Consider This from NPR - America's Farms Are Facing A Serious Labor Shortage

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

There's a labor shortage on farms in the U.S., and that has implications for all of us who enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables.For farmers across America, finding enough labor has become a top concern. Decades ago, whole families of migrant farmworkers, the majority of them from Mexico, would travel around the U.S. in search of seasonal work. But over time, farmworkers began to settle. Now, many of them are aging out. And their children and grandchildren are finding opportunities in other sectors.Who will replace them? And what is Congress doing to solve this issue? This summer, two NPR reporters visited some farms to see how this is playing out: NPR's Ximena Bustillo who reports on food and farm policy, and NPR's Andrea Hsu who covers labor.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Paola Mendoza's parents are farm workers in south-central Washington state. I grew up with both of my parents always working pretty much seven days a week sometimes, and I was off with babysitter at school, but yeah, they've always been farm workers, and that's pretty much all I've ever seen them do. Decades ago, whole families of farm workers would come to the U.S.

The majority of them were from Mexico, like Paola's family. They'd often follow a seasonal route from Texas through California and eventually make their way to Washington. That's where Paola's parents eventually decided to settle down. I was too young to see it, but even when I say grew up, see and then get home from work all tired and like kind of just got home, showered and like made lunch and went to sleep there. I was really tired and exhausted. They'd always say like, we don't want you to, you know, end up here because it's tiring. And like you kind of live your years out in the field and it's exhausting. Over a long period of time, your body just kind of gives up. So from when she was young, her parents were clear about one thing.

They did not want her to follow in their footsteps. They were working so hard to provide us with what they didn't have. So we didn't have to end up in the future ending up like them and working in the fields every day all day. They wanted better for me and my siblings. Paola is working on the farm this summer but she's not there to pick fruits or vegetables. She's a research intern which her parents are okay with. She's working on a project to improve irrigation systems. This fall she'll enter her senior year of college where she's studying to be a teacher. Most of my friends don't work out in agriculture. They're out like in stores or anything related to that. I'm working here so I can make money, pay my college, and move on.

When Paola is staking the fields and collecting samples, she's doing it alongside her boss, Alan Schreiber. Her mother, Patricia, has worked on Alan's farm for more than 20 years, planting and harvesting crops. Schreiber says Paola's family is pretty representative of farmworker families in the U.S., and it's left him worried about where he's going to find enough workers to keep his farm going. My workforce is a little like me. It's getting a little older, it's getting a little stiffer, and it's starting to have some medical issues. None of our farm workers want their children to be farm workers, and our farm worker force is aging out. For farmers across America, finding enough labor

has become a top concern. And because of tighter border control since 9-11, there's been fewer migrants coming in. And many of those who have settled want more for their kids. The shortage has implications for all of us who enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, and it is a major agricultural challenge. Coming up, we hear from farm workers about their experiences, and we discuss the challenges facing Congress when it comes to regulating agricultural labor. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Sunday, July 30th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. As we said, there's a labor shortage on farms in the U.S., and this has huge agricultural implications. The Mexican workers who came to the U.S. decades ago to pick crops are aging, and their children and grandchildren are finding opportunities in other sectors. And this all raises questions over who is supposed to replace them. I spoke with NPR's Jimena Bustillo, who reports on food and farm policy, and NPR's Andrea Hsu, who covers labor. This summer, they visited some farms to see how all of this is playing out. And I asked Jimena to start by telling me where they went.

Well, we went to Washington State, which is famous for its apples, cherries, and hops. And we specifically traveled to the Yakima Valley. In these towns, you can see how dominant agriculture is to the communities. Right next to a playground, there's an apple processing plant. And right next to a school, there's a hops field. We were there specifically at the start of cherry season, and we got to get up right before sunrise as the harvest was just starting. You can hear the workers moving fast, carrying big ladders, and they get paid based on how much they pick. And the season is short, only a couple weeks or months. But one of the problems we kept hearing is just how these kinds of farms don't have enough workers.

Okay, so Andrea, who is doing the picking then? It's a majority Latino workforce, and you can hear Spanish spoken on most of these farms. But beyond that, you can break down the workforce into two different groups. There are those workers who have been in the U.S. for a long time and settled in the area. Some of them are documented, some are not. And then there are these guest workers who have been brought to the U.S. for the harvest season through a federal visa program called the H-2A program. And nationally, we have seen a huge increase in these guest workers. And in a place like Washington State, the growth has just exploded over the past decade by something like 500%.

That is a very large increase. What's going on there? Well, as you mentioned, farmers say they cannot find enough workers to bring in the harvest. It's actually their top concern. And Scott, this wasn't always a problem. Decades ago, there used to be whole families of Mexican farm workers who would migrate around the U.S. They'd start in Texas. They'd make their way up through California, eventually make it to Washington state. But after 9-11, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border became much riskier. And then gradually over time, instead of moving throughout the year, some of these families started to settle in one place. These migrant workers, they put their kids in school. They started seeing other opportunities for them. And I guess that makes sense. That's like the archetypal American experience, right? You come as an immigrant, you work in one field, and you hope your kids advance and move forward and do something different and keep growing. Yes, exactly. And we met a really interesting

woman whose life story kind of explains the labor shortages we're seeing now. Dolores Gonzalez works for the local school district as a migrant advocate. Her job is to make sure migrant kids are coming to school. But for most of her life, she was a farm worker. She was born in Arizona to parents who were farm workers. She traveled around with her parents and grandparents, actually, migrating from place to place. Remember, this was in the 1960s when we could miss school and work, and I could still pick cherries and everything at the age of nine. She grew up, married another farmworker, and they raised their own kids, you know, kind of the way they were raised,

taking them to the cherry field, sticking them in a cherry bin all day long when they were young. And, you know, she was really proud of the work that she did, but she knew she wanted something different for her own kids. They would still work the fields with us in the summer. But at the same time, I planted the seed since they were little that they were going to go to college. And then when her oldest was about to graduate from high school, Delores said something clicked. She realized she wanted something different for herself, too. I'm tired of the cycle. I want to break it. And at the age of 40, Scott, Dolores applied to college, and now she and all three of her kids work in education. I really like Dolores. Yeah, she's quite a woman. You mentioned that she works

for the school district. Tell me about the students that she works with. What are they doing? Are they working in the fields right now? Well, some of them do. As Dolores pointed out to us, some of these families only have one car, and there's no public transportation. So if you're a teenager and you want to work, you have no choice but to go with your parents or your aunt and uncle to the fields. And of course, for anyone who's undocumented, it's harder to get jobs elsewhere. But many of the young people we met were born in the U.S., and many of them are finding other opportunities. We met one of Dolores' former students, Jasmine Corona. She used to go out with her dad to Montana every summer to pick cherries, but he always made sure she didn't miss school. And in the end, he gave her this choice. I remember he told me one

day, I already taught you how to work in the fields outside under the sun. Now it's your time. You got to decide if you want to continue here. And Scott, it really wasn't a very hard decision for Jasmine in the end. I've seen my dad all his life working in the fields, and I've seen him really tired. So I want to try something new. And Jasmine is now in college. She wants to become a teacher and actually work at her old high school. So a lot of these stories make a lot of sense on the individual level, right? You can see why somebody is making that decision. You could see why a family would be really happy with that decision. But it leads to this broader problem of if these were the people doing a lot

of the work, picking these fruits and vegetables that we all rely on and eat, who's going to be filling in that space? And Ximena, I'm assuming, I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm assuming that this is something that the government is thinking about and trying to set policy to fix? It is definitely something the government is thinking about and has been for some time, which takes us back to that H-2A visa program. For decades, the federal government has given farms the option of bringing in these guest workers from other countries to do the picking. And that's because this program has a couple

rules. So first, any employer has to prove that they couldn't hire someone currently living in the U.S. first before they ask for a visa and bring in someone else. There's also a special wage that has to be paid. And in Washington, that's almost $18 an hour. Employers must also provide housing and transportation and pay for all these things, which means farmers often complain about this cost and especially the rising cost of labor. They say that's one of the biggest contributors to high food prices right now. But while there's a really strong lobby for more visas and to make this more accessible and cheaper, labor groups are pumping the brakes on that. Why is that? I mean, I hear on one hand higher pay than it would be otherwise worst of the worst cases. One example is Operation Blooming Onion. This was investigated by the Justice Department and by the FBI out in Georgia. what they called slavery-like conditions. You know, workers that were forced to work on farms

that they didn't even have visas for, made to dig onions out with their bare hands. Some workers even died. And if federal investigators want to investigate something, finding these workers, they themselves say that it's a challenge. So what happens next with this program? Because you're laying out a lot of things that people like, and you're laying out a lot of things that people like and you're laying out a lot of areas of concern. Right. So because this is a federal visa program, any changes have to come from the administration or Congress. But there, of course, have been some difficulties in getting this through. One effort has been a bill called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. It would help some farmers by expanding this program and freezing wages,

but it also satisfied some labor advocacy concerns by increasing rights and even providing a pathway to legalization for undocumented workers that have been working in the United States for years. But because this deals indirectly with immigration, negotiations have been in a stalemate for years. One Republican that is leading this effort, though, is Representative Dan Newhouse. And he's actually from the Yakima Valley himself. And he has introduced this bill, but he faces opposition from hardline Republicans that want to see something done with border security before addressing ag labor. But Newhouse says that ag labor needs to be addressed now because it's a direct risk to food security. If we don't have an adequate labor force for the agricultural industry, that's in jeopardy. A lot of concerns being raised from a lot of different places,

though, but there's still this massive need for more workers to be out there in the fields. Is there a consensus that for all of its flaws, this program is the best way to get people in those places to do that work? There's not always a consensus because again, labor groups say that this program just needs to be reformed point blank before some sort of expansion happens. But there's just so many challenges in what reform looks like, who does the reform, if Congress can get a bill through, or if the Biden administration can move forward with changes. One of the biggest losses of this delayed negotiation has been that prolonged legalization for workers.

Here's one farm worker I spoke to that could have benefited from that. She says that she feels bad about it, but she's going to keep going because this is her home. And she's going to keep going even though they're living in the shadows, because what else can you do? It's a really complicated and personal issue for many. But as Andrea mentioned earlier, the workforce is changing naturally with or without laws. And that will eventually impact the way everyone, like you and me, get our food. Okay, but let's get back to that broader policy problem we started the conversation with, the fact that a lot of the people who have historically done this work don't want to do it anymore and aren't doing it anymore. If this program went away,

how would farms find the people needed to pick this fruit? Well, this program already accounts for a smaller percentage of all farm workers. Most farm workers are already in the United States and are undocumented. But it does shrink what labor is even available. And so it places farmers in a bit of a tough situation. Some are turning to artificial intelligence, but the technology isn't quite ready or accessible yet. Others are just choosing to pay even more, but margins are thin and they say that's not always the best option. And what farmers say is the doomsday scenario is they might just stop farming altogether or choose different crops, and in which case, we'll rely more on trade from other countries to get our food.

That's Amanda Bastia, who along with Andrea Hsu, is here talking about reporting they did in Washington state about labor shortages and farms. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.