SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Kevin Steward has spent more than a quarter-century in agriculture, much of that growing grapes for wineries. He’s always been able to rely on seasonal workers to tend the vines and bring in the year’s harvest.

But this year, workers are harder to come by.

“I could use 30 men,” Steward said. “We’ll get ’er done, but I can’t find anybody.”

Growers throughout California’s fertile Central Valley are wringing their hands as they struggle to find the manpower they need.

Anti-immigration laws and policies, an aging population, and even a raging drug war south of the border all are contributing to a slowdown in the pipeline of Mexican workers that for so long have fueled the farm industry, experts say.

“We’re just not seeing the number of people we (usually) see this time of year,” said Bryan Little, director of farm labor affairs at the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Steward, president of the Sacramento County Farm Bureau, said he has only a fraction of the 40 workers he depends on to tend the 1,000 acres of vineyards he manages in California’s Amador and San Joaquin counties.

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” he said, though he’s heard that there are “a lot of good workers who are busy picking cherries.”

But cherry growers say their labor situation is only marginally better.

Laborers available to harvest San Joaquin County’s lucrative cherry crop are down as much as 30 percent, according to the county’s farm bureau. At cherry grower Rutledge Farms in Woodbridge, Calif., 60 laborers are doing the work that 80 or 90 would in a typical year.

San Joaquin County is an agricultural powerhouse in California built on dairy, wine grapes, tree nuts and the sweet cherries being picked now. The county’s sweet-cherry crop alone is valued at more than $185.5 million, according to the California Farm Bureau.

The cherry harvest is a quick one, just days long and very labor-intensive. Shakers and other machines are useless in gathering the delicate fruit. Only pickers need apply.

“I hope what we’ve seen is an aberration,” Bruce Blodgett, executive director of the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau, said of the labor shortage.

California growers hope so, too. Early crops such as asparagus, blueberries and cherries are in, but soon will come more stone fruit, strawberries and the salad bowl crops – carrots, lettuce, mushrooms and peppers. All of them are crops that need hands in the soil.

California Farm Bureau officials say that as many as 225,000 workers toil on the state’s farmland, a number that typically grows to about 450,000 by the heavy harvest season in September.

Farm labor contractors saw warning signs as early as last year’s grape harvest when a late season stretched the labor supply to the limit, said Guadalupe Sandoval, managing director of the Sacramento-based California Farm Labor Contractor Association.

“Things didn’t ripen until late so everybody needed workers at the same time,” Sandoval said. “There weren’t enough crews out there. That was our canary in the coal mine.”

Reasons for the brake on Mexican immigrant labor are many.

Prices asked by the “coyotes” who smuggle workers across the border continue to rise – as high as $7,500, Sandoval is told. And, he said, “There’s no guarantee of getting across. The coyotes may take your money. Maybe your life, as well.”

The narco-terrorism plaguing Mexico makes an already treacherous journey north even more perilous.

Jeff Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., said surveys tracking the Mexican labor force “show a huge drop in the number of people setting out from Mexico. It’s not surprising that that’s having an effect on agriculture.”

“There’s a lot of factors feeding into this,” Passel continued. “We’re looking at a severely reduced demand for unauthorized immigrants, increased enforcement and a ramp-up in violence that makes it more dangerous to get to the border.”

Mexico’s demographics are changing, too, said Little, of the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Families are getting smaller and the population is aging, shrinking the number of workers crossing the border to follow the crops, Little said.

“That gigantic overlay of young people in the 1970s and 1980s – it just isn’t there anymore,” he said.

It’s not clear if farm labor shortages will continue, or what can be done to change the situation. Lawmakers have battled for years about various immigration reform strategies, including the guest-worker programs favored by many in the agricultural industry.

But Chuck Dudley, president of the Yolo County Farm Bureau, said the implications for American food consumers are severe if shortages worsen.

“It boils down to the fact that if labor continues as it is now . the ability to get a wide variety of food to table is somewhat in jeopardy,” Dudley said. “If you don’t get it planted, picked and packed, it won’t get to the table.”

Source: JoplinGlobe.com, “Growers struggle to cope with farmworker shortage” McClatchy Newspapers, 7 Jun  2012.

Pescadero Grown! opens in La Honda for a second season.

PESCADERO – Luscious strawberries. Enormous onions. Baskets of kale. Goat cheese and grass-fed beef. On May 3, these mouth-watering delights drew local shoppers to the seasonal debut of Pescadero Grown!, Puente’s popular local farmers’ market.

Nearly 200 locals, young and old, came to celebrate this special rite of spring and dance to the festive music of Mi Tierra Linda, a seven-piece mariachi band.

The Pescadero market features food picked, caught or raised within the South Coast of San Mateo as well as fresh fish from Princetown Harbor.

“You don’t find any better food anywhere. The difference between having it picked in Pescadero and buying it somewhere else the next day is astounding,” said Puente Executive Director Kerry Lobel.

To help fill the gap and get more farm-direct produce into the hands of low-income neighbors, Puente and its many community partners created Friends of Pescadero Grown! a wooden token-based matching program for recipients of CalFresh and WIC, as well as other low-income participants living in Pescadero, La Honda, Loma Mar, and San Gregorio.

For the first time this year, low-income shoppers are not only able to redeem their CalFresh and WIC Program benefits at the Pescadero and La Honda markets, they can enroll in the CalFresh (food stamps) program while shopping. The market match program is sponsored by Friends of Pescadero Grown, San Mateo County Human Services Agency, Get Healthy San Mateo and the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Puente and its local partners look forward to a long growing season. The Pescadero Farmers’ Market will occur on Thursdays through November from 3-7 p.m. at 251 Stage Road. The La Honda Farmers’ Market debuts May 8 and will occur on Tuesdays at the same time, at 8875 La Honda Road near the fire station.

Visit http://www.PescaderoGrown.org for the latest market news.

Source: PescaderoGrown.org, “Fresh, Local and Delicious: Pescadero Grown! Opening Day a Success” 4 May 2012.

As crops around the state are being planted, pruned, fertilized and watered in anticipation of a bountiful harvest, there’s a dark cloud forming overhead. The concern on farmers’ minds is whether there will be enough agricultural workers to get everything harvested.

Reports of labor shortages are springing up around the state. The farther north of the California-Mexico border one looks, the greater the concern that the number of agricultural workers needed for harvest work may fall short.

The shortage is already manifesting itself on the Central Coast, where many vegetable farmers say they find it difficult to fill out their harvest crews. San Luis Obispo County grower Tom Ikeda said his operation is in full harvest mode right now and he needs more help. He added that his neighbors report the same thing.

“We started noticing labor getting tighter a couple years ago. Then last year it got even worse, and this year it seems like it is getting to be much more challenging,” he said. “Our harvest has come into full swing in the last month, and that is when we really started noticing that we are having a tough time filling out harvest crews.”

Ikeda is part of a vegetable cooperative on the Central Coast and said members of the cooperative are sharing crews to harvest the perishable commodities in a timely fashion. Harvest activities will continue through November in the region.

Ikeda described the crew-sharing arrangement as a “win-win” for employees who have more steady employment and for farmers who are able to get their crops harvested at the peak time.

Farther inland, Lodi-area farmer Joe Valente reported that farmworker numbers are down in his area as well. The main crops requiring workers currently are grapes that are being suckered and shoot-thinned, asparagus that is being harvested and cherries that are nearly ready to be picked.

“Here in San Joaquin County, it is a balancing act,” he said. “If the asparagus is still going and the cherries are being harvested and there is grape work being done, then things will be really tight. It all goes back to Mother Nature.”

Joe Colace, president of Five Crowns Marketing in Brawley, said he has the good fortune of farming near the California-Mexico border. He estimated that between 250 and 300 members of his harvest crews legally cross into the United States from Mexico as day workers, returning to their homes in Mexicali at the end of the work day.

“We are able to fill our crews. We have been in the produce business for 56 years and we have a longstanding reputation with these local workers. And we are at the border, so we have the benefit of the green-card worker, the day worker. So we aren’t feeling quite the impact as our fellow growers and shippers the farther you get from the border region,” he said.

Colace blamed much of the worker shortage on two things: the inability of Congress and the president to pass a meaningful immigration reform package, and the unwillingness of most Americans to do agricultural work.

“If you cut to the chase, our government is not listening to us. They do not want to work with agriculture in this case and because of that I am afraid that five years from now we are going to be in a real crisis situation,” he said. “Illegal immigration has become a political hot button, but members of Congress aren’t seeing both sides of the coin. They are only seeing it from their own political benefit. Our nation has to understand that we are providing very safe and affordable food and yet that could be jeopardized if the labor force begins to shrink again.”

Colace said his company and other farming operations have tried to work with the state Employment Development Department in an effort to hire unemployed Americans, but those efforts have ended in failure.

“We have on several occasions submitted to EDD requests for 100 workers, 200 workers and what we get is minimal, less than 5 percent of our request,” he said, noting that of the 5 percent who do come out to work, most quit within four hours.

Colace said even offering wages of $12 to $14 per hour has not been enough of an incentive for these unemployed people.

From a statewide perspective, Bryan Little, California Farm Bureau Federation director of labor affairs, said he is hearing from farmers who are not seeing the usual number of employees returning in the spring.

“A lot of the people that I have talked with are very anxious about what the future might hold this year. So we will have to see the situation unfold, but right now a lot of growers feel things are not developing this year the way they normally do,” he said.

Little attributed this change to factors including a greater presence of federal agents along the border, dangers associated with border crossings and new realities in Mexico.

“There is a changing demographic in Mexico where their population is getting older, women in Mexico are having fewer babies, and what that means is that there are fewer people who are making the journey to America because there are job opportunities in Mexico,” he said.

A recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, noted that the number of immigrants coming into the United States from Mexico has declined significantly and there may now be more people leaving the United States and going to Mexico than vice versa.

According to the report, the sharp downward trend in migration from Mexico began about five years ago.

“I think that the labor supply 10 years from now could be very different from what it is right now. If the Mexican work force continues to contract to the degree that it looks like it is going to, that could be a real problem for us,” Little said.

(Steve Adler is associate editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at sadler@cfbf.com.)

Source: AgAlert.com, California Farm Bureau Federation, ”Farmers report early signs of labor shortages” by Steve Adler, 9 May 2012.

Do you work at a Migrant Health Center or work in a profession that serves migrant or seasonal farmworkers?  If so, plan on attending the Arizona Interagency Farmworkers Coalition annual educational conference in lovely Prescott, Arizona May 15-17, 2012. 

“Preserving Our Past, While Defining Our Future”,  a conference where those that provide services to, and work with farmworkers can learn about the variety of resources available and network with each other.  Presenters in the areas of Labor, Health, Education and others will provide information to attendees such as parent liaisons from the Department of Education,  promotoras and other staff from Migrant Health Centers, representatives from the Department of Economic Security, farmers and growers, contractors, and others interested in the well-being of farmworkers.  This is a unique conference and one of the few, if not the only, where attendees from such a wide variety of disciplines can gather together and learn from each other.

For additional information, please contact Lisa Nieri at 602-288-7557 or lisan@aachc.org.

Please click on the link below to register and for hotel reservation information. (Form must be printed and mailed or faxed with check, money order, or PO to the address on the form.)  Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity!

AIFC Conference Registration Form

While consumer demand for information about where our food comes from and how it’s grown is increasing, thus far there has been relatively little interest in the people that actually harvest it. Commonly used labels such as ”natural,” “free range,” “genetically engineered,” “heirloom,” “organic” and “local,” indicate nothing about how the farmworkers who pick these foods are treated, which is not great.

But brands and retailers should take notice – it is only a matter of time before socially conscious eaters in the United States begin demanding information about farmworker conditions.

The grassroots groundswell has already begun. The foundation arm of Bon Appétit Management Company, which operates more than 400 cafés for companies including Twitter, Yahoo! and eBay,  is already working to educate businesses and consumers of the issues and opportunities to change the status quo through TEDxFruitvale.

While not perfect, many eaters look for a “fair trade” label when purchasing coffee and chocolate products. The new Food Justice Certification, a third party certification for social justice in agricultural and food jobs from the Domestic Fair Trade Association, has yet to make it mainstream, but certainly foreshadows what’s to come.

“It creates a point of comparison for the rest of the food system,” writes Grist Food Editor Twilight Greenway of the new Certification. “We live in a time when consumers don’t have to dig too hard to find examples of really terrible farm labor practices. From documented cases of slavery and other human rights abuses in Florida’s tomato fields, to workers dying from heat exhaustion on California farms, and new data about the plight of women on farms and people of color in the food system at large, the national picture is pretty grim.”

How can we change the system and stop these injustices? Transform the grocery industry, says award-winning documentary film maker Sanjay Rawal.

Rawal’s latest film project Food Chain, explores labor practices within the United States agriculture sector and how the role the policies of large buyers, particularly supermarkets, play in perpetuating these practices. The Food Chain Team have collected over 400 hours of interviews with farmworkers, as well as with food justice thought-leaders such as Eric Schlosser, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Dolores Huerta, Barry Estabrook, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and the UFW.

Now, they are trying to raise post-production funds through Kickstarter to turn their footage into a 70-80 minute film. If you like the short, yet illuminating clip below, you can support the project here.

This post originally appeared on Food+Tech Connect, a media company connecting food and technology innovators with the information and people they need to transform the food industry.

Source: Forbes.com, “Consumer Demand for Food Justice Labels: The Next Big Thing” by Danielle Gould, 8 May 2012.

As the summer growing season approaches, farmers across the county are experiencing widespread frustration over the federal H-2A visa program for seasonal agriculture workers.<

In Idaho, farmers such as Jim Little of Emmett say they need immigrant workers from Latin America but that the government is making it too hard for them to follow the rules and employ workers legally instead of hiring border jumpers.

“It seems like they take great joy in piling on minutia and things we have to do,” said Little, a grain and hay farmer whose family has used foreign labor.

A bipartisan group of six U.S. senators, from Idaho, Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Wyoming, recently wrote the Department of Labor to express concerns with the system “and its serious implication on producers and our nation’s food supply.”

Frustration over the visa program helped drive Little’s daughter, Rochelle Oxarango, and her husband mostly out of the Idaho sheep ranching business.

“We needed four new workers from Peru. I started the paperwork in July and our workers didn’t arrive until February,” Oxarango said in an interview. “It’s really hard to depend on a program that takes that long to get workers here. We had to sell most of our sheep last year and this was one of the driving factors, it was just getting too hard to manage the labor situation.”

It’s a growing problem, according to Michaelene Rowe of the Snake River Farmers Association, an Idaho-based group that helps farmers with visa issues. Getting a temporary H-2A visa for a foreign farm worker to work in the United States is a confusing and painful process for an employer who is trying to follow the rules and only hire legal workers, Rowe said.

“This is counterproductive to the national discussion and political rhetoric related to the need to employ only legally documented workers,” she said.

Employers say that to use the program they have to deal with complicated paperwork and go through multiple federal agencies: the Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. The recent letter to the Labor Department from the six senators – Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Jim Risch, R-Idaho – cited “numerous cases in which unnecessary administrative delays resulted in not having enough labor to perform needed work.”

“Users routinely bring to our attention cases where applications are delayed or denied because of minor discrepancies related to language or officers applying an unreasonable degree of scrutiny that results in costly appeals to taxpayers,” the senators complained. They are asking for the three federal agencies who administer the program to hold regional meetings with farmers around the country to talk about solutions to the problem.

Assistant Labor Secretary Jane Oates said in a written statement that her department has been working with farmers to process applications more efficiently. That includes a revamped Website, an employer handbook and an ombudsman program to deal with issues, she said

She said that the department considers 85 percent of its final decisions on the visas to be issued in a timely manner and that it certifies the vast majority of applications.

The Labor Department reports that it certified 68,088 positions through the program last year. “We know that employers with legitimate needs are successfully using the H-2A program,” Oates said.

It’s not just farmers who have concerns with the H-2A program. The United Farm Workers of America says the foreign workers are easy to abuse.

“The concern is that H-2A workers in agriculture are the most vulnerable, exploitable workers out there, in large part because their ability to remain legally in the United States is entirely dependent on the goodwill of their employer,” said Erik Nicholson, national vice president of the union, which is based in California.

“And there has been case after case where, when workers articulate complaints, be it a lack of hand-washing facilities, toilet paper, underpayment of wages, substandard housing, that rather than responsibly addressing those concerns, the employer retaliates by discharging the worker,” Nicholson said.

The Department of Labor emphasized that growers can obtain the legal foreign labor only after they’ve first recruited U.S. workers and given them a fair shot at the job.

But Idaho growers said that’s part of the problem, with farmers required to hire and train Americans even if they have a Mexican worker ready who’s skilled, experienced and trusted.

Rowe, of the Snake River Farmers Association, said most H-2A users employ some Americans. But she said the required additional U.S. worker recruitment process has turned out to be a ”miserable failure that frustrates most program participants.”

“This often comes from their own experiences when local workers fail to show up, work a few days and quit, or perform work in an unsatisfactory manner,” she said.

Idaho farmer Danny Ferguson has four H-2A workers at his barley, wheat, cattle and specialty hay farm. He said he needs seasonal work and there’s not a surplus of skilled Americans willing to do what it takes. Too often the U.S. workers “are lazy, don’t want to be there, don’t want to put in the time and don’t do anything,” he said.

“The problem with the program is that as long as we have an H-2A employee we basically have an opening on the farm for a U.S. worker,” Ferguson said. “I have to advertise across the nation for U.S. workers. And sometimes we’ll get some people who will come, they want to come out, they want to go to work. But they don’t actually want to work.”

Email: scockerham@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @seancockerham

Source: McClatchyDC.com, “Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers” by Sean Cockerham, 7 May 2012.

Immokalee High School students who are participating in Michigan State University’s College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) stand for a portrait at Immokalee High School on Friday. which was initiated in 2000 and is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The program is one of 45 in the nation and accepts 50 students to the program each year. The mission of the CAMP program is to assist migrant and seasonal farmworker students in their transition to university life. PHOTO BY SCOTT MCINTYRE Scott McIntyre/Staff

For four years, Ernscie Augustin missed holidays with her family. She missed 80-degree winter days in Southwest Florida. And she missed her hometown of Immokalee.

But Augustin said what she couldn’t afford to miss was her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Every year, Immokalee High School students leave their homes and venture north to attend Michigan State University to take part in the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), which accepts 70 students annually and grants migrant students in-state status for their entire enrollment.

Augustin, a first-generation American whose family emigrated from Haiti, took the odyssey from Immokalee to East Lansing in 2008. On Friday, she became the first person in her family to graduate from college.

“As a Haitian in Immokalee you don’t really think about college,” Augustin said. “You think about taking care of your family, and the most efficient way to do that is working in the fields. That’s what my parents did. My family worked so hard every day, and that’s what motivated me to make a better life.”

Augustin is the 13th student from Immokalee to graduate from the program at MSU. Rudy Ramos, the associate director of CAMP, said the program has enrolled more than 600 students since its inception in 2000 and boasts a 72 percent graduation rate.

“Tuition for out-of-state students is double what it is for in-state students on a yearly basis,” Ramos said.

“The trustees of MSU realized the impact that the migrant population was having here in Michigan and made it possible for those students to come here. They made the admission criteria more flexible and opened opportunities for underrepresented students.”

Ramos said the mission of CAMP, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is to assist migrant and seasonal farmworker students in their transition to university life. Students who are accepted into the program receive financial support in various ways throughout their enrollment.

“Our students receive job offers from all over the country and from right here in Michigan,” Ramos said. “They may or may not return to Florida, but by the time they complete their education they are highly qualified professionals and they are bilingual. That makes them attractive to many businesses.”

Along with Augustin, Greta Dominguez and eight other Immokalee students joined CAMP in 2008.

“They helped me out with everything: books, tutoring, counselors, and room and board,” Dominguez said. “I couldn’t have come here without their help.”

Michigan State representatives travel to Immokalee each fall to talk to migrant students about the program. Rishay Ackley is the migrant counselor at Immokalee High School, and said another 11 students have expressed interest and are eligible to join the program this year.

“I feel like the interest is growing,” Ackley said. “It’s so important because most of our students are first-generation college students and they often don’t have anyone to guide them. It’s an opportunity that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.”

To apply for the program, students have to fill out an application and write an essay to CAMP. Ramos said the only other requirement is that the students provided verification that their parents have been migrant workers.

“An admission specialist from MSU actually comes down and does on-site admissions,” Ackley said. “Now, that is an unique situation. Without it, students have to wait two, three or four months. It’s great to see the smiles on their faces when they are told they’ve been accepted that day.”

According to Ramos, CAMP was created in part because 40,000 migrants come to Michigan each year for seasonal work on farms and cultivate grapes, apples and other fruit.

“Our two main receiving states are Texas and Florida. Families have been coming here for generations,” Ramos said. “Being that Michigan State is a land-grant university, it opens opportunities for our students.”

President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into law in 1862, which allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in every state “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.” Michigan State, founded in 1855, provided a model for the Morrill Act and is considered the pioneer land-grant institution.

Many of the students pursue farming-related careers after graduation, but some change paths. Dominguez is now attending Lansing Community College and has switched her major. She plans to start her own day-care business in Florida after graduation.

“I used to go with my father out into the fields, and I knew that wasn’t something I wanted to go through,” Dominguez said. “But doors opened for me when I came here. They really helped me. I changed my major, but I plan on getting my degree at MSU.”

Augustin said her education through CAMP has led to internships with the mayor’s office in Lansing and the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing. She is currently working for the university and plans on pursuing a career in immigration or family law.

“Because of this (CAMP), I have already had more opportunities than my parents and my grandparents,” Augustin said. “There were many times I didn’t think I would get to graduation, but I grew up a whole lot. I feel like now I can go anywhere in the country and make it.”

Source: NaplesNews.com, “Migrant program helps Immokalee students attend Michigan State University” by Jake Nordbye, 6 May 2012.

When a recent story ran about Mid-Columbia farmers who abandoned their asparagus fields because they couldn’t find enough workers to harvest the crop, several thoughts came to mind.

It’s sad for the farmer who worked to bring the crop to fruition. It’s sad for the asparagus lovers among us. But mostly, the farmer’s decision and the subsequent article shine a light on the immigration debate.

Most skilled farm laborers — especially those who harvest asparagus and other labor intensive crops grown here — are Hispanic. That is a fact. But that does not mean they’re all illegal aliens.

Many farm workers are U.S. citizens. Many were born in the United States, and others have the paperwork required to be here and working.

Still, farmers estimate that about 80 percent of farm workers are here illegally, although they typically have official-looking documentation that says otherwise.

Asparagus is a crop that waits for no man. Or woman. It needs to be cut when it’s ready. Let it go a day too long and it’s worthless and unmarketable. So, a shortage of workers has a devastating effect on the delicate fields dotting our landscape.

Gary Larsen, the Pasco farmer who gave up on 100 acres of asparagus last month, said it’s the first time he’s faced a labor shortage since he started growing the crop back in 1984. Some other farmers faced similar circumstances, choosing to curtail harvest on poorer-producing fields and focus on the best ones with the limited workers they had on hand.

Larsen said he was willing to take just about any worker to help fill the gap. But asparagus picking is a tedious and back-breaking business. His workers were working 10-12 hour days to keep up with the crop.

It’s just a guess, but we’re thinking his phone wasn’t ringing off the hook with unemployed Tri-City residents looking for the $9.04 an hour minimum wage that an inexperienced asparagus cutter would likely earn.

A lot of folks whose citizenship is not up for debate simply don’t have the work ethic or the stamina to put in long days in the field to draw an honest wage. A couch is way too comfortable for some to consider leaving for manual labor.

Several of the workers interviewed for the Herald article were from other areas, moving with the crops as they ripen from region to region. That kind of migrant work force is not nearly as common as it used to be. Not long ago, Mid-Columbia school enrollments swelled after spring break, when laborers for asparagus harvest began to arrive.

A decrease in the number of Mexican immigrants nationwide could be partly to blame for this year’s labor shortage. So could increased attention from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Or all the anti-immigrant rhetoric people are so quick to spout these days.

Whatever the reason for the shortage of workers this spring, it’s not the first Washington growers have faced in recent times. Last fall, apple harvest stretched later into the year than usual, and as much as 5 percent of the crop wasn’t picked because of a labor shortage. Our governor allowed some prison inmates to be relocated to the orchards to help with the harvest.

Asparagus is not a crop that can be successfully picked by machine. A skilled, determined and available labor force is needed to get the job done. And the window for a successful harvest is fleeting.

Leaving fruit to rot and crops to be plowed under is not what a farmer wants to have happen. It hurts the farm’s bottom line and the public’s access to the product. But without the necessary workers, what can they do?

We know it’s foolish to hope the nation’s broken immigration system ever will be fixed. There is no political will to take on the thorny issue.

But we could take one step toward a sane policy by creating a guest worker program that’s fair to workers and meets agriculture’s needs.

It would be a start.

Picket demonstration in front of Reynolds Headquarters (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Winston-Salem, NC – On a hot morning, May 3, over 200 people gathered in front of the R.J. Reynolds (R.J.R) Headquarters in opposition to the very severe working conditions forced on North Carolina tobacco farmworkers. In response, the police surrounded the front of the headquarters, along with every street corner near it.

R.J.R. has a long history of abusing North Carolina tobacco farmworkers through terrible working conditions, such as sub-minimum wages, pesticide and nicotine poisoning, uninhabitable housing and a lack of water and breaks, all of which result in numerous fatalities.

R.J.R. is also a corporate sponsor of the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which is known for its right-wing anti-immigration policies, such as Arizona’s S.B. 1070, along with advocating imprisoning undocumented workers, which private prison corporations profit off of. All of this is documented in a recent report by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), A state of fear: Human rights abuses in North Carolina’s tobacco industry.

At 9:00 a.m. a group of various organizations, including the FLOC, Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers (MSFW), the Youth and Young Adult (YAYA) Network of the National Farm Worker Ministry, Occupy Winston-Salem, along with religious leaders, gathered inside the R.J. Reynolds Headquarters to attend their shareholders meeting. Inside, as the CEOs discussed all the massive profits they’ve accumulated in the course of a year, FLOC continuously disrupted their meeting by standing up, calling for a “Point of information,” and asked serious questions which R.J.R. refused to tackle, in order to pressure them into actually meeting with FLOC to discuss and come to an actual agreement with tobacco farmworkers.

When asked on how well the action at the shareholders meeting went, Justin Flores, who is an organizer and Director of Programs for the FLOC, stated “Reynolds finally agreed to meet directly with FLOC, so we saw yet another step in the right direction. This is a direct result from all the campaigning that our supporters have helped us with around the country to shed light on the labor rights abuses happening in North Carolina. However, as the president [Baldemar Velasquez] has said, we don’t talk just to talk, so this campaign will continue until Reynolds comes to an agreement with FLOC on how to end labor rights abuses in their supply chain.”

Dida El-Sourady, a farmworker health outreach coordinator for the MSFW, commented similarly, stating “The shareholders meeting went really well. We got to ask a lot of good questions, which made them really uncomfortable. We had a very good presence there, with a lot of organizers talking about justice for farmworkers.”

As soon as the meeting was over, the various groups that attended made their way outside the R.J.R. headquarters and joined with the rest of over 200 people, ranging from farmworkers, Occupy, the religious community and even dedicated activists from both Ohio and Florida, and held a picket demonstration to continue the pressure on Reynolds. Chants like, “Reynolds Tobacco, you get rich. We get sick!” and “Qué queremos? Justicia! Cuándo lo queremos? Ahora! (What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!),” could be heard all along the street surrounding the front of R.J.R. headquarters.

By 11:00 a.m. everyone left the picket and marched to the Civic Plaza, where several different speakers of the FLOC spoke to the crowd, denouncing Reynolds’ abuse to tobacco farmworkers and undocumented immigrants. One speaker, James Andrews, who is President of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, commented, “I have a simple message to all of you today: don’t give up, don’t blink, don’t bat an eye, look at them eye-to-eye, not as trembling slaves, but as equals.” Another speaker, Baldemar Velasquez who is the founder and president of the FLOC, spoke passionately, “There has to be a way in which people can make all the money they want to make, but they cannot do it at the expense of people dying in the fields!”

As soon as all the speakers finished, everyone gathered again onto the streets and marched throughout Winston-Salem, chanting, “When I say people, you say power. People – Power! People – Power! When I say worker, you say power. Worker – Power! Worker – Power! When I say immigrant, you say power. Immigrant – Power! Immigrant – Power!” The march ended at Lloyd Presbyterian Church, where food and refreshments awaited and people got to rest and converse among comrades.

There was a microphone for anyone who wished to say a few words regarding the demonstration or any other topic that was dear to their hearts. A member of Occupy Winston-Salem spoke on the FBI raids of the 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists’ homes in September of 2010, along with the May 2011 raid of Chicano leader Carlos Montes’ home, mentioning the upcoming trial on May 15 in Los Angeles, California.

When asked his thoughts of the Reynolds-Farmworker situation as a whole and the demonstration held in response, Tony Ndege of Occupy Winston-Salem said “The heavily indoctrinated belief that labor is somehow bestowed upon us by our corporate overlords – that we should not only be grateful for having employment, but to fear and venerate those who exploit us at all costs – is what drives the enslavement of the overwhelming majority of humanity. The richest 1% of America now owns three times the wealth of the poorest 80% and that is an undeniably unsustainable fact. In a country with such unbelievable wealth, the fact that any human being is forced to work and live under such abusive and deplorable conditions, to save pennies on the dollar, is an abomination.”

Ndege continued, “In addition to benefiting from abusive farm labor, Reynolds American has begun another wave of firing full-time employees and hiring temps for a fraction of the labor costs. This shows that Reynolds American has no true allegiance to any of its workers. The brown-white labor divide created a false sense of security which has been smashed by the economic downturn. This is why it was so great to see so many groups – labor, church, occupy and El Cambio – present today. When it comes down to it, whether we are documented or not, we are all treated as cogs in the giant corporate wheel. And the only way we can stop this wheel from crushing us is to collectively throw a wrench in it.”

Source and photo gallery: FightBackNews.org, “Winston-Salem picket and march in support of NC tobacco farmworkers” by B.J. Murphy, 6 May 2012.

AUBURN, Maine (AP) – A former employee at the former DeCoster Egg Farms in Turner, Maine, has filed a lawsuit claiming he wasn’t paid overtime wages while he worked there.

In his complaint in Androscoggin County Superior Court, Leo Sierra Flores of Lewiston claims he regularly worked more than 40 hours per week at the farm, but wasn’t paid the mandated time-and-a-half rate for his overtime hours during the 2½ years he worked there.

His lawyer, Donald Fontaine, tells the Sun Journal that Flores is seeking $100,000 in back wages, damages and attorney’s fees.

The former owners of the farm could not be reached for comment.

The farm is now operated by a division of Land O’ Lakes, which last year agreed to take over operations of three farms formerly run by DeCoster.

Source: WLBZ2.com, “Former Maine egg farm worker files lawsuit” by Ken Christian, 27 Apr 2012.