Robot Crop Pickers Limit Loss of Farm Workers to Trump Wall
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...trump-wall
EXCERPT: Robotic devices like lettuce thinners and grape-leaf pullers have replaced so many human hands on U.S. farms in recent years that many jobs now held by illegal workers may not exist by the time Donald Trump builds his promised wall.
For many American farmers, the automation push isn’t just about the President-elect’s goal to seal the border with Mexico, the traditional source of cheap migrant labor for the world’s largest agricultural exporter. There just aren’t enough crop pickers around as immigration slows, deportations rise and the prospects of congressional reform look remote.
[...] “The trade-off isn’t, do you want a machine or do you want workers,” [Steve] Tennes, 39, said by telephone from his 120-acre farm, where he employs 72 workers and produces apples, peaches, blueberries, cherries, pumpkins and sweet corn. “It’s do you want to be in business or do you not want to be in business.”
After three straight years of declining U.S. farm income, sources of labor are becoming increasingly unreliable and costly, especially with illegal immigration likely to face a crackdown in the Trump administration. That’s forcing more growers to invest in machines that reduce human involvement in the production cycle....
Will Trump's Tough Talk On Immigration Cause A Farm Labor Shortage?
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017...r-shortage
EXCERPT: [...] "You think a gringo's gonna be pruning pistachios?" he asks me in Spanish. He says in his 17 years working the California fields, he's seen only Latinos — mostly immigrants — doing this work. So he's not buying the idea that he's taking away a job from a U.S. citizen.
[...] I also visit Steve Murray's farm outside Bakersfield, where a few workers are crouched among rows of strawberries that will sell at farmers markets around the region. [...] Even though this area has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, Murray says he has a hard time finding people to pick his fruit. He didn't vote for Trump, and he says his business would suffer if the new administration carries through on plans for mass deportations of immigrants.
"When the economy went south — what was that, in 2007, 2008 and 2009 — and jobs dried up, there were people that returned to Mexico and didn't come back," he says. "It's hard to imagine that things could get much worse."
An hour north, near Porterville, dairy farmer Tom Barcellos is feeling more optimistic. He tells me he met Trump, and he's betting the president-elect's business-friendly side will win out.
"Of course you heard about him saying 'build a wall,' " Barcellos says. "Well, what he told us is that wall is going to have a door in it, and we're going to talk to the right people that want to come in and work, and they're going to have an opportunity to do that."
There's already an agricultural guest worker program — the H-2A visa program. And use has gone up steadily over the past five years, as fewer workers enter the country illegally.
But every farmer I talked to complained about it, calling it cumbersome and expensive. Some experts speculate a Trump administration might strip away worker protections and create a program that's more favorable to employers....
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...trump-wall
EXCERPT: Robotic devices like lettuce thinners and grape-leaf pullers have replaced so many human hands on U.S. farms in recent years that many jobs now held by illegal workers may not exist by the time Donald Trump builds his promised wall.
For many American farmers, the automation push isn’t just about the President-elect’s goal to seal the border with Mexico, the traditional source of cheap migrant labor for the world’s largest agricultural exporter. There just aren’t enough crop pickers around as immigration slows, deportations rise and the prospects of congressional reform look remote.
[...] “The trade-off isn’t, do you want a machine or do you want workers,” [Steve] Tennes, 39, said by telephone from his 120-acre farm, where he employs 72 workers and produces apples, peaches, blueberries, cherries, pumpkins and sweet corn. “It’s do you want to be in business or do you not want to be in business.”
After three straight years of declining U.S. farm income, sources of labor are becoming increasingly unreliable and costly, especially with illegal immigration likely to face a crackdown in the Trump administration. That’s forcing more growers to invest in machines that reduce human involvement in the production cycle....
Will Trump's Tough Talk On Immigration Cause A Farm Labor Shortage?
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017...r-shortage
EXCERPT: [...] "You think a gringo's gonna be pruning pistachios?" he asks me in Spanish. He says in his 17 years working the California fields, he's seen only Latinos — mostly immigrants — doing this work. So he's not buying the idea that he's taking away a job from a U.S. citizen.
[...] I also visit Steve Murray's farm outside Bakersfield, where a few workers are crouched among rows of strawberries that will sell at farmers markets around the region. [...] Even though this area has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, Murray says he has a hard time finding people to pick his fruit. He didn't vote for Trump, and he says his business would suffer if the new administration carries through on plans for mass deportations of immigrants.
"When the economy went south — what was that, in 2007, 2008 and 2009 — and jobs dried up, there were people that returned to Mexico and didn't come back," he says. "It's hard to imagine that things could get much worse."
An hour north, near Porterville, dairy farmer Tom Barcellos is feeling more optimistic. He tells me he met Trump, and he's betting the president-elect's business-friendly side will win out.
"Of course you heard about him saying 'build a wall,' " Barcellos says. "Well, what he told us is that wall is going to have a door in it, and we're going to talk to the right people that want to come in and work, and they're going to have an opportunity to do that."
There's already an agricultural guest worker program — the H-2A visa program. And use has gone up steadily over the past five years, as fewer workers enter the country illegally.
But every farmer I talked to complained about it, calling it cumbersome and expensive. Some experts speculate a Trump administration might strip away worker protections and create a program that's more favorable to employers....