fbpx

Farmer Claims He Can’t Get American Workers At $16 An Hour, Housing And Transportation

Farmer Claims He Can’t Get American Workers At $16 An Hour, Housing And Transportation

workers

Credit: JackF, https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/jackf?assettype=image&mediatype=photography

If you want to know what 350,000 pounds of wasted food looks like, Idaho farmer Shay Myers would like to show you a 35-acre asparagus field that will not get picked because of a shortage of workers.

“It’s a beautiful, phenomenal product but we can’t get the labor,” Myers said in an April 23 video tweet. “We can’t get people to show up to do the work at $16 an hour even with housing, transportation, all of those things.”

Shay describes himself as an agripreneur working with asparagus, onions, and sweet potatoes; a produce industry influencer and an agriculture keynote speaker. “We grow enough food on our family farm to feed tens of millions of Americans,” he says on his LinkedIn profile.

Usually, Myers said, “(we) bring people in on a H-2A visa (temporary agricultural worker visa for employers who anticipate a lack of available domestic workers) but the border is so freaking screwed up that they can’t get people across, so we’re 30 days late.” Myers said he expects it will be up to 45 days “before we have any laborers in the field to pick the crops. So what are we going to do? We’re going to throw it all away.”

Myers said he sent out the video “for people to see it and understand the ramifications of what’s going on at the border and the lack of labor that we have in this country so that we can make a difference and change things.”

Land border restrictions introduced in March, 2020 due to Covid-19 have been extended every month since then, and are now expected to remain restricted to “essential” crossings only until at least May 21. Documented workers are considered essential and can enter the U.S.

In California, the majority of field hands are undocumented, Mexican-born immigrants, Sierra Garcia wrote for andthewest.stanford.edu. The labor shortage didn’t just start during the covid pandemic. It has been getting worse for years. According to the California Farm Bureau Federation, about 70 percent of Californian farmers reported that they struggled to find workers in 2018, compared with 23 percent in 2014. 

Unwelcoming immigration policies could cripple U.S. farms, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, an industry lobby. “If agriculture were to lose access to all undocumented workers, agricultural output would fall by $30 to $60 billion (nationwide)…the reality is that a majority of farmworkers are in the U.S. illegally,” its webpage warns. “It’s time to deal with reality.”

Myers’ video about wasting 35 acres of asparagus was met with some disbelief and denial on Twitter.

“He’s either lying about the pay or he’s in some remote area where no one is gonna drive to for $16,” @jayparson3 tweeted. “With Housing & Transportation paid for! Bull shit!” wrote Rashidbelike US ADOS @Rashidbelike.

“But where are all the Americans that say immigrants are stealing their jobs? Why aren’t they out there picking our veggies? $16 an hour plus housing and transportation and STILL they don’t want to work. Immigrants feed the world,”
@PattieSmitty tweeted.

“We need them. We should love and appreciate them,” @CathyOhrinGreip posted.

The agricultural workforce is shrinking for a variety of reasons, according to AgAmerican Lending, a mortgage lender that makes loans in the agriculture industry. These include:

  • High real estate and land prices
  • Steep initial investment cost of machinery and agrotechnology
  • Volatile commodity pricing
  • Unpredictable weather
  • Unequal work-life balance
  • The physical demand of the industry

Immigration policies limit the available workforce pool, according to AgAmerican. Nearly half of all farmworkers are undocumented and 25 percent are of Mexican descent. Stricter deportation rules and increased border control enforcement have led to a decline in undocumented immigrants, the lender said in a February 2020 report.

U.S. agriculture has relied heavily on foreign workers for decades. In California, 89 percent of hired farmworkers were from Mexico and just 9 percent were born in the U.S., according to the 2013-2014 National Agricultural Worker Survey, Sacramento Business Journal reported.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?

With continued industrialization in Mexico, Mexicans have increasingly attractive career choices other than farmwork. Meanwhile, the U.S. has tightened the border and discouraged people from crossing.

“It’s extremely difficult to come across the borders these days,” said Guadalupe Sandoval, executive director for the California Farm Labor Contractor Association. “It used to be extremely simple.”

For Myers, the Idaho farmer, immigration is essential infrastructure.

“SOOOOOO that entire narrative of immigrants are taking are jobs is complete BS!! I thought that’s what Tucker, Hannity & Ingram told us,” @EFRESH_80 tweeted.

Read more: THIS COUPLE PARTNERED WITH BLACK FARMERS TO CREATE A GROCERY DELIVERY SERVICE