The impending California lettuce shortage

Capital Public Radio program about immigration features CFBF Labor Advisory Committee Chair Luawanna Hallstrom.
sound icon Streaming Audio

With thousands of acres ready for harvest, California farmers say they're facing the tightest labor market in recent memory. In some growing regions they say labor shortages are reaching crisis levels--crops must come off right now and there aren't enough workers to do the job.

At the height of harvest about 450,000 farmworkers usually are needed to get California's crops in, but this year there are far fewer workers than that. How many fewer? There are no reliable statistics from government at any level to verify the immediate shortage in real time.

Farmers throughout the state, however, report extreme difficulty getting enough workers to fill out harvest crews, operate tractors and help with packing and shipping. They say the tight labor situation could quickly turn into a disaster with ruined crops if it starts to rain before the work is done.

They also say lack of workers could lead to further planting curtailment for next year's food production if something isn't done to address the situation.

California Farm Bureau Federation leaders are concerned that stricter border enforcement and a crackdown on falsely documented workers--without also taking steps to ensure that farmers have adequate and orderly access to a legal, temporary workforce--could be disastrous for the state's $31 billion a year agricultural production.

Experts say a serious vulnerability for agriculture is that an estimated 70 percent of the state's seasonal farmworkers are falsely documented.

Oceanside tomato grower Luawanna Hallstrom, who chairs the CFBF Labor Advisory Committee, said Farm Bureau leaders and representatives of the state's various agricultural commodity groups have been and will continue to meet with members of Congress and the Bush administration to emphasize the importance of meaningful immigration reform. It is important that reform does not eliminate workers upon whom the nation's food security depends, she said.

"We are urging Farm Bureau members to contact their representatives to urge them to include farm labor reform in immigration proposals," Hallstrom said. "Farmers must have access to a legal, productive workforce. And we don't want a reform program that imposes more stringent housing, transportation and payment requirements on agricultural employers than for employers in other job sectors, nor do we want any provisions that will promote frivolous and expensive lawsuits.

"We cannot wait until our crops are rotting in the fields to address this critical problem," Hallstrom said.

"My biggest concern is our winter vegetable crop, which we start harvesting in November," said Imperial Valley vegetable grower Jack Vessey. "Last year I was short-crewed every day. I'd put in an order with my harvesting company for a thousand cartons of vegetables and they'd call back and say, ?Hey, we can only get you 500 or 800.' That happened almost every day last year. Albertson's stores can't wait while I find a harvest crew."

He said the labor outlook this year is even worse than last year. He blames a variety of problems: Intensified border security that either turns away workers without adequate documents or discourages those who do have them to not work in the United States. Security measures and document checks have become repetitive and time-consuming.

"What has been happening here is that the Border Patrol has been stopping every labor bus at checkpoints and pulling everybody off the bus to check documents, sometimes stopping the same bus several times before workers ever get to the fields. After a while the workers don't want to ride the buses," Vessey said.

He said many Mexican workers, who commute across the border to work in the Imperial Valley and the nearby farming areas around Yuma, are paid piece rate and they can't make money if they can't get to the fields. He added that it's easier for them to work in construction or service jobs.

"There are some things we're going to have to do if we want to keep our borders safe and at the same time ensure a reliable food supply for the nation," he said. "That's why AgJOBS is such a big deal for us. We want a legal workforce and something has got to be done about workforce issues or there will be people in this country going without fresh produce this winter."

After introducing the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act (AgJOBS) in Congress, the bill's author, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "a nation that fails to manage its borders cannot be secure at home. It begins to lose control over the safety of its people, its commerce and its very identity."

"On the other hand, with approximately 7,500 miles of land borders and 95,000 miles of shoreline and navigable rivers, we cannot seal off our country," Craig said. "Our only alternative is to manage our borders and ports of entry effectively."

The Bush administration is placing new emphasis on immigration reform that could finally lead to a more reliable and stable immigrant workforce. At a White House briefing last week, senior officials indicated a willingness to support reform of the H-2a program for temporary agricultural guest workers. And, President Bush said earlier this year that immigration reform should include increased border security, better workplace enforcement of immigration laws and better access by U.S. employers to willing temporary workers.

There is concern now that immigration reform will be delayed as Congress copes with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and deals with other pressing issues such as two appointments to the Supreme Court, the war in Iraq and record-high fuel prices.

California farmers in some growing regions say they're facing the very real prospect their crops won't be harvested or they will be ruined by rain if lack of workers delays things much longer.

Jerald Rebensdorf is a farmer who manages Fresno Cooperative Raisin Growers. He says he hired 110 workers to harvest raisins last year. This year he has been able to hire only 50.

"Every crew is short," he said. "I don't know anybody who has enough workers."

He said he has converted some of his vineyards to mechanical harvesting and some to "dried on the vine." But he has also had to extend the harvest. He said the latest he has ever harvested raisins in the past was Sept. 10 or 12; this year, he said he expects harvest to extend until Sept. 16. That's a concern, because farmers always worry about having raisins exposed to rain or other inclement weather.

Fresno grape grower Alan Kasparian said that when it comes to getting an adequate workforce, it looks like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

"Usually in a given year there are one or two challenges you have to deal with, but this year it's almost everything," Kasparian said. "This is the tightest I've seen the labor situation in many years. We had a historically wet spring that delayed planting and crop development. This year harvest is at least two weeks late and, for raisins, that means the grapes are going down on trays when there's a real chance of rain damage.

"Raisins are the most labor intensive crop in this area," he said. "And we have more growers deciding to lay down their grapes because the wineries are indicating they don't need as many grapes for concentrate as we expected."

Kasparian said a late crop is a problem for field workers who normally move to other harvests in northern growing areas and to Washington state to harvest apples. Increasingly, workers are going into service jobs, such as in Las Vegas, which has seen a big job boom in recent years. And, because labor is tight, people are bidding up wages and pay, which some farmers can't afford, he said.

"I had someone enter our fields last week to try to take our crew by offering them more money. I had a small crew that was hijacked to go and pick someone else's fruit. Coupled with a paper shortage for laying down the grapes in the field, we've got a serious problem," Kasparian said.

Along California's Central Coast the labor situation isn't any better. Victor Tognazzini, a grower in the Santa Maria area in Santa Barbara County, said the labor supply has been short all year. Nearly $1 billion worth of agricultural commodities are produced in that county.

"There weren't enough field workers for the strawberry crop, there's a shortage for the grape harvest and now there are concerns about the ripening vegetable crops," Tognazzini said. "There's always attrition in the farm labor workforce, but as workers are leaving there's no one to replace them.

"We haven't been able to get all our crops in because we've had to cut back to match the size of our workforce. We're down about 15 percent in available labor and we're going to have to reduce our crop production by at least that much."