There’s An ‘Urgent Shortage’ of Farm Workers, But Native-born Americans Don’t Want the Jobs

  Migrant workers harvesting corn on Uesugi Farms in Gilroy, Calif. (U.S. Department of Agriculture / CC 2.0)

California’s central valley, the hub of the state’s agricultural business, provides more than half of the produce grown in the United States, and in 2016 the region overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. Now, the same farmers who put Trump in office are experiencing a critical shortage of farmworkers – and nobody is stepping up to take on the jobs.

In a piece published by the Los Angeles Times last week, reporters Natalie Kitroeff and Geoffrey Mohan explore the lack of farmworkers and how Trump’s immigration and deportation policies are starting to hurt the same Californians who helped put him in office.

“The flow of labor began drying up when President Obama tightened the border,” Kitroeff and Mohan explain, but Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration has already started to affect the labor pools in California’s central valley.

They write:

So far, the results aren’t encouraging for farmers or domestic workers.

Farmers are being forced to make difficult choices about whether to abandon some of the state’s hallmark fruits and vegetables, move operations abroad, import workers under a special visa or replace them altogether with machines.

Wages are on the rise as the labor pool has tightened, and some employers have begun offering 401k packages, Kitroeff and Mohan report.

“But the raises and new perks have not tempted native-born Americans to leave their day jobs for the fields,” they continue. “Nine in 10 agriculture workers in California are still foreign born, and more than half are undocumented, according to a federal survey.”

One grower who voted for Trump tells Kitroeff and Mohan that he is worried about Trump’s immigration policy and its effects on his business. It’s “killing our labor force,” he says.

And Trump’s theory that cracking down on undocumented immigration would open up more jobs for American-born works does not seem to be coming to fruition. One farm labor contracting company, Silverado, explains that it has never once had a white, American-born person take an entry-level farming job.

Noting the tough conditions and long workdays, one agricultural expert says, “You don’t need a deep analysis to understand why farm work wouldn’t be attractive to young Americans.”

Read the entire piece here.

—Posted by Emma Niles