Higher wages trigger specialty crop mechanization in US
Tom Hertz is a federal government data collector who studies and analyzes numbers to grasp a real-time view of the ever-changing U.S.-Mexico farmworker-immigration issue.
Hertz, a farm labor economist with the USDA’s Economic Research Service in Washington, DC, shared a hard drive's worth of interesting farm labor data with farmers, including where farmworker numbers and wages are headed in the future.
Hertz also discussed general labor wages during and after the recession. During the U.S.’s financial slowdown, wages paid to workers were tight. This was not because of a slowdown in agriculture, Hertz noted. “Agriculture powered through the recession quite well.”
Since the Great Recession, Hertz says, wages for farm labor contractors and crew leaders have grown about 7 percent per year. Overall wage growth for general farmworkers has climbed 4.5 percent on average annually over the last four-and-a-half years. Wages for farm management-type services are nearly 6 percent higher.
The end result is fewer available workers and a growing threat to U.S. farmers who rely on farmworkers to plant, tend, and harvest crops. Hertz sees the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry as the agricultural sector which could be hurt the most by reduced farmworker numbers.
source: westernfarmpress.com