A worker harvests sorghum on a tractor at Jason Perry's farm in Chandler. This land was previously set for development. Photo by Elvina Nawaguna-Clemente

CHANDLER, AZ – On a late November afternoon, tractors with side chutes harvest sorghum from a small roadside farm, spitting it into a truck riding along. The grain is milled and sold as feed to a nearby dairy.

About a year ago, this land was set for development. But the owner went bankrupt, another developer bought it at an auction and leased it to farmer Jason Perry.

“A lot of our land is in that situation,” Perry said.

Rick Gibson, University of Arizona county extension director and agriculture agent in Pinal County, said the real estate crash has farmland once sold to developers finding its way back into agriculture, especially in Maricopa and Pinal counties.

“Some are buying or coming back to them when the buyers defaulted on payments,” he said.

For the developers the land might have dropped in value or may not be worth developing at present, he said.

In the meantime, Arizona farmers are happy to take the extra land and increase acreage for commodities like cotton, wheat, alfalfa hay and corn that are enjoying high prices amid increasing demand.

For instance, Arizona’s cotton acreage rose from 136,000 acres in 2008 to 261,000 acres this year according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

“Farmers have to be businessmen,” Gibson said. “They watch the trends and make financial decisions based on those trends.”

Perry, a fourth–generation farmer who set out on his own 12 years ago, leases all his farmland from several owners in Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa and Queen Creek. He also grows alfalfa, corn, oats and Bermuda grass.

In the last couple of years, several developers have offered him their land to lease because they either could no longer afford to develop it or didn’t think it was worth much at a time like this. Sometimes he approached them.

“A lot of times the owners were interested because instead of paying somebody to go pick up the weeds twice a year, by having us there the land would have presence on it,” he said.

About 250,300 acres of Arizona farmland was converted to development land between 2002 and 2007, the most in the nation after Texas, Florida and California, according to the Farmland Information Center, a partnership between the Natural Resources Conservation Service and American Farmland Trust.

Although statistics showing what’s happening nationally won’t be available for another three years, Jennifer Dempsey, director of the Farmland Information Center, said ultimately that development may continue when the real estate market rebounds.

“I feel like it’s forestalling something but not necessarily changing the underlying dynamic,” she said.

Jason Perry leased this farm land after another developer bought the land at auction because of bankruptcy by the owner. Photo by Elvina Nawaguna-Clemente

Jeannette Fish, the Maricopa County Farm Bureau’s executive director, said the price of land shot up during the mid 2000s when the real estate industry was booming, and farmers cashed in.

“A fairly large amount of property was sold to developers at that time,” she said.

Fish said many of the farmers included in their sale agreements provisions to regain the land if buyers fell behind on payments.

Harold Crist, who’s both a farmer and real estate developer, is caught in between.

“The land that we’re farming today is land that we were planning to use for development,” he said.

He’d already changed the titles for a 930-acre piece of land in Florence and another 150 acres in Eloy.

“As the market fell, we returned that to agriculture, primarily because we don’t see the market coming back as quickly as we’d like or as everybody anticipated,” Crist said.

He’s using the extra land to grow more alfalfa and vegetables like squash, tomatoes and spinach.

As a developer, Crist has seen the value of his land drop drastically with the recession. At its peak, his Florence land was worth about $40,000 an acre.

“Today, we’d be fortunate to get $10,000 an acre if you could find a buyer,” he said. “That’s a dilemma that people holding land have and it’s part of what drives it back to agriculture.”

Steve Barker, state resource conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, said that developers often lease land to farmers to keep their taxes low as they wait for the right time to develop. Agricultural land has a lower tax rate than commercial or housing property.

“So as long as you can keep the land in that category you don’t pay as much tax,” he said.

While the downturn hurts the real estate market and related jobs, from a food–production standpoint the availability of that land serves the state well, Barker said.

“It’s a good thing because it keeps agriculture alive and healthy on some of our best lands in Arizona,” he said.

Source: CronkiteNewsOnline.com, “As economy struggles, some land slated for development returns to farming” by Elvina Nawaguna-Clemente, Cronkite News, 22 Nov 2011.

A majority of California and Arizona growers polled in late September reported labor shortages, according to a labor survey by Irvine, Calif.-based Western Growers.

Seventy-three completed surveys were analyzed, and 62% of those responding (45 growers) indicated they had experienced challenges in finding workers this year, according to Western Growers.

“It’s difficult to know why the workers who have traditionally been here aren’t coming to the fields now,” said Jason Resnick, general counsel for Western Growers.

An improving economy in Mexico, combined with a weaker economy in the U.S., could be reducing the flow of immigrant workers. What’s more, Resnick said the Obama administration has deported 400,000 illegal immigrants since coming into office, which is more than twice as many as President George W. Bush deported in eight years.

“Whether that means part of our workforce has been deported is hard to know, but certainly words gets around and it has to have a chilling effect.”

The survey found that farm labor positions needed by growers ranged in length from one month to a year or more, with 72% of those who responded indicating they need employees for six months or more.

The survey covered farms in 19 counties, with Santa Barbara having the most responses followed by Monterey, Ventura, Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties.

Thirty-eight growers provided economic estimates of losses caused by labor shortages. Seven said they did not anticipate any losses; eight growers said they anticipated losses between $40,000 and $100,000. Thirteen predicted losses between $101,000 and $500,000 and two respondents indicated losses could be more than $1 million.

Resnick said Western Growers and others lobbied many years for the AgJobs program, which included revisions to the guest worker program and a pathway to citizenship for workers already in agriculture. However, the Republican Party opposes the pathway to citizenship in the AgJobs bill, he said.

Resnick said only a few California growers currently use the existing H-2A program because of the program is burdensome, expensive and prone to delays. “We are going to need to see significant changes to a temporary agricultural worker program before we start to see growers using the government program.”

Other alternatives, including improved guest worker programs and plans to employ existing workers in agriculture, haven’t picked up momentum.

“There doesn’t seem to be much courage in Congress to make that happen, even though farmers are experiencing labor shortages and crops are dying in the fields and more of our agriculture and food production is being moved offshore.

The long-term result of a tight labor market probably will be less fresh produce grown in the U.S., Resnick said.

“I’ve heard of growers cases of growers who are planting less or they are moving operations to Mexico or other places offshore, or moving to grains, cottons or other crops that can be easily mechanized,” Resnick said.

Source: ThePacker.com, “Western Growers report underscores lack of labor” by Tom Karst, 7 Nov 2011.

Among those who took centerstage at the Cesar Chavez Memorial Dinner were keynote speaker Greg Schell, left, and award recipient Steve Kirk of Rural Neighborhoods.

BRADENTON, FL — Farmworkers are the canaries in the coal mine of globalization.

That was the thesis of keynote speaker Greg Schell, an attorney with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, at the Cesar Chavez Memorial Dinner on Thursday night.

An increasingly global economy has worked vast changes on migrant labor, and the same forces will inevitably change Florida agriculture as well, Schell told the audience that gathered at Renaissance on 9th, 1816 Ninth St. W.

Since the groundbreaking TV documentary “Harvest of Shame” in 1960, the migrant workforce in the United States has evolved from one that was primarily American families.

The workforce in 1960 morphed into one that was comprised largely of families from Mexico, to one today that is overwhelmingly composed of unaccompanied males from Mexico, he said.

Changes in American agriculture began with the revolution of Fidel Castro in Cuba, which at the time contributed many of the winter crops to U.S. tables.

With the communist takeover in Cuba, the U.S. government supported making America self-sufficient in its agriculture.

But what might have made sense in 1959 does not always work in the new global economy.

In fact, American agriculture, which lobbies for low-cost foreign work- ers to harvest crops, al- ready understands the changing dynamic, Schell said.

For instance, the three largest tomato growers in Manatee County already have operations in Mexico, he said.

Ultimately, the tariffs on foreign producers, such as Brazilian citrus, will be lifted, making it more difficult for domestic producers to compete, he said.

But Florida agriculture will survive and change in ways to provide products that foreign competitors cannot match, he predicted.

Globalization cuts both ways, and U.S. corn producers have wiped out competitors in Mexico. The result: out-of-work farmers in rural Mexico come to the United States in search of work, he said.

With the mechanization of farm jobs, and crops going to places that can most efficiently produce them, the American jobs that are retained will be better paid, he said.

Foreign labor should be used only as a last resort. But those workers that are imported should be accorded freedom and protections, Schell said.

Thursday night’s dinner was dedicated to Sister Nora Brick, founder of Project Light and a staunch advocate for farmworkers in Manatee before she was attacked and seriously beaten in her home in February.

After the attack, she went into retirement was replaced by Sister Noelle Hart.

Luz Corcuera, president of Project Light Literacy Center, paid tribute to Sister Nora Brick as being Irish by birth, American by citizenship, a Franciscan by faith, and a migrant farmworker at heart.

“You never left Stillpoint House of Prayer without a blessing or prayer,” Corcuera said.

“We miss her daily presence, her sense of humor and, of course, her prayers,” Corcuera said.

Among those who re- ceived Cesar Chavez Farmworker awards were:

• Steve Kirk, executive director of Rural Neighborhoods, a Florida-based nonprofit that has developed quality, affordable housing for migrant and seasonal farmworkers;
• Carmen Pureco, who came to the Myakka City area with her family at 15 years old and has become a staunch advocate and networker to improve the lives of migrants;
• Marvin Mills, secretary of the Manatee/Sarasota Farmworker Supporters.

James A. Jones Jr., East Manatee editor, can be contacted at 941-745-7021.

Source: Bradenton.com, “Florida farms buffeted by global economy” by James A. Jones Jr., 4 Nov 2011.

Field workers harvest melons in Dos Palos, Calif. Many are American-born young people of immigrant parents -- more, says farmer Joe Del Bosque, than he's ever seen. Some are well-educated but can't find jobs in the struggling economy. (Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times / October 28, 2011)

Reporting from Dos Palos, Calif.— A Salvadoran flag wrapped around his neck to block out the sun, Geremias Romero hunches low to the ground alongside the other laborers, following the tractor along rows of cantaloupes.

He reaches into the leafy green rows of fruit, touches a melon to gauge its ripeness, and then tosses it into a cart, where another laborer boxes it. Walk, pick, toss. The pattern goes on all morning.

Harvesting cantaloupes for $8.25 an hour isn’t the job that Romero, 28, dreamed of as a child. Born in Newark, N.J., to immigrant parents from El Salvador, he graduated from high school and has taken classes at the Art Institute of Philadelphia and Merced Community College. He has experience as a special education teacher but, unable to find a teaching job, he’s started working in the fields.

“I’d rather keep myself working than get in trouble,” he said, wiping his hands on his ripped jeans, stained with grass. “My dad started from nothing. He worked hard, so I don’t mind working hard too.”

Many young Americans are finding themselves worse off than their parents were at their age, without jobs or working below their skill and education levels. The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is 17.4%, up from 10.6% in 2006.

The situation is even tougher for children of immigrants, such as Romero. Their parents paved the way by working tough jobs so their children could get an education and secure their place in the middle class. Now, with middle-class jobs disappearing, many children of immigrants are settling for the jobs their parents did, even if they are better educated.

“We’ve never had so many American-born working in the fields,” said Joe Del Bosque, the Central Valley farmer who hired Romero and other laborers like him to pick melons. “Farm work is usually the big step for some people to push their kids into the American Dream.”

They include Raul Lopez, 23, who worked as a contractor for a utility company during the construction boom but is now back in the fields picking cantaloupes.

“We’re still struggling, so we have to go where the work is,” said Lopez, whose mother, a Mexican immigrant, just passed her U.S. citizenship exam.

Economists worry that this lack of mobility imperils the country’s productivity, especially since about a third of American adults ages 18 to 34 are foreign-born or children of immigrants.

“It’s a great waste of talent and motivation,” said Alejandro Portes, a Princeton University sociologist who studies children of immigrants. “Since this is a growing population, the fact that they find so many obstacles to becoming productive citizens represents a significant waste for a knowledge-based economy.”

Only 47% of Americans think their children will have a higher standard of living as adults than they do, down from 62% in 2009, according to a poll done in May on behalf of the Pew Economic Mobility Project.

Concerns about the availability of a middle-class lifestyle are likely to be a hot topic this election season. It has already come up in such diverse forums as Occupy Wall Street and the Republican presidential debates. About half of Americans think the government does more to hurt people trying to move up the economic ladder than it does to help them, according to the Pew poll. About 80% said the government was doing an ineffective job of helping poor and middle-class Americans.

“There is clearly a demand among voters and working Americans in general for Congress and the president to do something bold to create jobs” said Catherine Singley, senior policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza.

In 2008, there were about 32 million people in the U.S. with either one or two foreign-born parents. They include a wide range of educational and cultural backgrounds, but overall, those ages 18 to 34 lag in reaching traditional adult milestones, including leaving home, finishing school and entering the workforce, according to a 2008 study by Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at UC Irvine.

“If I had to update that study, the situation would be much more dire for children of immigrants,” Rumbaut said.

In the study, about 24% of young adults born in the U.S. to Mexican parents were high school dropouts, compared with 11% of whites with native parentage and 7% of children born in the U.S. to Indian immigrants.

Even education doesn’t always help, as some of the fastest-growing sectors in the economy are those that require few skills. Personal service and care jobs, which paid an average of $25,000 last year, grew 27% over the last decade. Food preparation and service jobs grew 11%. They pay an average of $21,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“A lot of families who felt at one point that they were on the solid rung of the American middle-class ladder are slipping and falling down a rung,” said Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley.

Decreasing access to the middle class could especially imperil economic recovery in states such as California, Florida, New York and Texas, where nearly 60% of young adults are immigrants or children of immigrants.

“A key to the future of California — and to that of a nation being transformed by immigration — will be how the rapidly expanding generation of young adults is incorporated” into its economy, politics and society, Rumbaut wrote. “For a sizable proportion of the nation’s immigrant population, that access is now blocked.”

Dorian Alcanzar, 24, doesn’t feel as if he’s being incorporated into the economy at all. He has a degree in civil engineering from Cal State Long Beach, but he has started applying for low-wage jobs here because he can’t find work in his field.

“We came here for his dreams, for the future, for the opportunity, but we don’t see that here,” said his mother, Aida Hermosillo, 43.

Alcanzar is considering returning to his mother’s home in Mexico, where his cousins are working the jobs they want. His current situation reminds him of visits to Mexico while he was growing up, where family friends who had trained as lawyers worked as street vendors.

“I’m not very optimistic right now,” he said. “I feel that we’re going to have an economy similar to a Third World country.”

Source and video report: LATimes.com, “Children of immigrants hit an economic ceiling” by Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times, 30 Oct 2011.

LatinaLista — With family grocery bills getting higher and higher with every run to the store, it’s hard to be thankful for our food. Yet, that’s exactly what we need to be and why today is being celebrated as Food Day.

For the first time in 34 years, the United States is celebrating the day when Americans are asked to join together to push for healthy and affordable food that is produced in a “sustainable and humane” way.

Sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day promotes six principles:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
2. Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness
3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
4. Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms
5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers

The overall goal of the day is to get people to drive less through drive-through fast food lanes and stay home and cook with fresh foods. In other words, organizers want to change the way Americans eat. No easy task.

It’s no secret that the nation is becoming more obese with every super-size burger, shake and fries that is substituted as a “balanced meal.” Food Day supporters want the country to “eat real” by taking the time from our busy lives to cook in the kitchen.

To help us in that department, the Food Day web site offers a free downloadable cookbook with recipes from such popular chefs as Rick Bayless, Emeril Lagasse and Jamie Oliver.

In addition, Food Day organizers want Congress to commit to supporting the six principles as more and more children go hungry each night, contaminated foods makes its way into the food supply system and families continue to spend more on eating out than cooking at home.

However, an observance of Food Day isn’t complete without acknowledging the workers who pick the food that reaches our tables — the farm workers.

The United Farm Workers (UFW) has created a special way all Americans can personally thank the farm workers for their extremely hard work in making sure the food is picked, packaged and ready to be sent to stores across the nation.

The UFW has created a special page where each of us can create a personal message of thanks to farm workers. The UFW will then print out the messages and distribute them to UFW members across the country “so they know how important you think they are in creating a more just food system.”

It’s a food system that deserves a lot more attention and appreciation from a public that has taken our food system, and its workers, for granted for too long.

Source: LatinaLista.net, “Food Day can’t be celebrated without honoring migrant farm workers” by Marisa Treviño, 24 Oct 2011.

What Happened to the American Work Ethic?

Millions of people are looking for jobs, but aren’t jumping to be seasonal farm laborers. Why is that?

Sweet corn can be picked by hand or machine, and many growers use machines to pick the third of U.S. sweet corn that is consumed fresh. Hand harvesting involves a crew of 20 stripping ears off the stalks and throwing them onto a moving conveyor belt on which another 20 workers ride to sort and pack the ears into 48-ear boxes. Employers control the speed of work by setting the pace of the “mule train.” Machines can also strip the ears, which are then taken to a shed for sorting and packing.

John Harold, the farmer in Olathe, Colo., elected to pick sweet corn by hand. His experience shows that it is hard to switch from a “captive” and “loyal” H-2A labor force to American workers who do not lose the right to be in the United States if they lose their jobs. H-2A workers are the “N.F.L.” of low-skilled workers, carefully selected abroad, housed at the U.S. work site, and eager to maximize their hours and earnings. American workers willing to fill seasonal farm jobs, on the other hand, tend to view them as a short-term fill-in job until they can find something better.

Agricultural history shows that the demand for labor is more flexible than supply. As labor costs rise, farmers are more likely to switch to labor-saving machines before they find “good” U.S. workers. Not all farmers and commodities will survive the changes motivated by rising labor costs. Most green onions consumed in the U.S. are imported from Mexico, which has lower wages. Sweet corn is likely to remain in the U.S. as labor costs rise, but more will be picked by machine rather than by hand.

Philip Martin, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, is the author, most recently, of “Importing Poverty? Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural America.”

Source: NYTimes.com, “Hand vs. Machine” by Philip Martin, 9 Oct 2011.

Workers with Walsh Vineyards Management harvest chardonnay grapes by machine at a vineyard in the Carneros region early Friday. CRISTA JEREMIASON/Press Democrat

In the dark of night, the Pellenc machine rolled like a giant Transformer-like insect through the vineyard, seemingly swallowing up vines as it gently shook the chardonnay grapes free.

For entire article, please visit: PressDemocrat.com, “Machines replacing men in the vineyard” by Cathy Bussewitz, 2 Oct 2011.

LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) –  The severe drought hammering the South Plains has taken away cotton and now, it’s taking away local agricultural jobs.

Lubbock’s Agri-Life Extension Agent Mark Brown says times are tough for local cotton producers and their employees.

“One in every 7 jobs are related to agriculture. It’s probably higher than that here in Lubbock County,” Brown said. “We will see fewer days that people work during the ginning season and, unfortunately, we’ll see fewer people employed this year because the gins won’t be running as long or need as many hands.”

This year’s drought has been devastating to cotton production. With so little cotton expected to be harvested this season, many cotton gins will pay the price.

“You’re going to cut down on employment because you’re just not going to need that force of labor to handle that crop,” said cotton gin manager, Guyle Roberson.

Roberson manages a cotton gin in Lamb County. He says he is considering cutting back on ginning shifts, which would mean cutting back on employees.

“You’ve got employees that are seasonal workers, that come back year after year and depend on that job,” Roberson said.

However, Roberson says his gin is luckier than most in the area.

“I’ve heard talk of some gins not even opening up this year,” Roberson said.

Gins aren’t the only businesses who will be impacted by the lack of cotton. Brown says all across the board, ag industries will be affected.

“You’ve got a lot of truckers who transport those bales of cotton, you’ve got the spinning mills and you’ve got a lot of storage facilities that won’t store nearly as many bales. It’s a huge trickle down effect,” Brown said.

Roberson says it’s scary to admit it – but the drought and its affect on cotton, could be dire for the South Plains.

“This is probably going to be more devastating than people realize,” Roberson said.

Source: KCBD.com, “Not enough rain, not enough cotton, not enough Ag jobs” by Abby Reed, 23 Sept 2011.

Dan Iles, WDM’s south-west mobiliser, interviews Christina Schiavoni of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance.

On day four of the European forum on food sovereignty, I met Christina from the US. I was very interested to find out about what sort of actions are happening over in the US as well the aftermath of the Wall Street Reform Act passed recently to limit financial speculation on food. In this interview she talks about the urban and rural movements for food sovereignty across the US, including dairy producers, supermarket workers and anti-food speculation protests.

What does food sovereignty mean to you?

To me it means the right of people to define their own agricultural policies, rather than those policies being defined by the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the IMF, or multinational corporations.

Can you give me some examples of local initiatives that involved with enacting food sovereignty in the US?

These are local manifestations of food sovereignty, because I really think that food sovereignty has to be about local transformation as well as broader policy change. But at the local level we actually have a lot of innovative work being done in urban areas around the US. We have a huge problem in most of our cities, in the lack of healthy food. We also have rising rates of poverty right now that is only making it harder. And of course also major healthcare issues: situations in which people are actually dying from what are preventable diet related illnesses; diabetes, heart disease, etc. And at the same time some communities are completely out of the interest of politicians, mainly communities of colour, immigrant communities and low income communities.

So many of them have taken it upon themselves to reclaim land in their areas, to claim abandoned lots, clean them out and transform them into amazing community spaces which are actually quite productive in terms of food, but they are also a safe space for communities, there is space for the youth as well as intergenerational exchange. And also there are urban farms and community markets where, increasingly, people are coming together to sell and buy their stuff from their neighbours, generally at solidarity prices. We also have an exchange of knowledge going on; so for instance in New York City, we have the New York farm school, where urban farmers can come teach each other and learn from one another; I see this as a really powerful initiative.

And then there are many others in rural areas as well. We have a movement for domestic fair trade. Especially right now in the midst of the dairy crisis we have in the US, where dairy farmers are getting paid below the cost of production and going out of business in droves.  So people are trying to form cooperatives, to do value added products and to struggle to get fair prices for their products.

One other is in a rural community in Maine, where they managed to pass the first ever local food sovereignty ordinance. There is a group called Food for Maine’s Future which is doing excellent work. One phenomenon we have in the US is a criminalisation of small farmers, for instance we have a lot of laws restricting or prohibiting the sale of raw milk, and farmers have actually been arrested and their supplies destroyed just for trying to sell milk in their communities. There are also regulations that are called ‘food safety regulations’ but often they are nothing to do with making our food system safer, they are regulations that really fit the needs of large scale agro-industrial models and just make it very hard for small scale farmers to do direct marketing of their products. So there are these restrictions in the state of Maine, where farmers simply wanted to be able to sell their own products from their own farms and in many instances there were laws restricting this. So this local food sovereignty ordinance that was passed was to give farmers the right to sell their own products from their own farms. So that’s a really big deal.

One other example is the issue of workers’ rights. There is a powerful alliance being formed that is actually part of the food sovereignty alliance but is called the food chain workers’ alliance. It’s an effort of workers from across the food system including farmers, factory workers, retail workers and restaurant workers, to try to increased their collective power in unity.  A specific one of these is called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. In Florida we have these massive tomato plantations and the labour to pick those tomatoes is almost entirely from immigrant workers, where the conditions are horrendous and the pay is horrible; there have even been documented cases of modern day slavery on the fields of Florida. So this group of workers have organised themselves to take on major corporations.

We have very few laws protecting farm workers in the US, most farm workers are exempt from regular labour laws. So they knew with the government they weren’t going to get very far. So they went straight to the corporations that were benefiting from their labour, the first being Taco Bell. Then they went for McDonalds, Burger King, Wholefoods and from there they intend to take on the rest of the supermarket industry. They’re doing campaigns in a really creative, fun and engaging ways that are building all sorts of alliances between the farm workers, other workers in the food chain and religious groups.

In what ways do you see food being treated as a commodity instead of something with a cultural and social value?

The main group in the US that is really challenging the idea of food as a commodity is La Via Campesina North America, and they together with others are part of the US food sovereignty alliance which is definitely challenging the commodification of food, denouncing the rampant speculation on commodities and promoting fairness throughout the food system. Arguing that food needs to treated like the basic human resource that it is and as a human right, not a commodity. That is one of the core messages of the US food sovereignty alliance.

In terms of the issue of commodity speculation, it is something that, unfortunately, is not as much on everyone’s radar at a grassroots level as it should be. The laws to regulate commodities have just been loosened or ignored over the passed few administrations since the Regan era. And so groups such as the Mary Knoll Centre for Global Concerns are calling for existing regulations to be enforced as well as new regulations to be in place. Each time a promising piece of legislation is going through congress there are sign on letters, petitions, collections of testimonies and recently there was a day of action against commodity speculation, with actions in New York City, on Wall Street, and in front of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and a few other locations across the country calling for an end to the use of food as a commodity.

How do you see the future after Nyeleni 2011?

Well I definitely see things moving forward in a positive way because this event wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Nyeleni 2007. And I see that same sort of momentum coming out of this event. In Europe there is now more coordination moving forward, more feeling of commonality and togetherness. On a practical level as well, we now know each other’s campaigns, know what’s happening and are now better placed to support each other in the future. There is now a sense of being a broader movement. It has also been a positive inspiration for other movements around the world. I think Nyeleni 2011 provides inspiration but it also provides concrete examples; how this forum was run from the meals to the methodology, to actions and the site visits, is all concrete guidance that we can take home to the US.

Christina Schiavoni works for the New York-based WhyHunger and also represents the umbrella organisation, US Food Sovereignty Alliance.

Source: WDM.Org.UK, World Development Movement, “Urban farming and rural workers’ rights: food sovereignty in action in the US” by Dan Iles, 22 Aug 2011.

Jason Azurmendi, left, is joined by Will Pesante, center, and Kristen Everett, right, all of Atlanta, as they protest a proposed controversial state immigration bill outside the state capitol on April 14, 2011 in Atlanta. As most states wrap up their legislative session for the year, only a handful (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and South Carolina) passed anti-immigrant bills, while 26 others rejected them, mainly because of their cost.

The Fiscal Impact of States’ Anti-Immigrant Legislation

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It has been just over a year since the passage of Arizona’s ill-fated anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070. In its wake, many states put copycat bills on their agendas for the 2011 legislative session. But as most states wrap up their legislative session for the year, only a handful (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and South Carolina) actually passed anti-immigrant bills, while 26 others rejected them. Even Arizona, which last year saw its anti-immigrant bill largely blocked by a federal judge, joined this movement and rejected a series of even harsher bills this year.

While opponents have had some successes in a handful of states, far more states rejected anti-immigrant bills. One of the principal reasons for the failure of so many of these legislative efforts was cost. S.B. 1070 and bills like it in other states are expensive to implement at many levels, placing a heavy burden on state and local governments already feeling the effects of a down economy. This brief examines the costs of anti-immigrant legislation from a variety of perspectives, detailing the losses that states such as Arizona have already faced, as well as the future costs that states such as Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, which have only just recently passed their own anti-immigrant laws, will have to reckon with.

In particular, we focus on three costs:

• The economic damage stemming from a state being perceived as hostile, including lost tourist revenue and individuals choosing to live elsewhere rather than remain in an unwelcoming environment.
• The burden of implementing these laws, each of which requires significant resources to be deployed by state and local governments to turn local police into immigration officers—to the determinant of their regular law enforcement duties. The laws also force small businesses into costly immigration enforcement through the use of the electronic employment verification system, known as E-Verify, which some states have made mandatory as part of their anti-immigrant agenda.
• The expense of the legal fees associated with defending anti-immigrant legislation from the raft of ensuing lawsuits.

As we will demonstrate, these costs are crippling for states and their citizens—so much so that dozens of states have decided against pursuing an anti-immigrant agenda. We examine these costs in detail and then close our analysis with a brief overview of the only reasonable alternative: comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level.

States protect their wallets from Arizona-style bills

[A state immigration law] would basically eliminate the tomato industry in the state. … in agriculture we are totally dependent upon a hand process.

— Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange

A number of states that considered Arizona-like legislation explicitly rejected it after uncovering the crushing fiscal burden such laws would impose. In Kentucky, for example, a fiscal-impact analysis by the state Senate found that passing S.B. 6 (legislation similar to Arizona’s) would cost $40 million a year. The analysis stated that the overall burden on local governments “including local law enforcement agencies, is expected to range from moderate to significant in the short-term.” These costs included such things as:

• Additional training for law enforcement on the new procedures
• Additional personnel to implement the ordinance
• New technology acquisition costs
• Transportation costs for those immigrants arrested under the law
• Increased jail usage
• Legal costs, both those needed to revise local ordinances and those to defend the overall legislation

In short, it identified a laundry list of unseen costs to consider.

In Tennessee, legislators shelved their anti-immigrant bill in the face of a $3 million price tag for the first year and $2 million for every subsequent year. These expenditures included the cost of hiring 24 new criminal investigations division officers, a whopping $1 million in first-year training costs for local law enforcement, and significant additional expenses to process, house, and transport the estimated 7,500 additional undocumented immigrants who would be detained each year.

While Florida’s legislature did not formally “score” their bill—budget speak for calculating the cost of the legislation—the business community voiced their opposition to the almost certain economic losses that would incur. The Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation argued that undocumented immigrant workers contribute $4.5 billion in taxes each year, which would be lost if those immigrants were driven from the state or entered the underground economy where they would pay no taxes. Even the state agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam (R), argued that “we are known as a diverse, welcoming state … we have to be very careful about messages we send explicitly and implicitly.” Growers like those represented by Reggie Brown of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange worried particularly that they would lose their workforce, as migrant workers skip over the state for more friendly ones nearby, potentially devastating the $500 million tomato industry.

Even Arizona, the originator of S.B. 1070, declined to pass five additional anti-immigrant measures after a group of 60 business leaders sent a letter to the state Senate highlighting their potential impact on the state’s businesses. The letter acknowledged the precarious financial state of Arizona in the wake of S.B. 1070, arguing that the boycott of the state was “adversely impacting our already-struggling economy and costing us jobs.” Even outside of the state, the letter continued, “Arizona-based businesses saw contracts cancelled or were turned away from bidding.”

Arizona pays the price

It is an undeniable fact that each of our companies and our employees were impacted by the boycotts and the coincident negative image.

— Letter from 60 chief executives to Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce

Indeed, states stand to lose out significantly if they are seen as hostile and unwelcoming, especially to groups like Latinos. Even before Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s S.B. 1070 into law, leaders inside and outside of Arizona began to call for a national boycott of the state. One week after Gov. Brewer signed the bill, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom instituted a moratorium on official travel to Arizona. Los Angeles followed suit only a few weeks later, as have a number of other major U.S. cities. Phil Gordon, the mayor of Phoenix, labeled the boycott’s effects as a “near economic crisis.”

Within days as well, pundits in the state had already noticed that conferences were being cancelled, with some estimates of possible lost revenue as high as $90 million. In the end, the actual figures for lost conference money were far higher. Research conducted by Arizona-based economists for the Center for American Progress found that anti-Arizona sentiment resulted in a major hit to the tourist industry, with significantly decreased wages, lodging revenue, and tourist dollars. These losses have already totaled at least $141 million, including $45 million in hotel and lodging cancellations, and $96 million in lost commercial revenue. Fewer tourists has meant that an incredible 2,761 jobs, $253 million in economic output, and $9.4 million in tax revenues have disappeared, with the potential for far worse results in the future.

What’s more, this analysis only focused on one sliver of the economy—conference cancellations— meaning the identified costs are likely just the tip of the iceberg.

And to what end? If Arizona accomplished the stated goal of S.B. 1070—“attrition through enforcement,” making life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they leave the state—it would shrink Arizona’s economy by $48.8 billion. Eliminating all of the undocumented immigrants in Arizona would not occur within a vacuum but would instead destroy an important piece of Arizona’s overall economic pie. Undocumented immigrants make up roughly 7 percent of the state’s population, and eliminating them would evaporate 581,000 jobs—not just for immigrants but also for native-born workers who are employed in sectors dependent on immigrant labor.

This mass attrition would reduce the state’s tax revenues by 10.1 percent, both in terms of revenue lost from fewer people in the workforce, as well as fewer people in the state paying income, employment, and consumption taxes, such as sales tax.

Georgia’s costly decision

Georgia passed its own version of S.B. 1070, H.B. 87, in mid-May. Business groups, especially in the agricultural industry, attempted to stop the bill from being passed in the first place, with 200 agribusiness leaders sending a petition to the legislature expressing their displeasure. The letter argued that “our state’s unemployment rate still leads the nation, and we should look for alternatives to adding new costly mandates that could discourage legal job creation.” The Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau also expressed its concerns about the possible effects of the law on future tourism and conventions. Nevertheless, the bill easily cleared both the House and Senate, and Gov. Nathan Deal signed it into law.

It is too early to say what the full economic ramifications of H.B. 87 will be, though we conjecture that losses could be considerable in industries heavily dependent on immigrant labor. Anecdotal evidence suggests that undocumented immigrants are leaving the state to work elsewhere or else have decided not to come work in the state. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, businesses that cater heavily to immigrants, such as grocery stores focusing on Latino products, have seen steep declines in their sales.

Indeed, nearly half of Georgia’s agribusinesses have reported shortages of workers, and employers such as Georgia’s Vidalia onion growers worry that they will not have enough workers to pick their crops—a potentially disastrous result to the $65 billion state agriculture industry. The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association estimates that the losses stemming from H.B. 87 will total at least $250 million this year alone. A state survey of agriculture employers found more than 11,000 jobs, or 14 percent of the total, unfilled. Gov. Deal suggested a novel solution to this dearth of farm labor—replacing immigrant workers with parolees from the state’s prison system.

Businesses and taxpayers bear the high cost of implementation

[There has been] little or no savings in government services from the ordinance. … the issue is not what it cost the government to implement, it’s the rhetoric about the issue and the negative impact it has had on the brand and reputation of Prince William County.

— Prince William County, VA, Supervisor Frank Principi

Anti-immigrant legislation places a double burden on states and localities. It hurts businesses that have to shoulder the costs of programs such as use of the electronic employment verification system E-Verify. And it imposes significant unfunded mandates on local law enforcement officials, passing the fiscal burdens to localities that simply cannot afford them. Let’s examine each of these costs in turn.

E-Verify is costly

Participating in E-Verify imposes a high price on employers, and is ineffective. Eight states so far have mandated E-Verify for all employers (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah) but many other states require the system for some portion of employers. Government surveys have found that the system has an error rate as high as 54 percent for unauthorized workers, meaning that it catches less than half of all people without status.

What’s more, a Public Policy Institute of California report on Arizona’s experiences under E-Verify found evidence that the program shifted many unauthorized immigrants in Arizona from the formal economy, where they pay income taxes, to the informal economy where they do not. The tax revenue from undocumented immigrants in 2010 for Arizona was more than $433 million, $130 million for Alabama, and $456 million in Georgia, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.

E-Verify disproportionately harms small businesses. A Bloomberg study from January 2011 estimates the costs to these employers, which make up more than 99 percent of all businesses, would be $2.6 billion if the system were made mandatory. Most disturbing, with an error rate of roughly 0.8 percent for legally authorized workers, the National Immigration Law Center estimates that roughly 770,000 American workers would lose their job nationwide because of the system. These hard-working, innocent Americans would be unemployed simply because a state decided to implement E-Verify.

E-Verify does not inoculate a business from prosecution under the federal immigration laws. Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, for example, the largest chicken producer in the United States, was raided by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in 2008. The company “prided” itself on having each and every one of its plants enrolled in E-Verify, and according to their own admission, had “relied on the ICE Best Hiring Practices in designing its immigration compliance practices.” Since E-Verify only checks that the information provided by the employee matches the information on file, it cannot catch identity fraud, leaving the company open to charges of hiring unauthorized workers.

The upshot: Even with strict E-Verify usage, Pilgrim’s Pride ultimately settled with the federal government for $4.5 million.

Ensuring a legal workforce is an important part of any immigration system, and penalizing employers who intentionally hire undocumented immigrants is critical to reducing the flow of undocumented immigration. But E-Verify cannot work unless it is accompanied by a stable, legal workforce. Deploying it universally, when 5 percent of the workforce is undocumented, will create more enforcement challenges than it solves.

Local law enforcement costs are significant

Prince William County, VA, provides a cautionary example of the high costs to law enforcement of implementing anti-immigrant measures. County legislators failed to consider these expenditures before passing their immigration ordinance, to their significant detriment. A county ordinance of July 2007 required police to check the status of anyone they had probable cause to suspect was not in the country legally. But the chief of police, Charlie T. Deane, estimated the county would have to spend $3.2 million to install cameras in every patrol car to ensure no racial profiling would occur. On top of these expenditures, the county estimated its law would require $1.3 million just to implement, and would trigger annual costs between $700,000 and $750,000. After considering the burden, the county board of supervisors revised its ordinances to allow immigration status checks only for those already under arrest.

Had they continued with the strictest enforcement provisions, their expenditures would have unquestionably been higher. But even still, the costs were significant and failed to accomplish the stated purpose of reducing crime. A 2010 evaluation of the enforcement ordinance by the Center for Survey Research, the University of Virginia, and the Police Executive Research Forum found that “the policy has not affected most types of crime in Prince William County, in large part because illegal immigrants account for only a small percent of arrests overall and a small to modest share of offenders for most types of crimes.” The report did find a reduction in the number of undocumented immigrants in the county but it also found that “Hispanics elsewhere in the metropolitan area are not eager to move to Prince William,” while other legal immigrants simply left.

Mounting legal fees

They already owe $3 million just to their cavalcade of lawyers, who keep getting it wrong. It is clearly [other people’s money].

— William A. Brewer III on the lawsuit challenging Farmers Branch, TX’s local anti-immigrant ordinance

Beyond lost tourist and agricultural revenue, passing anti-immigrant legislation means having to expend a significant amount of money on legal fees. The federal preemption doctrine, which gives the national government alone the power to decide immigration law, precludes most state and local action on immigration enforcement. And to date, most anti-immigrant statutes have been struck down and virtually all have been challenged in the courts.

In July 2010 U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton issued an injunction blocking the most controversial parts of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 from taking effect. Judge Bolton argued that “based upon well-established precedent,” provisions such as those that require law enforcement to check legal status under reasonable suspicion are likely preempted by federal law, and thus unconstitutional. Arizona appealed the injunction but in April 2011 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal.

While the legal saga around S.B. 1070 has not yet concluded and might ultimately require Supreme Court intervention, it will almost certainly be declared unconstitutional. Lawsuits have quickly spread to the other states that have passed copycat legislation. On May 4, 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union and National Immigration Law Center filed suit against Utah for the enforcement provisions in its immigration law, and within a few days a federal judge issued a temporary stay against the law. On May 25, 2011, they filed suit against Indiana, and on June 2, 2011, against Georgia. As with Arizona and Utah before them, federal judges have stayed the harshest provisions of the Indiana and Georgia laws. The ACLU and NILC have also filed suit against Alabama, and are now preparing a suit against South Carolina. It is only a matter of time before these laws are struck down as well.

A separate ruling on the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act, which mandates the use of the electronic employment-status verification system E-Verify for all businesses in Arizona, was found to be constitutional on May 26 of this year. But the Supreme Court made it clear that they were only ruling on a narrow point of law—the ability of states to retain their traditional role in licensing decisions—not on the overall issue of federal preemption. The ruling has little to say about the constitutionality of S.B. 1070 and legislation like it.

Arizona’s S.B. 1070 case should serve as a warning sign for other states considering anti-immigrant legislation. In just over a year since its passage, the state has already spent $1.9 million to defend lawsuits against it, prompting Gov. Jan Brewer to set up a legal defense fund to solicit contributions. That is $1.9 million expended just for the preliminary injunction and appeal—the case itself has yet to be decided.

The litigation costs around other local anti-immigrant laws are likewise instructive. The township of Hazelton, PA, passed one of the earliest local ordinances, which included fining landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and penalizing businesses that hired undocumented immigrants. In July 2007 a district court struck down the laws, arguing that they were preempted by federal law and violated the due process protections of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. On appeal, the 3rd Circuit in September 2010 agreed with the earlier ruling, noting that under the statute, “employers might quite rationally choose to err on the side of discriminating against job applicants they perceive to be foreign,” an egregious case of injustice.

In Farmers Branch, TX, the city council passed a law requiring landlords to seek proof of legal status to rent an apartment. Four separate lawsuits were filed, including one by business owners claiming they had lost customers because of the harsh English-only ordinances that accompanied the crackdown. In January 2007 a district court ruled against the law, which Farmers Branch quickly repealed and replaced with a second. In a tragi-comical turn, after this second ordinance was declared unconstitutional, the city council passed yet another. This third ordinance was also declared unconstitutional in April 2010, proving the dictum that if at first you don’t succeed … well, in this case you will not succeed regardless.

These legal battles have come at a hefty price. Hazelton has already spent $2.8 million to defend its laws and could ultimately spend up to $5 million to fight through the appeals process. These costs arrived at the same time as a serious budget deficit, and to rectify the gaping hole in the city’s finances, Hazelton Mayor Lou Barletta proposed tax increases of, on average, $249 per homeowner. Farmers Branch likewise has paid out a hefty sum, with more than $3.7 million in legal fees already expended and total costs which are estimated to top $5 million.

Conclusion: A better solution?

On their surface, crackdowns against undocumented immigrants sound appealing to state legislators looking to get tough on immigration. But the hidden costs in legal fees, training fees, additional personnel, and lost tourist revenue, among others, all add up quickly.

So can your state afford anti-immigrant legislation? Definitely not.

There is a better solution. Instead of going the Arizona route and attempting to kick out all undocumented immigrants in your state, why not bring them into the legal system and ensure they can fully contribute economically? In Arizona alone, full legalization would create jobs, increase state revenue, and raise the wages of all workers. Full legalization would grow tax revenues in the state by $1.68 billion, add 261,000 jobs, and increase total employment by 7.7 percent.

As Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda and Marshall Fitz argue in their recent report, “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona,” “if state legislators really intend to promote the best interests of their constituents, they should reject these counterproductive deportation initiatives and focus instead on holding their federal counterparts responsible for reforming our immigration laws.” Sound words, especially since a comprehensive immigration reform program on the federal level, which includes a legalization program for undocumented workers, would:

• Add $1.5 trillion to America’s gross domestic product over the next 10 years by raising average wages for immigrants and native-born Americans alike
• Increase net tax revenues: $4.5 to $5.4 billion in the first three years
• Support the creation of a significant number of new jobs

These gains accrue by bringing undocumented workers out of the shadows and making them equal partners in economic growth.

Now those are numbers we can all live with.

Angela M. Kelley is Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at the Center for American Progress. Philip E. Wolgin is an Immigration Policy Analyst at the Center. The authors would like to acknowledge Ann Garcia, Research Assistant for Immigration Policy, and Maya Edelstein, Intern in Immigration Policy, for their reserach and editing assistance.

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Source: AmericanProgress.org, “Your State Can’t Afford It” by Philip E. Wolgin, Angela Maria Kelley, 5 Jul 2011.