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Influx Immigrant Farm Worker Makes Up For Loss Of Vt Farm Labor Service

Tuesday April 25, 2006

By Ed Barna

No one familiar with dairy farming has been surprised by the appearance of Mexican farm workers, to accompany the Jamaican apple pickers whose diligence is critical to the harvesting of that crop each fall. Some observers wonder if the question now is whether they will stay on the farms with construction companies also desperate to find more workers.

For at least two decades, the difficulty of finding reliable, knowledgeable hired help to cover during illnesses, emergencies and time off has been second only to milk prices in convincing dairy farmers to sell their cows. The increased need to have at least one family member work outside the farm (milk prices have stayed the same while expenses have soared) and the decrease in average family size have added to the pressure, among other factors.

Several years ago, things got to the point where a number of Vermont farmers and their associates were willing to try a European way of easing the labor crunch: a farm labor service. Extension agent Rick Levitre brought the idea from Ireland, and soon found allies in an attempt to create something similar here.

In Ireland and other European countries, there was a pool of trained, experienced farm workers that farmers could draw on for temporary help--which sometimes turned into permanent positions. A central office gathered these workers--retired farmers, ag school graduates trying out the profession, people trying to work their way up to owning a farm, or people who just liked working with cows and fields--and their contacts with a large number of potential employers made it possible for those in the labor pool to stay busy enough to make a living.

For the Vermonters, such a service looked like a good way to give workers more training and possibly to afford them benefits. But first, there needed to be a critical mass of both workers and employers.

The man entrusted to manage that effort was Paul Seiler of Cornwall. Interviewed recently, he said the attempt was on its way to being a success, and he still believes there is a place for a Vermont farm labor service.

But it disbanded last fall, Seiler said, for lack of the funds to maintain an administrative office. (He had been working out of his home, he said, and in addition to the problem of paying him and anyone else involved, there was the issue of how to set up a more businesslike, long-term clearinghouse.)

“We ran out of money probably early in 2005 and we kept it going without any money,” Seiler said. “There was unfortunately no participation, financial or otherwise, from the Department of Agriculture” (now the Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets).

“A lot of things were in place already to make it work,” he said. “It was up and running. There were people who were receiving workers, part-time or full-time. There was a database in place for working farms that needed help.”

The Vermont Farm Labor Service brought “satisfactory results” for farmers and workers both, Seiler said. “We never went below $15 an hour,” usually $15 to $20 an hour.”

The Mexicans, who are working throughout the Champlain Valley, “do a good job,” Seiler said. But he still believes there would have been a place for the Farm Labor Service, providing assistants with deep farm experience and technological know-how that would let them do things like take over milkings without supervision from the farm owner.

“It was always kind of a challenge,” Seiler said of the FLS, “but it could have and should have been up and running.”

How much money would it have taken to do that?

“I'd say $75,000 annually,” Seiler said. That would have paid the manager's salary and gotten the office going, he said. “But there was no interest from the Department of Agriculture or the Governor to keep it going.”

Secretary of Agriculture Steve Kerr said he was not familiar with the Farm Labor Service situation. Its formation had been “before my time,” he said. Possibly someone had decided that the administrative costs were too high for the number of people involved, he speculated.

In any case, Kerr and Agri-Mark economist Bob Wellington and others observed, there has been a shift in attitudes among American young people in their willingness to do hard physical work, especially work outdoors in all kinds of weather. Ironically, shrinkage in the number of Vermont farms has had the effect of decreasing the number of youths who learned to shoulder tough tasks and take on adult-level responsibilities long before graduating from agriculture's School of Hard Knox.

But assuming that Congress resolves the issue of whether and how to punish illegal immigrants (who are apparently reluctant to try going back across the border due to tougher enforcement), the question will arise how they can be integrated into Vermont's farm economy.


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