Minding Ag's Business

Comprehensive immigration reform is critical to the economy as well as on moral grounds, said California Secretary of Agriculture Karen Ross in a phone interview with me this week. She oversees agriculture in a state that produces over 50% of the nation's fresh produce and tree nuts, but thinks rural communities everywhere have a big stake in seeing an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants become documented workers. Raised on a western Nebraska farm that she still owns, she also brings a Midwesterner's pragmatism to West Coast politics.

The country needs immigration reform "to be able to attract people to agriculture and to allow them to live openly and legally," Ross says. Inability to fully integrate immigrants into society as we did with past newcomers is already affecting the social fabric of our communities, she says.

Meanwhile, labor shortages create a crisis for agriculture employers, particularly in dairy and highly perishable specialty crops. According to a recent Texas A&M study, immigrants tend herds that produce three-fifths of the American milk supply. Yet dairy's demand for 24-7 workers just isn't being filled with enough locals, even with the nation's high unemployment rates.

Stronger border enforcement has made labor shortfalls for highly perishable crops more pronounced. Manpower shortages last year were the worst of the last 3-4 years, Ross says. The situation was acute for cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, which have a short window for picking and a high demand for hand labor. In fact, a 2012 survey by the California Farm Bureau found that 71% of tree fruit growers, and nearly 80% of raisin and berry growers, were unable to find an adequate number of employees.

"Lots of fruit was left unpicked or was too soft to qualify for the fresh market so ended up in juice," she says.

Over time, that unnecessary waste affects our ability to offer high quality food at reasonable prices--just when policymakers and health officials think we have an obesity crisis.

Besides treating our labor force with dignity, leaving food unharvested in a world of hunger sounds like a moral issue to me, too, Secretary Ross.

Follow me on Twitter@MarciaZTaylor.

(SK/CZ)

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