SOUTH BEND (Indiana) TRIBUNE

November 12, 2007

Michigan relies on shrinking migrant worker pool

TIM ALBERTA
Capital News Service

LANSING -- Another harvest season for Michigan farmers has come and gone, but will future production be impaired by a continued decline of migrant workers coming to the state?

The answer is a resounding "yes," according to Don Koivisto, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

"Michigan crops are heavily dependent upon manual harvesting or planting," Koivisto said. "We'd like to see immigration encouraged by expanding worker permits in the state -- we have a real shortage of the labor necessary to do agricultural work in Michigan."

Work permits are temporary visas given to foreigners wishing to come to the United States on a nonpermanent basis, most of the time for work or schooling. A federal guest worker program known as H-2A has been bringing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to work in the United States each year.

A 2006 study by the Michigan State University Product Center for Agricultural and Natural Resources showed that Michigan ranks fourth in the number of migrant farm workers in the country, with about 45,000 each growing season.Norm Myers, the Oceana County Extension director, said the typical season for migrant workers begins with asparagus and ends with Christmas trees.

"The crops that we use migrant labor for are pretty much done growing, besides Christmas trees," Myers said. "Workers arrive in the spring and do asparagus, then move to cherries, peaches, apples and finish with Christmas trees."

Myers said the commodities most dependent on migrant labor are fruits and vegetables that require hand-harvesting.

"Asparagus is one of our major crops in Michigan and it takes a lot of migrant labor -- it's probably the peak of our migrant season," Myers said.

The MSU study said the total economic value generated by the farm sector and related industries is $6.7 billion annually. Crops that use migrant labor account for almost 58 percent of that figure.John Baker, executive director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board in DeWitt, said migrant labor is "absolutely key" to the continued production of many crops, especially asparagus. The top-five asparagus-growing counties are Mason, Oceana, Van Buren, Manistee and Berrien.

"Roughly 99 percent of our asparagus crops are harvested by migrant workers," Baker said. "Currently, there's no mechanical harvesting equipment available to do the type of work that migrant labor does."

Baker said the declining number of farm workers in recent years not only reflects fewer migrants coming to Michigan, but also an unwillingness of other unemployed people to work in the agriculture industry.

"I've personally tried to find and hire local people to do the job, and despite high unemployment, we've had very little success finding people willing to do that type of work," Baker said, citing the irregular hours and tough manual labor as the main obstacles.

Baker said the lack of workers, migrant or otherwise, has hurt Michigan's agricultural economy, with asparagus no exception."We estimate about 5 to 8 percent of our crop this past spring was destroyed due to lack of labor," he said. "We've had our share of farms this past spring that were short on labor or didn't have any labor at all.

"It's not uncommon for a Michigan farmer to lose 400 to 500 pounds per acre, or about 20 percent of his total harvest," Baker said.

Amador Diaz, an agricultural employment specialist with the Department of Labor and Economic Growth, said there are many reasons why Michigan is attracting fewer migrant workers.

"There's a lot of rebuilding in the south and southeast parts of the country, and usually those are better-paying jobs," Diaz said. "Also, gas prices are very expensive. For a family living paycheck-to-paycheck to drive from Texas all the way up Michigan is expensive."Baker said that although the H-2A program brings plenty of capable workers into the United States, growers of some crops are unable to use their labor.

"Many producers have looked at it, but it just won't work for us," Baker said. "Right now, we don't have any guest worker program for asparagus.

"It may work for harvesting plants that are more predictable, but asparagus grows when it's early in the spring," he said. "May in Michigan could be 40 degrees one day and 80 the next, so it's a very irregular work schedule and our workers have to be available seven days a week."

The MSU study indicated that without migrant workers, some farmers would leave the business. A survey in Wisconsin reported that 49 percent of farmers would likely cease operations and 28 percent would sell their land or equipment if access to migrant labor was lost.

"Less migrant labor is a big concern because agriculture is Michigan's second-largest industry," Diaz said. "It pours billions of dollars into our economy -- a lot of it from small farms that employ migrant workers."Diaz, who grew up as a migrant worker, said people often take for granted how vital migrant workers are to the state's economy.

"Most of these workers live and work in small communities, so they have to go shopping at the local grocery store, too," Diaz said. "They pour money into our local communities.

"People don't realize that for every one farm job, there are three or four other jobs depending on the farm work getting done," he said, citing the thousands of Michigan employees who work in plants processing the fruit that was handpicked by migrants.

The loss of migrant labor would also shift production of some crops from the United States to other countries. The MSU study reported that 10 percent to 20 percent of fresh fruit, vegetables and nursery products harvested in the United States would shift to other countries.

Baker said, "If the work force in the U.S. is unwilling or unable to do these jobs, we need to find a way to get workers in here. It could be something as simple as a picture ID -- something that could electronically verify who they are so they can work."Unless Americans want their fresh fruits and vegetables to come from other countries, we're going to have to figure out a way to get people in here to harvest our crops," Baker said.