FRESNO, Calif. – Cherries are starting to blush red in the state’s warm southern reaches, but farmers are eyeing the first big summer crop with concern, unsure if they’ll have enough hands for the harvest.
In recent years, growers in America’s most bountiful farmland have watched tighter border enforcement and competition from the booming construction industry threaten their labor supply.
The building bubble has burst, but will laborers come back to lower-paying, backbreaking jobs in the fields? Growers are doubtful.
“We’re hoping they’ll show up,” said Bruce Fry, whose Bing cherries near Lodi are starting to turn from straw yellow to the first pale shades of red.
His family has worked the land since 1855, and seasonal workers have always returned for the harvest in mid-May after the long growing period when they’re not needed. Fry believes he might attract enough workers, but the number of people who come by looking for jobs is dwindling. “We’re taking a leap of faith,” he said.
California harvests about half the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables – a massive undertaking that requires about 225,000 workers year-round – double that during the peak summer season. More than half are immigrants who cross the Mexican border illegally and travel from field to field picking some 400 different crops that each ripen at different times.
Last year, that seasonal migration was marked by spot worker shortages, and some fruit was left to rot in the fields.
President Bush’s plan to secure the border relies on raising the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents from about 12,000 to 18,000 by the end of 2008, which would further limit the number of immigrant workers who can reach the farm jobs waiting for them.
Even with the slowdown in construction, Wenceslau Covarubias, who doubled his salary to $15 when he left the fields three years ago to help build homes, isn’t going back.
“You can’t go backward in life,” he said. “In construction, I can learn more, I can keep going up.”
He traded his aging Honda for a new Ford Explorer, learned to lay cement for home foundations and do detailed tilework. These are skills he’s proud of.
“I’m sure some people will go back to (agriculture), but I think that’ll be the exception, not the rule,” said Phil Martin, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis.
Farmers realize they can’t match the wages and stability that led immigrants to take 60 percent of the 1 million construction jobs created during the 2004-2006 building boom, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by the Pew Hispanic Center.
“You get used to a certain lifestyle, a certain pay scale, and it’s difficult to go back,” said Henry Vega, of Ventura County, a labor contractor who grows 65 acres of strawberries and avocados and manages another 1,000 acres. “You’re hot and dirty in the fields.”
One of Vega’s strawberry plots, normally harvested by 240 workers, is being picked by 160. That shortfall is forcing him to harvest more slowly. This means picking berries that are too ripe to be sold fresh. The fruit can be canned or juiced – but both are less profitable options.
“I’ve been in this business for 25 years, and it’s getting worse every year,” he said.
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