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Story last updated at 1:08 a.m. Saturday, August 19, 2006

Outsource U.S. food production

Have you checked where some of your fruits and vegetables are coming from lately - the country of origin?

The next time you walk down the produce aisle, look at the stickers to see where which country these items come from. You're likely to see apples from Fuji or peppers from Mexico. Many of the fruits and vegetables in our supermarkets today are grown outside the United States.

A chief reason is these products were not in season for U.S. growers.

However, U.S. farmers continue to face competition from growers in Mexico, Central America and other countries around the world. This could be changed with visionary public policy.

By assembling a well-thought-out, workable guest-worker program for agriculture, this nation's lawmakers can make sure those stickers you see on fruit and vegetables seasonally don't become a year-round occurrence.

If this nation's farmers, ranchers, restaurateurs, etc. don't have a guest worker program, the Untied States will be forced to bring in more and more produce from outside our borders. In turn the money you fork over at the cash register at your local supermarket will increasingly be sent - billions of dollars - to farmers in other nations to grow the food we Americans eat here at home.

How did we arrive at this predicament in the United States? Why do we have too few farm laborers? How can we solve this dilemma?

Today, the demand for farm labor is one of the lowest in terms of labor in this country's history. This is mainly because of the productivity of American agriculture. Approximately 2 million workers come from farm families. Another 1 million are hired.

While there are no concrete figures on it, at least one half or even more of agriculture's hired workers are not authorized to work in the United States. If there is a clamp down at the border without providing a legal channel for workers and employers, much of this country's labor supply could disappear.

So why can't farmers and ranchers find people to help them?

Visit with a farmer sometime, or better yet visit a farm or ranch. Work on farms and ranches is hard, hot work. This work doesn't appeal to most Americans today. While most ag producers are willing to pay higher wages than most service industries, most Americans would much prefer working in air conditioned buildings out of the dust and sun-scorched fields. Today, most people won't work on a farm or ranch at any wage.

This country could easily lose one third of its fruit and vegetable production according to an American Farm Bureau Federation study. In today's era of ever increasing trade deficits, that could translate into a financial loss of between $5-9 billion annually for our country. The financial effects also would ripple across all sectors of American agriculture, with up to an additional $5 billion hit to net farm income here in the United States due to higher production and labor costs.

Farmers and ranchers are not calling for wholesale amnesty any more than we want U.S. agriculture to hemorrhage to the tune of $9 billion a year.

The answer can be found in a compromise between the House and Senate bills that will take into consideration a tightening of our borders, a crackdown on employers who flagrantly disobey the law and a mechanism to find workers for employers who cannot find adequate labor in the United States. This would mean temporary workers from outside our borders who are willing and able to participate in a lawful U.S. program.

Like the work on an American farm and ranch striking a compromise on this issue isn't going to be easy. Still it's time for Congress to do what's in the interest of U.S. employers and workers - enact a comprehensive program that's right for border security and U.S. agriculture.

John Schlageck has been writing about farming and ranching in Kansas for more than 25 years. He is the managing editor of "Kansas Living," a quarterly magazine dedicated to agriculture and rural life in Kansas.