NW Labor Shortage

NW Labor Shortage

NW Labor Shortage. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

With the cherry season well underway and apples, pears and apricots around the corner, how is labor looking here in the northwest. We check in with Washington Farm Labor Association's Dan Fazio.

FAZIO: Its mid June, summer starts this week, and we scared as heck that there are not enough workers. Basically, it looks like each year coming out of the recession we have fewer workers. As the economy improves, workers are being siphoned off from seasonal agricultural jobs and into construction work, where the pay is the same or better, and there is a much longer season. Add to that the fact that many ag workers are retiring, and migrant workers from Mexico are no longer crossing the border.

Fazio says that he's been hearing that we may have one of the largest apple crops ever.

FAZIO: It all adds up to a big labor shortage. Its June now, and of course, a lot of things can happen between June and September. But it sure seems like there's going to be problems and that means that there could be fruit left on the ground because we don't have enough workers to pick it.

And he says that even if Congress passed immigration reform now, it would make no difference. It would not impact us for this season.

FAZIO: We do have a federal program that helps farmers when there are not enough domestic workers, and it allows you to legally bring workers, with visas, from Mexico. Farmers from Washington State have embraced the federal program and so we are looking at more than 8,000 of these legal foreign workers that are coming here. The farmers are paying all their way up and back.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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