Thread: Advances slash area farmers' labor needs

http://www.thetimesherald.com/apps/pbcs ... 60303/1002

Article published Jun 26, 2005
Advances slash area farmers' labor needs


By HILLARY WHITCOMB JESSE
Times Herald

The weeds between the sugar beet plants in Tom Wadsworth's field are barely thicker than a human hair. Their leaves are the size of the red-pepper flakes you shake onto pizza.

But if they grow much bigger, the weed-killing spray the Wadsworths and other Sanilac County sugar-beet farmers use won't be effective. It's designed to be applied every week or so, zapping weeds while they're tiny.

Although the hand-picked produce industry still needs migrant workers, changes in agricultural practices have edged them out of necessity for many crops.

"We always sprayed before, but we didn't have good chemicals to control the weeds. We'd spray one time, then bring the migrant labor in to hoe," Wadsworth, 43, of Custer Township said.

He estimated eight or nine years ago was the last time big groups of migrant workers were needed.

Before the chemical advances that make tiny weeds history, farmers needed people to hoe the weeds from between the beet plants until the beet leaves grew large enough to shade out the weeds.

"Ten years ago, eight years ago, any of the bigger guys (farms) pretty much had their own crew. Every year there's been less and less.

"We used to have 40 of them come up and hoe for us. Now the last four or five years, we've had just one family," Wadsworth said.

He and his father grow sugar beets, soybeans, dry beans and corn. They used to expect calls from migrant workers, letting the farmers know they were coming, but as of late this month, he hadn't heard from their migrant family.

Sometimes, if a row of beets is patchy or thin and can't suppress the weeds, there's still a job for a migrant worker or two with a hoe, Wadsworth said. Workers who do still come to this area sometimes move from farm to farm depending on the work that's available.

He said farmers try to keep migrant workers busy as soon as they're available for hire.

"Once we get them here, we like to have work for them to do." If there's no work one year, the workers might not return the next year. "And that might be the year we need them," he said.

Workers in Sanilac County are mainly on sod farms near Marlette or in the Palms area south of Minden City. In St. Clair County, they're at produce farms, where crops must be hand-picked.

Still, numbers aren't huge.

Joe Pirrone of Mike Pirrone Produce in Mussey Township employs six men in his fields in St. Clair County and northern Macomb County and said he expects his crew to grow to about 30 for harvest.

At McCallum's Orchard & Cider Mill in Grant Township, owner Charles Ruthruff waits for the same retired couple to return each summer from Texas and call him from their relatives' homes in Croswell. They pick fruit in Ruthruff's orchards.

"Sometimes I'll have three generations of the same family," Ruthruff said, but he'll start with three workers and only get up to about 10 in peak fall harvest time.

"Ten years ago, eight years ago, any of the bigger guys (farms) pretty much had their own crew. Every year there's been less and less.

See? I told you all. "Every year there's been less and less."

Our agricultural community doesn't need more and more farm workers, they need less and less every year for a couple of reasons. New advancements in technology plus there are fewer acres of farmland in production every in the United States!!

There is nohing wrong with using migrant workers, but there is a point where all this whining about the agricultural community needing more and more when in fact they need less and less is a situation of the Boy That Cried Wolf too many times.

Plus...what is the agricultural community doing with all these "extra labor"? Congress have given them more and more almost every year when they needed less and less, so what are they doing and where are they working? In jobs Americans had but got fired to be replaced with illegal immigrants or workers here legally but not working for the employer that said they needed them. So are they being rented out for money like a tobacco quota?

Probably is my guess.

STOP IT CONGRESS!! DO NOT ISSUE ANY MORE VISAS FOR FARM WORKERS UNTIL WE FIND OUT WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?!?!?

I believe you've been Horn-Swaggled!!

But, what's new in that!!