[xoxoxoBruce]

Every time the illegals come up somebody screams the prices will go up on fruits and veggies. Diversionary bullshit is what that is.
CIS

What Would Happen (without foreign labor)

Costs:

Even with transitional government assistance, some marginal, undercapitalized farms propped up by foreign labor would fold or have to sell out to better-capitalized, more progressive competitors. Such a shakeout, though difficult in the short term, is inevitable when an industry loses the subsidies protecting it and is forced to rationalize and become more efficient and competitive. But the reallocation of capital and labor to more productive uses benefits the nation in the long run.


There might be modest price increases. I say "might" because farmworker wages typically account for less than 10 percent of the retail cost of fresh fruits and vegetables, and even in the absence of a new guestworker program, there is no possibility that all illegal workers would disappear overnight; ending illegal employment, were we to make such a choice, would be a process, not an event, permitting farmers time to adjust. But even if the entire illegal agricultural workforce were somehow to magically disappear overnight, the impact on supermarket prices would be extremely modest and short-lived: Research suggests that supermarket prices for fresh produce would rise about 6 percent during summer and fall (when imports are small and prices are lowest) for one or two years, before farmers adjusted to the new circumstances. In the winter and spring, the price rise would be even smaller, perhaps 4 percent for one or two years. Such price increases are less than the variation between supermarkets, and would in any case apply to only a very small portion of the nation's food bill.


Some crops now grown in the United States would be imported, primarily very fragile crops intended for sale as fresh produce that will have to be picked by hand for the foreseeable future; fresh produce represents a relatively small portion of fruit and vegetable production, since most fruit and vegetable production is destined for processing and thus better suited for mechanization. The phasing out of production of certain goods which are not suited to high-wage, capital-intensive methods is a natural consequence of modernization; indefinitely subsidizing industries (or crops) which can no longer operate economically without government assistance is simple protectionism.

Benefits:

Harvest productivity would increase dramatically, strengthening the long-run competitiveness of American agriculture. Only by emulating other industries, which have prospered by evolving beyond the low-wage production methods of the past, can American fruit and vegetable farmers remain competitive with the growing number of commercial agricultural producers overseas. Attempting to maintain the status quo through guestworker programs is a dead end which we will all pay for in the long run. As several noted agricultural engineers have written, "while the U.S. was in the past the leading country in the world in mechanical harvesting, the majority of the research work in recent years is conducted outside the U.S."


Price increases, if any, would not only fade very quickly, but they would likely be followed by actual decreases in the real price of certain fruits and vegetables, as was the case with processing tomatoes after the end of the Bracero program. This should not be surprising, given the proven power of innovation to reduce real prices, as demonstrated by the late University of Maryland economist Julian Simon's famous bet with Stanford ecologist Paul Erlich (which Simon won) that the real prices of five commodities would all be lower in 1990 than 1980 due to innovation.


Employment would stabilize, eliminating many of the political and legal controversies that have surrounded agricultural labor for many years. In other words, much of the regulation of agricultural labor issues would be rendered moot, or at least less pressing, with the gradual evolution of farm labor into more steady, year-round employment, marked by wages and working conditions more in line with the rest of our society.

The guestworker approach is widely supported by agricultural trade associations. One would expect farmers to know their own interests. But a guestworker program is simply another kind of subsidy, and the experience of other industries, both here and abroad, shows that industries often seek the short-term comforts of government largesse to the long-term benefits of bracing competition and the innovation that results from it.

The dependence of our horticultural sector on foreign labor is a genuine problem — but the solutions so far proposed would only spawn new difficulties. The national interest demands that we reject the false choice of either illegal immigrants or guestworkers. A modest, transitional program to promote mechanization would better serve the long-term interests of agriculture and be far more cost-effective and have fewer unintended consequences than importing a vast new poverty class. Helping agriculture disentangle itself from foreign labor would strengthen the competitive position of America's farmers, avoid burdening taxpayers with huge new liabilities, and lighten the load of those who continue to toil in the fields. Seldom does such a small measure have the potential for so much good.