Thread: Who will pick the crops? North Olympic Peninsula farmers lam

Who will pick the crops? North Olympic Peninsula farmers lament lack of migrant workers

By Diane Urbani de la Paz
Peninsula Daily News

DUNGENESS -- Washington state's fields and forests are missing a key element during this fall's harvest, say two well-seasoned statesmen of agriculture.

Migrant farm workers "are just not here," said Nash Huber, owner of Nash's Organic Produce, an operation that produces scores of crops on 400 acres across the Dungeness Valley.

"I know of farmers around Washington who are having tremendous problems finding help," added Roger Short, owner of Valley View Dairy in Chimacum and a member of the Washington Farm Bureau board of directors.

"I know people who've lost their milking crews."

Short suspects the U.S. Border Patrol's intensified presence on the North Olympic Peninsula -- what he calls "harassment" -- has frightened immigrant workers off the farms.

The workers are scared because they're undocumented, Short said.

There is no process for those who have crossed into the United States illegally to obtain legal documents.

Short knows of at least two Mexicans who came to Jefferson County, found work on farms, sought legal residency, couldn't navigate the paperwork and were deported back to Mexico.

Mexican farm workers, both Short and Huber say, are highly skilled, grateful for their jobs -- and very hard to replace now that they've largely disappeared from the North Olympic Peninsula.

Few native-born people can or want to spend long days hoeing, bunching spinach or cutting cabbage, Huber said. "It takes focus," and a disciplined mind as well as a strong back.

"We gave up wholesale spinach," Huber added, "because that requires the skilled workers who aren't here."

He's also considering other changes to his product line, and this year introduced more grain crops since those can be managed mostly with machinery.

Short gave up dairying five years ago and now runs beef cattle and a new composting business, Magical Dirt, on his 350 acres.

Back when he was hiring dairy workers, "the native-born people didn't want to do what we were doing. They don't want to deal with the fact that a dairy is 24-seven-365."

Strawberry fields

Arturo Flores, manager of the 1,100-acre Graysmarsh Farm north of Sequim, tells a similar story of teenagers who come to work in the strawberry fields.

Many of these Sequim-grown workers cannot keep up with their migrant counterparts.

There are some, Flores said, who don't expect the job to be a leisurely lark like last summer's family outing to the you-pick patch.

When the berry fields are ready, "we work seven days a week, 12 hours a day," and the fastest hands can make up to $17 an hour.

Flores pays minimum wage plus a 45-cents-per pound bonus for strawberry pickers.

Still, he said, many teens would rather work in a restaurant or any place where the weather doesn't beat down on their bodies.

Flores, who immigrated legally from Mexico in 1986, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1996.

He's run Graysmarsh for 12 years, working with a year-round crew of Hispanics he said are likewise legal immigrants.

Produce lost

But he also believes that a lot of produce from Washington's farms could be lost if undocumented workers continue to stay away due to the Border Patrol's presence.

The border agents "are just doing their job," of searching for narcotics traffickers and terrorists as well as illegal immigrants, Flores acknowledged.

Yet it's clear to him that "most of the people working on farms are not drug dealers, and they are not terrorists."

Huber and Short, who have a combined 85 years of farming on the North Olympic Peninsula, agree that the nation's borders should be secure.

But they want to see some sort of path for immigrant workers to gain legal status once they've proven their value in the workforce.

They have done that in spades, the farmers say.

"We should treat them as equals," said Short. "We should treat them like they are people."

The Border Patrol "is harassing immigrants," he added, "and that isn't solving the problem."

The farm-labor shortage "was created by Congress," Huber added.

Federal lawmakers have failed to reform immigration policy since "certain parties have chosen to demonize the immigrant."

Huber pointed out that over the decades, Hispanic, Japanese and Chinese immigrants have come here to plant and harvest Americans' food. All have been demonized.

Questions roadblocks

Dan Fazio, director of employment services for the Washington Farm Bureau, said this week that the Border Patrol road blocks set up on the North Olympic Peninsula this summer and fall violate the state Constitution.

The Border Patrol, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, says the need for national security supersedes such state laws.

"That rubs our [farm bureau] members the wrong way," Fazio said.

"We believe the states should be able to decide if they want to have a higher level of rights" for their residents.

"If these road blocks are going to stop terrorists, we're obviously going to have to support them," he said.

But Fazio believes Border Patrol road blocks -- and what he suspects is a focus on Hispanic migrant farm workers -- could make Washington feel like a police state.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Michael Bermudez, spokesman for the Blaine sector that includes the north Peninsula, said the agency does not profile Hispanics whether they're on city streets, on farms or pulling into checkpoints near Forks, Discovery Bay or the Hood Canal Bridge.

Gain control of borders

The Border Patrol's mission is to "gain control of our nation's borders," and apprehend foreigners seeking illegal entry, Bermudez said.

This spring, the agency increased its force to 16,371 agents along the northern U.S. border from Washington to Maine; he declined to say how many of those are assigned to the Peninsula.

"We restrict ourselves from enforcing immigration laws in schools and churches. But if we see an individual who looks suspicious, we will stop that individual," Bermudez said.

"We don't differentiate," based on ethnicity or age, he added.

"I arrest people who have broken the law."

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/artic ... /310269998

I went to the website of the Peninsula Daily News and their slogan is
"Serving the North Olympic Peninsula since 1916".

I clicked on their classifieds, went to employment and didn't see a single listing out of about 20 for unskilled labor. Not a single listing in the last 30 days for "farm" labor. Can y'all find one? Maybe I'm just not searching for the right words, should I try it in Spanish or French?

If these farmers are so hard up for help, why aren't they running help wanted classified ads?

This link should take you to the Employement section of the Classified
PDN Employment Classified

Dixie

Interesting Dixie.

With so many citizens now out of work you would think they could get workers, for a decent wage of course.

Or get the prisoners out there to help pay back their debt to society.

I'm sick of the Agri-Bussiness welfare system. They are whinning and not working and still getting paid.

Everyone of those businesses will be filing claims for "unharvested and rotting" crops and trying to rake as much of the taxpayers money into their pockets as they can.

They ran all the family farmers out of business. The men and women that would get out in the fields and pick it themselves, they they would go help pick the neighbors crop and then the uncles crop and then the other neighbors crop...

I have no respect for agri-business and quit calling them farmers.

Dixie

Dixie said:

They ran all the family farmers out of business. The men and women that would get out in the fields and pick it themselves, they they would go help pick the neighbors crop and then the uncles crop and then the other neighbors crop...

That's so true. Where I come from the small town farmer is slowly dwindling away, saw how they helped each other out but the big biz people are buying them out. Very sad.

Originally Posted by Dixie

I'm sick of the Agribusiness welfare system. They are whining and not working and still getting paid.

Everyone of those businesses will be filing claims for "unharvested and rotting" crops and trying to rake as much of the taxpayers money into their pockets as they can.

They ran all the family farmers out of business. The men and women that would get out in the fields and pick it themselves, they they would go help pick the neighbors crop and then the uncles crop and then the other neighbors crop...

I have no respect for agri-business and quit calling them farmers.

Dixie

Awesome! This year I went to a local apple orchard and picked my own (a bushel) apples. There were lots of innovative people there picking there own apples as well.

I was in the steel industry for more than 25 years. When this industry asked for help. the farm industry always declined. The farm industry was willing to loss steel jobs or let be out sourced to other countries. Today, we only two large domestic steel companies: USS & Nucor. The other domestic steel companies have gone belly up or been purchased by foreign companies. Inefficient plants have been closed, weak companies disposed of and thousands of jobs have been lost.

The farmers may need to suffer the same way. They need to mechanize or grow labor intensive crops in low wage countries. Why should farmers be supported when they failed to support other US industries, such as steel, furniture and clothing ?

Small farmers work extrmely hard ( and deserve support), but the large corproate farms are merely asking for more corproate welfare.

Few native-born people can or want to spend long days hoeing, bunching spinach or cutting cabbage, Huber said. "It takes focus," and a disciplined mind as well as a strong back.

If an illegal invader can do it, you bet an American citizen will do it, so long as he is paid a decent wage! But I suspect therein lies the problem! Guys like Huber want to pay slave wages and also expect Americans to be availing themselves.

Americans have to pay taxes Huber! We do not get paid under the table! We are held accountable, unlike your beloved illegal invaders who have no such obligations!

Why can't we use prison labor to do at least some of this work (limited work release?) I think that it's an excellent idea.

Ostrich

In many cases machines are available but farms don't want to spend the money to buy the machines.

Also more effort has to be put into developing newer machines to pick various crops.

The answer to the migrant worker problem - is mechanization. Lets get machines to do the work so we DON'T NEED MIGRANT LABORERS AT ALL.