Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Farmers in Colorado Struggle with Labor Shortage
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec07/farmers_08-20.html

In the wake of repeated crackdowns on illegal workers, some farmers in 
Colorado are struggling to bring in their crops with fewer available migrant 
workers. The NewsHour reports on how the problem is affecting individual 
farmers and the American economy.


TOM BEARDEN, NewsHour Correspondent: On the Pisciotta family farm just 
outside Pueblo, Colorado, workers are weeding and pruning the onion crop, 
preparing for the fall harvest. But they aren't typical farm laborers; 
they're inmates of the nearby state prison.

They're in the fields because the migrant workers that usually do this kind 
of work are not. The women volunteers are part of a pilot program that five 
local farmers are trying out. Joe Pisciotta pays the state over nine dollars 
an hour per worker, which is more than the typical hourly wage for this kind 
of work. He says, without this program, his onion, watermelon and pumpkin 
crops would have suffered.

JOE PISCIOTTA, Vegetable Farmer: We need them. We've got a lot of money 
invested in that crop up to harvest time, and if we don't have the people 
here to harvest them -- we've tried local people. We've tried unemployment 
agencies, and they just -- people just don't do that kind of work.

TOM BEARDEN: Pisciotta and others farmers say increased raids by immigration 
enforcement officials on farms and businesses, coupled with new anti-illegal 
immigration laws passed in Colorado last year, have depleted the 
migrant-immigrant workforce on which they depended for decades. Some of those 
workers were undocumented.

JOE PISCIOTTA: The immigrants, when they get here, they show up. You know, 
they show up in their car or whatever. And, you know, "We're here. Let us 
know when you've got work," and we just haven't had any come.

TOM BEARDEN: Colorado State University extension director Frank Sobolik has 
been trying to help farmers adjust to the current labor shortage. He says 
Colorado farmers are going to take a serious economic hit this year.

FRANK SOBOLIK, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension: What I'm 
hearing is that many of the farmers have cut back roughly 50 percent of what 
they would normally produce. And that's because they're expecting about 50 
percent of the available labor that they're used to having, and there's no 
sense in putting a lot of investment into the land, into the crops, and only 
getting half of it back.

TOM BEARDEN: Farmers in southeastern Colorado hope the prison labor program 
can be expanded, but growers on the western side of the state don't have 
access to any similar program, growers like the Talbott family. They've been 
raising peaches, apples and grapes in Palisade for more than 90 years. For 
the first time last year, they faced a labor shortage.

Bruce Talbott says, as rumors of raids spread through the migrant community, 
fewer people showed up to work. He worried that immigration officials might 
show up and disrupt his harvest.

BRUCE TALBOTT, Talbott Farms: My worst fear is to lose a percent, significant 
percent of my people in the middle of harvest. And because our income -- 70 
percent of my income is generated in six weeks. And if that falls apart, 
there's no way to recoup that.

We always saw H2A as an act of desperation and something you would only do as 
a last-ditch effort to stay in business. We didn't expect to end up there.

Using federal guest workers

TOM BEARDEN: Talbott had no choice but to turn to a federal guest-worker 
program called H2A. It was first established in 1943 and reformed in 1986 
during the last round of immigration reform. Last year, farmers throughout 
the country used H2A to legally bring in more than 59,000 agricultural 
workers from outside the United States.

BRUCE TALBOTT: The H2A program is the government visa program to bring in 
farm workers. And it's a very expensive, bureaucratic and cumbersome process, 
so we've tried to avoid it as long as we could. We always saw H2A as an act 
of desperation and something you would only do as a last-ditch effort to stay 
in business. We didn't expect to end up there.

TOM BEARDEN: Talbott says he pays $2,400 each year just to apply to the 
Department of Labor and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for a 
specific number of foreign workers. He had to demonstrate that there was no 
local labor available by placing month-long advertisements in the local 
papers. Talbot also paid $300 per worker for visas and security certification.

And for each of his 35 H2A workers, he paid $160 for round-trip 
transportation to and from their home countries. Farmers must also provide 
free, federally approved housing, and pay a higher hourly wage than has been 
traditional, a rate set by each state. This year, it is $8.64 an hour in 
Colorado; he used to pay just over $7 an hour.

Talbott advertised extensively to try to find local workers.

BRUCE TALBOTT: I had three people respond to our advertisement for the 
positions. We hired one immediately; she never returned. We hired another one 
that, when the contract started, we wanted to use that person. He never would 
answer his phone again. And the last one never would come in for an 
interview. So we didn't end up getting anybody for our -- 59 positions is 
what we were advertising for.

For any business that's dependent upon labor, as soon as you think you don't 
have anybody else to get, that you began to be concerned, and we did.

Choosing not to plant

TOM BEARDEN: The Talbotts also had to hire an outside company just to deal 
with massive amounts of government paperwork required to hire these immigrant 
laborers.

On the other side of the county, Mark Harris says all of those requirements 
make it economically impossible for him to participate. He runs Grand Valley 
Hybrids, which grows and distributes hybrid seed corn in 11 states. He didn't 
think he could find the 100-plus workers needed to work his 700 acres this 
year, so he decided to just not plant a crop.

MARK HARRIS, Owner, Grand Valley Hybrids: The situation was going to be 
turbulent at best and that we began to feel that, this time last year, that 
if we'd had to have three more people, we're not sure we could have found 
them. That began to concern us. For any business that's dependent upon labor, 
as soon as you think you don't have anybody else to get, that you began to be 
concerned, and we did.

TOM BEARDEN: But not planting was a wrenching decision.

MARK HARRIS: This is the first year since 1958 we grew no seed crop in the 
Grand Valley near Grand Junction, Colorado. And that's a big deal for people 
who were kind of basically farmers to begin with. This is what we've known 
and what we love to do.

There is a huge benefit to that in that we have a legal workforce. We don't 
have to worry about getting raided or we don't have to worry about our 
workers having to hide in the shadows.

Seeking help from Congress

TOM BEARDEN: He says Congress needs to do something to deal with the growing 
farm labor shortage.

MARK HARRIS: We're worried that -- I mean, labor's scarce in this country. 
Whether it's ag labor, whatever it is, labor's scarce on all ends of the 
economic spectrum. So, yes, we think we're looking at a situation where 
there's not going to be enough labor to go around.

MIKE GILSDORF, Owner, Arapahoe Acres Nursery: Can you get on the radio and 
call Danny for me and see where he's at?

TOM BEARDEN: Mike Gilsdorf is feeling the pinch, too. He runs Arapahoe Acres 
Nursery and Tree Farm in a Denver suburb. Gilsdorf also participates in the 
H2A program, one that he says has been successful for his operation for 
almost a decade.

MIKE GILSDORF: There is a huge benefit to that in that we have a legal 
workforce. We don't have to worry about getting raided or we don't have to 
worry about our workers having to hide in the shadows because they come up 
with a legitimate visa, and then every year they return to Mexico in the 
wintertime.

Finding adequate labor

TOM BEARDEN: Despite those advantages, Gilsdorf has had to turn down business 
because he still can't get enough people to do the work. And this year, his 
guest workers arrived two months late after the government misplaced his 
paperwork. It almost cost him his entire inventory.

MIKE GILSDORF: Well, we had intended to have all of our winter pruning done, 
our planting done, much of our potting, and all of our tree harvesting done 
by April 1st, and we didn't have any laborers to do it. So we went to the 
Colorado Department of Labor in Weld County asking them, can they find us any 
employees anywhere? We asked them to look in state and out of state. We went 
to every employment agency we could. We advertised. We got very few workers.

TOM BEARDEN: Gilsdorf has to use a different visa program for his landscaping 
business, called H2B. It's for non-agricultural workers. He'd like to hire 
more such workers, but the H2B program is capped at 66,000 people for the 
entire country. And for the second year in a row, the cap was reached in the 
spring.

MIKE GILSDORF: So you're at the mercy of the government. And, yes, it does 
concern me. I lay awake at night wondering, am I going to have labor next 
year? Am I going to be in business next year?

TOM BEARDEN: With comprehensive immigration reform reportedly dead until 
after the next election, five more southern Colorado farmers have inquired 
about signing up for the prison labor program.