The Salt Lake Tribune

September 4, 2006

Laborers' numbers worry farmers
Slim pickings: There's worry in the fields as the influx of necessary laborers slows to a trickle
 

By Jennifer W. Sanchez

The Salt Lake Tribune

Second in a series
A SPECIAL REPORT: Undocumented Immigrant Farmworkers in Utah
   
When farmer Kenyon Farley hears about the "crackdowns" on the U.S.-Mexico border, he worries about his apples.

Last fall, Farley couldn't find enough farmworkers to pick the "quality apples" off his trees - he needed up to 30; he only got 10. So he lost money. This fall, he's concerned seasonal workers from Mexico won't make it across the border to help with the harvest, resulting in harder times for already struggling farmers statewide.

"If you don't have good quality fruit, you can't sell it," says Farley, who's been farming for at least four decades. "It's essential to have the labor force available."

Utah farmers say farm workers are becoming harder to find and hire statewide. Some say it's because fewer Mexican workers are making the trek across the border, which is under tighter security by federal agents. Others say they're losing workers to the boom in the building and hospitality industries because hotels and construction companies pay more - sometimes even doubling a farm worker's salary.

Regardless, many farmers say they depend on mostly Latino seasonal and migrant farmworkers and hope a guest-worker program eventually will be the end result of months of immigration reform debate in Congress.

Rey Allred, of Payson, runs a farm the size of roughly 500 football fields. He mostly depends on his 12 Latino, full-time workers throughout the year, but he also hires some 15 to 20 seasonal farm workers.

Allred says he's "extremely concerned" about not finding enough farmworkers in the next several weeks to pick his peaches and apples by hand. Sure, technology continues to change agriculture, but there's no alternative for handpicking, he says.

"We could not operate at all without people to do the hand labor," says Allred, who's been farming in Payson for about five decades. "Many things have changed, but you still have to pick the same way."

About a third of the state's 15,300 farms depend on farmworkers throughout the year. In 2002, farmers hired some 20,000 farm workers statewide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food.

 

Farmworker advocates in Utah estimate that some 95 percent of farm workers are undocumented immigrants. Government officials say they don't keep track or know how many farmworkers are undocumented.

 

Some farmers say they are changing how they manage their farms to deal with the labor shortage, but they can't compete with higher salaries in other industries.

 

Farley says he changed his crops so he would depend less on workers. In the past, his farm was about 75 percent apples and 25 percent tart cherries that can be picked by machine. Now, it's the reverse. Farley declined to say how much he pays his farm workers, but he called it a "comparable wage."

 

Farmworkers and their advocates say workers make about $6 an hour. The state estimates that farmworkers make $10 an hour, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services.

 

Farley says he wishes he could pay as much as construction, landscaping and service companies, but he can't afford it.

 

"Agriculture in Utah hardly doesn't exist anymore," he says. "Every business that requires hand labor is competition for us."

 

Still, other employers say they're also having a hard time finding workers - even by offering more money.

 

Circle Four Farms, a Milford-based company that annually produces about 1 million pounds of pork, starts its full-time employees at $10 an hour with a minimum of 45 hours a week. Kevin Smith, a company spokesman, says officials are concerned with the agricultural labor shortage because Circle Four Farms depends on raising the pigs on animal feed that is grown by farmers.

 

For at least the past 18 months, the 400-employee company has been understaffed by 10 percent to 15 percent. Smith says. To lure employees, the 11-year-old company is recruiting employees from Southern California, paying bonuses and considering building homes closer to the company's facility that is about 30 miles from the closest neighborhood, he says.

 

"All we need to do is perform," Smith says. "We need enough people to make the demand."

 

For Farley and Allred, they fear that the labor shortage will get worse unless Congress changes the immigration laws for undocumented immigrants to work legally in the United States.
 

It's difficult for "poor, uneducated Mexicans" to go through the U.S. immigration system to become a farmworker, Allred says. It's also expensive and time-consuming for farmers to apply for U.S. work visas for their farmworkers, Farley says.

 

"I'd like a legal, dependable supply," Farley says of farmworkers. "And I'd like to be able to pay them a good wage."