Ag Labor Answers Pt 2
From the Ag Information Network, this is today’s Fruit Grower Report. If they get deported and we can’t find an adequate labor force for farmers and ranchers, where will we get the food to feed America?
Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, says without foreign-born ag workers, there’s one other option …
CONNER … “The alternative, you know, to growing it here in America, having handled, processed and harvested with foreign-born workers is that we just simply move that production down to where those foreign-born workers may have probably come from originally anyway, out of this country.”
And that, Conner says would impact food quality dramatically …
CONNER … “It does, and I think that’s why again, if you surveyed most consumers, they may not understand, but if asked them, would you rather it be, you know, produced here in the United States, they would say, heck yes. And I think food safety is one of the key reasons they would say “heck yes,” and it’s not just a nationalism kind of thing. They believe U.S. products would be better and safer.”
Food safety questions, Conner says will be coming …
CONNER … “I think as a food industry we’ve got to be ready for that, you know, the amount of information on safety, that consumers are going to demand here, is only going to increase dramatically in my view. And that’s what I keep telling my Coop members. And that’s a good thing? And that’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Again, that’s Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the
National Council of Farmer Cooperatives.
