Ask any farmer in California what keeps them up at night and we would guess that nearly all of them would list ‘labor shortages’ and ‘water access’ as their top two concerns. Ironically, despite over 90 million American citizens choosing to sit out of the labor force and California having one of the highest minimum wage rates in the country, farmers in the Golden State struggle every year to find enough labor to keep fruits and vegetables from literally rotting on the vine.
Meanwhile, as the new administration promises to crack down on illegal immigrants, farmers are feeling the labor shortages in 2017 more than ever. As the Wall Street Journal notes today, many farmers have turned to the H-2A agricultural visa program to recruit temporary workers from Mexico but the process is generally described as “bureaucratic, costly and time-consuming.”
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 8, 2017.
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