling a void in the U.S. labor market, and that there is no viable visa system to admit these workers legally.

"It may be that Phil Martin is right that there is not much of a shortage now," said Bruce Goldstein of Farmworker Justice, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. "So what?"

Goldstein said "the real question" facing the country is what to do about undocumented farmworkers, who are needed but vulnerable and stuck in the United States because they can't legally travel back and forth to home countries seasonally even if they want to.

Martin's paper, "Farm Labor Shortages: How Real? What Response?" was released this week just as the Senate gears up to consider attaching an agriculture-specific immigration proposal to the new farm bill.

Backed by labor advocates and agribusiness, the AgJOBS proposal would allow certain farm laborers to earn U.S. residency if they keep working in agriculture for three to five years after registering with the U.S. government. A new guest worker program would admit future workers only for short periods and would not allow them to earn residency.

Martin said his report doesn't debate the merits of AgJOBS.

The report, he pointed out, reveals that plantings of U.S. fresh fruits and vegetables have increased in recent years, a sign that growers are not fearful of labor shortages. Martin said, too, that real shortages would have caused wages to increase more.

If wages were increased by 40 percent in fresh produce, he added, consumers would pay only about $8 more a year.

Goldstein said he accepts that growers could afford to pay workers more. But the answer, he said, is to make undocumented workers legal so they are less afraid to demand higher pay.

In his paper, Martin also suggested that if a real labor shortage were to occur and wages were to rise, agribusiness would feel urgent pressure to mechanize jobs and reduce the need for workers.

Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said Martin's paper bolsters the argument that U.S. farms don't need "Mexican high school dropouts," and could supplant foreigners with a combination of mechanization and by luring back U.S. workers.

Martin, however, said his paper doesn't reach this conclusion. "I don't want to get drawn into people's speculation," he said.

His paper says: "If current trends continue, the farm workers of tomorrow will continue to grow up somewhere outside the United States."

The "big argument," he said, is going to be how much access farmers should have to those foreign workers.

Craig Regelbrugge, lobbyist for the pro-AgJOBS Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, said evidence is strong that individual farmers have suffered losses due to labor shortages. He said, too, that while the industry is always inventing ways to mechanize, human beings are inevitably needed for some jobs.

Agricultural economist Jim Holt, who works for the coalition, argued that the U.S. economy is producing more jobs than domestic workers can fill in agriculture.

In 1999, he added, the United States became a net importer of fruits and vegetables.

In a global economy, he said, "the real policy question is: Do we rely on foreign labor to produce the food elsewhere, or do we rely on foreign labor to produce the food here?"

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