PORTLAND OREGONIAN

November 8, 2009

Stable farm labor seems elusive in global economy

By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian

Labor has always been the Achilles' heel of U.S. agriculture. But today, globalization is causing the ultimate strain.

In the past two decades, U.S. producers of labor-intensive crops have not kept up with the growth in the market. They have lost both global and domestic market share to foreign competitors, primarily because of cheap labor and lower production costs overseas.

That's particularly true in regions that produce fruits, vegetables and nursery products. Six states -- Oregon, Washington, California, Florida, Texas and North Carolina -- account for half of all hired and contracted farmworkers. Growers depend on them to increase productivity and get fruits and vegetables to our plates.

And yet, the people vital to our diet and to our nation's economic vigor have rarely been a stable labor force. Foreign-born immigrants, most without legal status, make up the majority of those working in the fields. Critics of illegal immigration say they should be deported, replaced with legal American workers, and shut off from re-entering by a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

But stabilizing the agricultural labor force is not as simple as putting up a wall. Everywhere policymakers have turned for the past 50 years -- guest worker programs, legalization -- they have encountered roadblocks. And most agriculture experts agree that U.S.-born workers are not likely to ever fill those jobs.

Because of industrialization, Americans have left farm work in droves. Now most won't work for minimum wage doing some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the nation. And if growers paid more, trying to attract local workers, the low-cost global marketplace would quickly put them out of business.

The question remains: How does the U.S. secure a stable agricultural labor force?

A defining societal shift

When Bob Terry, owner of Fisher Farms near Gaston, advertised for entry-level field work positions a few months ago, he expected at least a few white, Anglo job seekers.

"With unemployment being as high as it is, we thought we'd have at least some Caucasians," Terry said. "But we had none."

Several hundred job seekers showed up, all Latino, Terry said, and most spoke broken English. The company, which produces more than 3.5 million nursery plants on 300 acres at three sites, hired 80.

This is how it's always been, said Terry, who has worked with the company for 16 years.

"We always hear, 'You don't hire Americans; you hire the others, immigrants, because they're cheaper,'" Terry said. "And it's just not true. We don't discriminate; we just take them as they come in."

Monumental changes in the structure of agriculture have affected who works in the fields and how Americans feel about agricultural jobs, experts and data show.

Family farms, passed down through generations, were once the agricultural engine. But technology led to increased production and pushed farms to consolidate into large, industrial-size operations. Although small family farms still exist, the bulk of production has shifted to large-scale family and corporate operations, which hire more nonfamily workers.

At the same time, millions of American farmworkers left rural areas for industrial and commercial jobs and the lure of the city. Farm wages were too low to compete, plus farmworkers were excluded from most labor protections, then and now. According to the 2006 Current Population Survey, crop farmworkers earn less than workers in similar low-skilled occupations, such as maids and janitors.

The societal shift from farming means that working in the fields is no longer part of American culture and is not a job most U.S.-born Americans are skilled in or find desirable, even during a recession, experts and growers say.

Even farmers and their families have been driven from farm work by expanding nonfarm economic opportunities, said William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

"We have a market where you can find alternatives," Kandel said. "Some pay less than agriculture, but are easier work- and transportation-wise, and don't require the ability to move and follow the crops."

Lessons learned, forgotten

To fill entry-level farm jobs, agribusinesses and policymakers have turned to a variety of solutions, but many have proved problematic.

One solution was to bring in immigrants to work the fields. But the Bracero Program, a guest worker program instituted by the government as the United States entered World War II, established a new instability.

Nearly 5 million Mexican farmworkers came on temporary contracts to the United States, including 15,000  to Oregon. Braceros brought with them large numbers of unauthorized workers, whom U.S. growers recruited and gladly hired. During the peak of the Bracero Program, in 1954, apprehensions of illegal border crossers by the U.S. Border Patrol skyrocketed. Apprehensions fell as the program ended in 1964, amid reports of worker abuse. But the pattern was set.

From the mid-'70s on, under the U.S. government's tacit approval, illegal border crossings ballooned and U.S. growers continued to hire undocumented workers.

In 1986, immigration reform tried to legalize undocumented farmworkers and offer farmers a stable, legal work force. But it failed to deter illegal immigration.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act granted legal status to more than a million agricultural workers. It also introduced sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers and increased border enforcement.

But as the unauthorized work force turned legal and gained job mobility, there was substantial "leakage" of legal workers from agriculture to better-paying or more stable employment, the National Agricultural Workers Survey shows. Ten years after the immigration act, half of all farmworkers were again illegal, the survey shows.

The farmworkers who had gained amnesty left farm work, Kandel said, just as American farmworkers had done before. They were replaced by others crossing in illegally. Though sanctions threatened to penalize employers for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, the law turned out to be ineffective. It requires employers to inspect identity documents and complete employment eligibility forms but not to verify the authenticity of those documents.

"The cycle started all over again," said Robert Emerson, professor emeritus of food and resource economics at the University of Florida.

Globalization challenges

 According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, more than 90 percent of today's farmworkers are Latino, and only about 20 percent are U.S.-born. More than half don't have legal status, both nationally and in Oregon.

The question, Emerson said, is how to prevent the illegal immigration cycle from recurring when another reform is passed. Some experts, worker advocates and immigration critics say changes are needed to attract and retain U.S.-born and legal immigrant workers.

"Growers may have to increase wages, mechanize or use other kinds of agricultural methods to reduce reliance on hired farmworkers," Kandel said.

But globalization could impede that effort.

Employers can't afford to invest in mechanization or raise wages because "costs of production are going up," said Gary Furr, general manager of J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., a large nursery based in Boring. Companies must remain competitive in a global marketplace, Furr said, or "you go out of business and push production to Third World countries."

That shift to other countries is already happening, Emerson said, especially among producers of labor-intensive crops. Since 1990, U.S. producers have lost a substantial chunk of the domestic fruit and vegetable market, data show.

In 1999, the United States became a net importer of fruits and vegetables for the first time in history. The import-export gap widened to a nearly $8 billion deficit in 2007, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Paradoxically, loss of competitiveness comes at a time of increased demand year-round from consumers for fresh fruits and vegetables, Emerson said.

Shifting the costs of higher farmworker wages onto U.S. consumers -- who spend less of their income on food than anyone else in the world -- is also not viable, Emerson said. Growers have little control over prices, he said, and suppliers can simply bring cheaper goods from overseas.

"There's no silver bullet to this problem," Emerson said.

With competition from cheap wages overseas, it's unclear how to retain legal workers in low-paid U.S. farm jobs, he said, because U.S. agriculture has become a revolving door even for immigrants. Once they learn English, understand the job market and are legal, they, too, leave for jobs with better pay and conditions.

"The majority of workers stay in agriculture only for a few years," Emerson said. "Most people don't look at it as a permanent job."

The existing guest worker program, called H2A, is wrought with bureaucratic red tape and used by a scant number of growers. But it may be the future of U.S. agriculture, experts such as Emerson and Kandel say, because it's unlikely U.S.-born workers will return to the fields.

"When you have an industry that's reliant on a set of conditions distinct from all others," Kandel said, "it's difficult to turn around as an employer and say, I'm going to up my wages so I can attract native-born workers."

Oregonian weigh in on farm labor’s plight

Experts, growers and data show that most farmworkers in the United States are foreign-born Latinos. White, non-Latino, U.S.-born farmworkers are "not a dying breed, it's a dead breed," says William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. An Oregon grower and two workers talk about why that's the case.

Dick Joyce, owner, Sherwood-based Joyce Farms
Dick Joyce's father started the family farm in 1910 and over the years sold everything from grain to dairy products, cattle and hazelnuts. During harvest, Joyce says, neighboring farmers would go from farm to farm with a community threshing machine to cut the grain.

When the Joyce farm grew to include cherry orchards, during harvest time the family bused in pickers from Portland's West Burnside Street, Joyce says. Most were "Anglos," he says, and a few were African Americans.

"Some people termed them as 'winos,' others as 'fruit tramps,'" Joyce says. "These guys would travel and follow the crops."

At other orchard, nursery and berry operations, women and children worked during summers to pick crops, Joyce says. When laws restricted children's work in agriculture, "the children didn't get training, they didn't get the incentive to work," he says.

And more Oregonians left the rural areas for city life, Joyce says. "Over time, as their economic situation improved, people were not interested in farm work."

In the 1980s, the state saw a rapid influx of Mexicans, who filled the hole in the labor market, Joyce says. "Nobody was displaced as a result of their coming."

Joyce, who has sold most of his land, now runs a 40-acre fruit tree nursery and a maintenance business. He employs about 20 permanent workers -- all Latinos. Many have worked for him for more than two decades, he says, and he now employs their children.

"Culturally, white Americans have moved away from agriculture, and it isn't a matter of money at all," Joyce says. "There's no amount of money that you can lay on the table to make them work."

Joyce hopes to see a change in immigration law that would tighten borders and allow farmworkers to gain legal status.

Monty Smith, former farmworker, Scio
Monty Smith has done farm work since he was 12. He has worked on horse ranches, dairy farms, berry farms, plus cattle, sheep and goat farms. His family, originally from Oklahoma, followed crops from state to state.

"I love farming; sometimes it's very rewarding," he says, "though it could be a real pain."

Smith, 38, says most of his family and neighbors have dropped out of agriculture. He lives in rural Linn County south of Salem, but none of his friends do farm work.

"Farming is just something the American people don't do anymore," he says.

Most of the time, Smith has worked with Latinos and was "the only white guy working." White, non-Latino Americans shy away from agriculture, he says, because of low pay.

"It seems to me like a lot of Oregon workers are looking for higher-pay jobs -- $11 to $12 an hour -- not minimum wage," Smith says. "It takes a lot for a person to raise their family, and farms don't pay that."

Farm work can mean eight- to 18-hour days, toiling in the scorching sun or cold rain, relocating and having little family time. And many farmers don't pay overtime.

Smith was a farmworker, he says, because he didn't have family obligations. (He separated from his wife eight years ago, and his two children live in Missouri.) But last spring he got a job as a heavy-equipment operator with Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, patching potholes and fixing water pipes. He doesn't plan to return to farm work.

Anne Trujillo, former farmworker, Carlton
Anne Trujillo, 45, entered farm work last year because she was unemployed and many companies in Carlton, southwest of Portland, had shut down. Neither her parents nor her grandparents worked in the fields.

"It's nothing I ever thought I would do," she says. "If the economy wasn't this way, I would never do this kind of work. It's the hardest work I've ever done in my life."

Trujillo left Carlton and ended up packaging lettuce in Yuma, Ariz. Most of her friends were surprised she worked on a farm. None of them had ever worked in agriculture.

"They're in their comfort and don't want to leave home," she says.

Trujillo is used to life on the road. She was in the military and has held jobs in manufacturing and as a corrections officer. "It has never bothered me to move to new places," she says. "I'm pretty lucky; I have no kids or husband, so I'm able to pick up and go."

Work in the lettuce fields would start before sunrise and continue into the night, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, she says.

Trujillo says she was the only white, English-speaking farmworker. She was told no other white Americans had applied. All the other workers were Latino immigrants and spoke only Spanish, she says.

Trujillo is part Latina -- her great-grandparents on her father's side came to the United States from Mexico -- but she doesn't speak the language or know the culture.

It took her awhile to learn how to do the job, she says. "I was nowhere near the speed of some of these women."

The company she worked for bought two apartment complexes to house employees, "outfitted with brand-new sheets and mattresses, fridges stuffed with food," she says.

The experience persuaded her to continue with farm work. In April, Trujillo took a job in California planting, staking and picking tomatoes. But she quit after two weeks, she says, because "I just couldn't keep up with the fast pace of the Latino men."

Now she's back in Carlton, looking for a job -- any job -- including in agriculture. "You have to do what you have to do."