Farm Labor

 A Mexican government census report shows a sharp decline in the number of Mexican workers going to the United States this season; that means a drastically reduced labor force going into the 2009 farm season.?  According to the report American farmers will have to make up a 226,000 worker shortfall, a decline of 25 percent from last year. Idaho’s ex-Senator Larry Craig had worked on AgJOBS legislation in 2007 that reformed the seasonal worker program, so that farmers were provided with the stable, legal workforce they needed, and so that there was a legal pathway to citizenship for hard-working, law-abiding immigrants already employed on American farms. Recently, California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein warned that there are not enough agricultural workers to pick, prune, pack or harvest our country’s crops. With an inadequate supply of workers, farmers from Maine to California, and from Washington State to Georgia, have watched their produce rot and their farms lay fallow over the years.

 However, in Idaho, these doomsday warnings may not be realized. Here’s Robert Troxel of the Marsing Agricultural Labor Association: “We’ve got all kinds of workers here, with the economy downturn there’s a lot of construction workers and landscapers and stuff that are looking for work, there’s a lot of people that live in the area that look for any kind of work available.”

 Then that’s good news. Farmers need not worry, there’ll be a lot of help on the farms. (Troxel) “That’s the way it looks to me, Yeah.”