Is Farm Work Too Hard for U.S. Workers?

Photo courtesy Hoosier Outsider.

Farmers are the hardest working people I know.

By far.

These men and women truly eat and breath agriculture from sun up, well past sun down. Vacations are non existent, even in the dead of winter, especially if there are animals on the property.

And those are just the owners. Farming – from cultivating the soil to harvest, from birth to slaughter – is backbreaking work. Just ask Stephen Colbert, who spent a single farcical day as a farmworker, then testified about the experience before Congress.

But seriously, talk to any farmer about day-to-day operations and it becomes clear that labor is a big issue.

So it was no surprise to me, even in this economy, to see this analysis by the Associated Press that found Americans shunning farm work, at least as the jobs are currently structured in this country.

“It’s a question rekindled by the recession: Are immigrants taking jobs away from American citizens? In the heart of the nation’s biggest farming state, the answer is a resounding no,” the AP reports.

The wire service seemed to back up that statement with some California job data it could get its hands on to show that that even a farmer who pay as much as $10.25 an hour for workers to trim strawberry plants is having to rely on foreign workers.

The AP analysis showed that, from January to June, California farmers posted ads for 1,160 farmworker positions open to U.S. citizens and legal residents. But only 233 people in those categories applied after learning of the jobs through unemployment offices in California, Texas, Nevada and Arizona.

One grower brought on 36. No one else hired any.

Even when U.S. workers are placed in the jobs, farmers tell the AP that many simply can’t handle the grueling work.

Of course, there’s probably some truth to complaints by the United Farm Workers of America that are critical of farmers who’ve become accustomed to a cheap, undocumented workforce. Raise wages and improve working conditions and legal workers would take the jobs, they maintain.

The Labor Department has been stingy with information with the AP, which was trying to get data on farmworker hiring and to evaluate the federal guest worker program. When it filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the Labor Department responded with an $11,000 copying bill.

I hope the AP gets the data and takes a much closer look at farmworker hiring. Everyone can agree that the farm labor system needs fixing.