Where have all the farmworkers gone? Stricter borders, better
jobs and expensive living adds up to a shortage
Gilroy – Oranges are dropping from Bob Moitozo’s citrus trees, and Moitozo sees his profits dropping with them. Roughly 300 tons of oranges remain to be picked at his Santa Clara County grove, and Moitozo can’t find farmworkers to harvest the fruit.
“I’m dead-stopped right now,” Moitozo said. Dozens of workers have quit his grove, some after only a few hours of work. “We raised the pay, but they still left.”
Across the county, farmers are scaling back on oranges, strawberries and other labor-intensive crops, faced with a shortage in willing workers. George Chiala Farms cut its strawberry production by 10 percent last year; G & K Farms abandoned 20 percent of its 1,000 acres. Bell peppers and chilis rotted in South County fields, left unpicked for the past three harvests. Bracing for another shortage, local farmers say they’re planting less and paying more.
“We’re not growing what we can market – we’re growing what we can pick,” said manager Tim Chiala of George Chiala Farms. “The tail is wagging the dog,”
Tighter borders have kept many immigrant workers from crossing into the U.S., and pressed others to live and work here year-round, avoiding the border’s risks, said Juan Gil Garcia, who aids citizenship applicants for Catholic Charities. Now, farmworkers are in demand – and farmers are struggling to compete with construction crews, fast-food chains and even other states for their labor. Repelled by California’s sky-high rents, many have moved to Oregon or Washington, said Hollister labor contractor Ramiro Rodriguez, who has searched for workers as far south as Bakersfield. Those that remain want higher-paying work to pay California rents, said Garcia, and they’ve found it in South County’s construction boom.
“Farmworkers aren’t leaving just because they don’t like it,” said Sylvia Montoya, supervisor of Morgan Hill One Stop, which runs a program to train farmworkers in other fields, such as trucking and childcare. “It’s because they need to make more money. You can’t support four or five kids in South County on seven dollars an hour.” Ninety-nine percent of farmworker-families in her program have moved up to better-paying jobs, and the program expanded to 45 families this year, she said.
To attract workers, some farmers are hiking pay or offering continuous work, busying workers with weeding or other small tasks between harvests. But farmwork is naturally seasonal work, and farmers say they can’t boost wages without also boosting prices. Paying farmworkers like truckers or construction workers – upward of $15 an hour – is unheard of. Many farmworkers are paid by the piece, not by the hour, and can make more or less than the minimum wage, depending on how much they pick.
“The reality is, are you willing to pay $15 for a head of lettuce?” Rodriguez asked. “We try and get our clients to pay more, but if the consumer isn’t willing to pay, the farmer can’t pay us any more.”
Thursday, wind whipped the laborers hunched over rows of bell peppers, plugging pyramid-shaped seedlings into pre-cut holes in a tarp. Roughly 60 workers, contracted by Rodriguez, are earning $7.50 an hour for their work, planting peppers alongside Mesa Road in south Gilroy.
“After 10 hours, your legs hurt,” said Alexander Rodriguez, an 18-year-old from Los Banos doing temporary work during school breaks. “You feel like you can’t even walk. Sometimes workers don’t make it the whole day. They quit.”
“Construction is easier,” added Adam Roman, 50, speaking in Spanish. Roman splits his time between Guerrero, Mexico and Los Banos. “There, you’re under a roof. Here, you’re under the sun.”
It’s tough work, but someone has to do it, said Jenny Derry, executive director of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau. As farmers scrape for workers, some are seeking labor-free alternatives: Chiala Farms hired an engineering firm to mechanically de-stem strawberries, and G & K is researching tractors that steer themselves, using GPS. But machine-harvesters aren’t feasible for many of the row crops grown in South County, said Derry. Strawberries bruise easily, and John Deere doesn’t make a jalapeño harvester, Chiala added: It just doesn’t pay off.
“We need skilled farm laborers,” Derry said. “But the legislatures haven’t come to grips with the fact that we have this labor shortage … People are having to leave food in the fields. It’s an unbelievable shame and a waste of food.”
Immigration officials say H-2A visas are readily available to farmworkers, allowing them to enter the U.S. for a season. There’s no limit to how many can be awarded, said Sharon Rummery, Northwest regional media manager for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. More than 70,000 such visas were issued in 2005. But those who work with South County’s immigrants say the visa isn’t easy to obtain, and farmworkers are often unaware of it.
“There’s no outreach done to the isolated areas where workers live,” said Bernadette Barrera, migrant education recruiter for Gilroy Unified School District. In the past two years, she’s noticed the number of farm laborers drop, and encountered farmworkers from as far as Georgia, trekking west to pick South County crops. “Some don’t stay long enough to get the full information.”
The Farm Bureau backs an immigration bill known as AgJOBS, which restructures the H-2A program and creates a pathway for undocumented farmworkers to gain legal status. AgJOBS was reintroduced in January 2007, after previous versions failed to make headway in Congress. Garcia called the bill “a better long-term solution.”
“The problem with the H2A visa is it doesn’t take into account that workers are human beings who have families. They fall in love. Maybe they decide to settle,” Garcia said.
Farmworkers might settle, but with fewer workers and more jobs around, they’re not always settling for low wages. In pricey South County, they can’t. That has farmers nervous – and the Farm Bureau agitating for legal change.
“Unless the federal government comes together with a good guest worker program,” argued Chiala, “it’s going to be bad.”
