From,"In Florida Groves Cheap Labor Means Machines" by Eduardo Porter, NY Times

In 1979, the farm worker advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance, with support from the United Farm Workers union of Cesar Chavez, sued U.C. Davis, charging that it was using public money for research that displaced workers and helped only big growers.

The lawsuit was eventually settled. But even before that, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter's agriculture secretary, Bob Bergland, declared that the government would no longer finance research projects intended to replace "an adequate and willing work force with machines." Today, the Agricultural Research Service employs just one agricultural engineer: Donald Peterson, a longtime researcher at the Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.Va.

"At one time I was told to keep a low profile and not to publicize what I was doing," Mr. Peterson said.

As the government pulled out, growers lost interest as well, refocusing on Congress instead. In 1986, farmers were instrumental in winning passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized nearly three million illegal immigrants — more than a third under a special program for agriculture.

Farmers' investments in labor-saving technology all but froze, and gains in labor productivity slowed. From 1986 to 1999, farm labor inputs fell 2.4 percent, after a drop of 35 percent in the preceding 14 years. Meanwhile, farmers' capital investments fell 46.7 percent from their peak in 1980 through 1999.

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"The rest of the world hand-picks everything, but their wage rates are a fraction of ours," said Galen Brown, who led the mechanical harvesting program at the Florida Department of Citrus until his retirement last year. Lee Simpson, a raisin grape grower in California's San Joaquin Valley, is more blunt. "The cheap labor," he said, "isn't cheap enough."

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So what do we have today? As a recent article here pointed out American produce suppliers are dropping the $100/day illegal aliens and outsourcing
to third world countries where the labor may be as little as a few dollars a day. Or farmers with enough money might be able to buy machines built by overseas manufacturers. But in the meantime, since these landmark events in 1979, we have let millions in to do farmwork---and still we are told we need more. It seems the farmworkers have wandered off to greener fields in crafts and manufacturing!

When Senators like Diane Feinstein cry and whine that we need more agricultural visas for farmworkers I would say WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE TWENTY FIVE MILLION FARMWORKERS WE HAVE ALREADY LET IN TO THE USA?

So that is why I have no high regard for Cesar Chavez. It was his organization which brought the suit---no matter what Chavez's intentions were--that has brought it all down.