Logic Behind Labor

Ken Forth, president of FARMS, a Canadian Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Service says he runs the world's most successful program connecting seasonal workers with agricultural employers. He offers a fascinating analysis of why Canada has to turn to migrant workers from other countries to fill labor positions in agriculture." We have an overwhelming concern in the US about immigration and people coming in and crashing our borders. On the other hand, we are the third largest dairy producer in the country and the guys who own the dairy operations will tell you that without labor from places like Mexico, they couldn't survive. In urban Canada, some of the people have those concerns, there are people who will complain about everything. By and large, there are no Canadians to do these jobs. The people who did these jobs in horticulture prior to this program starting in 1966 were displaced people from the first and second world war. In southern Ontario, we had a vast amount of immigration from Europe after the second world war, those people had nowhere to go. The place blew up and we had a lot of people from Portugal and Italy and Eastern Europe, those were the people that worked on our farms. By 1965, those people were old because they came here in their 30s and 40s and they were ready to retire and they did. We were in a hurting situation. As far as labor was concerned, it just was not available." Ken says there are around 25,000 seasonal laborers across the Canada.