Business News - Lacking workers, some farms scale back

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Lacking workers, some farms scale back

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (UPI) -- The lack of farmworkers has caused some U.S. farmers to scale back on acres planted, a farm bureau official said.

"We have producers across the state who ... started making cuts in the amount of acres they produce," due to a lack of workers, Landon Gates of the Colorado Farm Bureau told USA Today.

The U.S. State Department processed 50,791 H-2A work visas for farm laborers in 2007, a fraction of the number needed, the newspaper reported.

California alone employs 180,000 workers during the harvest season, President of the Nisei Farmers League Manuel Cunha Jr. told the newspaper.

Jason Resnick of Western Growers, a farm association in Arizona and California, estimated 70 percent of farm laborers are illegal immigrants using fraudulent paperwork.

States and farmworkers' unions are developing initiatives to increase the number of legal workers, the report said.

Farmers are reluctant to use the H-2A system, which requires they advertise for domestic workers first, then pay transportation and housing for immigrant laborers.

Paperwork can also be costly. A company charged Palisade, Colo., farmer Bruce Talbott $600 per worker to process work applications, the newspaper reported.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 07/03/2008

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