As Congress prepares to debate immigration reform legislation that farmers and ranchers hope will tackle agricultural labor challenges, the co-authors of a study on demographic and economic changes in Mexico say additional harvest mechanization and other strategies will also be needed to resolve the problem in the long term.
J. Edward Taylor, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis, and doctoral student Diane Charlton presented findings and conclusions published in their article, "The End of Farm Labor Abundance," at the California Farm Bureau Federation Leaders Conference held this month in Sacramento. They are co-authors with Antonio Yúnez-Naude, a professor in the Center for Economic Studies at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City.
"Our speakers’ research indicates that economic and demographic trends in Mexico signal that ever fewer Mexican citizens are inclined to journey north to the U.S. in search of agricultural work," CFBF Associate Counsel Carl Borden said in his introduction. "In addition, sources of farm labor from other nations are limited and likely insufficient to make up the difference. This is disturbing news, but it is important information that we would ignore at our peril."
Based on information from the Mexico National Rural Household Survey in 2003, 2008 and 2011, researchers said they could see how the recession affected labor decisions and whether individuals worked in agricultural or non-agricultural sectors, either in Mexico or the U.S.
"The probability of working in agriculture from rural Mexico is decreasing over time, while the probability of working in non-agricultural sectors is actually increasing," Charlton said. "We would expect that this would have implications for both farmers in the United States and in Mexico, as they compete for the same dwindling supply of agricultural workers."
New data, Taylor said, show that Mexico’s farm labor supply is declining at the same time as demand for labor on Mexican farms is increasing.
"Mexican farm employment dropped by about 2 million (from 1995 to 2010), and now it’s beginning to pick up," Taylor said. "There is growing competition in Mexico for this dwindling farm labor supply. What this means is that as the supply of labor goes down and the demand for it goes up, its price starts to get pushed upward. The ‘reservation wage,’ which means how much you have to offer workers to induce them to work on your farm, is increasing."
The increase in wages for workers in Mexico also pushes up the wages that U.S. agricultural employers must offer to induce those potential employees to come to the United States.
Changing income and education levels in countries around the world also affect the potential pool of people available to work on farms, Taylor said.
"We are no different from other countries in the world. Other countries with incomes similar to ours, their kids don’t do farm work either," he said. "In fact, at pretty low income levels, societies transitioned out of hired farm work and began facing this farm labor problem. You see it in Germany, France and England."
Other factors affecting the number of farmworkers from Mexico coming to the United States, the researchers said, include non-farm economic growth creating other alternatives; rising rural education; plunging fertility rates; border violence; and weakening networks of people migrating from Mexico to the United States.
"What the findings suggest is that over time, agriculture is going to have to figure out ways to increase productivity to produce more with fewer workers than it does right now," Taylor said. "We’re in this new age where mechanization is going to be a critical component of adapting to this new reality. This means demand for more skilled workers (those who can operate machinery)."
The U.S. agricultural education system, Taylor added, is training farmers and food system workers but not really farmworkers. This needs to change, he said, so that the United States is prepared for the new, "teched up" careers that agriculture is going to provide.
"I would think about how to influence immigration policies in a way that can help keep U.S. growers competitive with Mexican growers over this dwindling supply of farm labor, but at the same time, recognize that immigration policy, although it plays a role, is only one of several intervening variables," Taylor said. (The farm labor supply) is going to keep on shrinking. What our findings are suggesting is that it is really time to rethink what we need to do to adjust to this new world that we’re living in."
Following the seminar, CFBF Federal Policy Division Manager Rayne Pegg noted that the UC Davis study applied specifically to Mexico.
"On-farm jobs have represented a source of opportunity for people from many regions," she said. "Though demographics in Mexico are changing, people from Mexico and other nations will continue to seek agricultural employment in the U.S., and immigration policy must accommodate their ability to work in our nation legally."
(Christine Souza is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)