Farmers feel the pinch of missing migrant workers

WOODLAND, Wash. — A third of Jerry Dobbins’ 155-acre strawberry crop rotted on the vine this year. His blueberry bushes are so heavy with fruit that the branches are hanging near the ground.

There is no one to pick them.

Dobbins Berry Farm in Southwest Washington near the Columbia River is one of many farms across the state facing a huge labor shortage this growing season, as tighter security along the U.S.-Mexico border has crimped the supply of migrant farm workers.

Harvest time for strawberries, one of the hardest fruits to pick because of its proximity to the ground, has already come and gone at Dobbins’ farm, the largest of its kind in the area. Now Dobbins is worried that his other crops will suffer a similar fate.

“We won’t pay any of the bills on our strawberry crop this year,” Dobbins said.

His problem is not unique.

Production at the Bell Buoy Crab Co. in Chinook, Wash., is down 50 percent since Immigration and Custom Enforcement raids in April, according to the Washington State Farm Bureau. Growers across the state are feeling the void left by the worker shortage, said Dean Boyer, spokesman for the Farm Bureau.

“This is a rolling problem. As various harvests come, farmers are going to feel the effects,” Boyer said.

For Dobbins, extreme temperatures in late June worsened the problem. Strawberries ripened faster than usual. An acre of strawberries usually requires two workers per acre, but this season Dobbins needed three workers per acre; he actually had about one worker per acre.

The work force on the farm is almost entirely made up of Latino migrant workers, and Dobbins speculates that many of his usual workers simply did not show up this year because border crossing has become too dangerous and too expensive.

“It seems to me like if they would have some kind of guest worker program in place before they put pressure on the borders, it would make a lot more sense to farmers. There’s got to be a better solution than what they’re doing,” he said.

Down the road, fellow farmer George Thoeny faces the same labor shortage. Migrants are a necessity, he said, because Americans are unwilling to do agricultural work.

“I personally can tell you, where I need 300 workers a day, I haven’t had one Caucasian person knock on my door and say, ‘I want to work for you.’ I couldn’t do this without the Hispanic people,” Thoeny said.

“Fifteen years ago we would have a steady stream of young people coming to us to ask for a job. This year, we didn’t have one Caucasian person come to us,” added Dobbins.

Handpicking berries is necessary for the farmers because foreign competition keeps prices low. Both Dobbins and Thoeny own machines that can pick raspberries and blueberries, but they’re too expensive and inefficient, Dobbins said.

Machine picking costs him about 85 cents a pound, where handpickers make about 35 cents a pound.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see it’s going to be a disaster,” he said.

Berry-picking machines also pull green, unripened berries off the bush, making more work for farmers and wasting thousands of berries. The machines also damage fragile raspberries, creating a lower-quality product.

The farmers are quick to defend the Latino population they employ. They mention hearing radio and TV talk show hosts portray Latinos as drug dealers and criminals, or claim that immigrants are stealing jobs from the work force. They turn the shows off in disgust.

“I think that most of these people who work in the fields are some of the hardest-working people I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re no different than people who live here and go to Alaska to work in the summer,” Thoeny said.

For Dobbins and Thoeny, the future seems bleak. “Usually farmers can improvise and come up with a plan B,” Thoeny said. “The depressing part is, there is no plan B.”