U.S. Wheat Farmers Face Grim Harvests as Immigration Bill Dies

Yahoo News ^ | Tue Jul 3, 12:11 AM ET | Alan Bjerga Tue Jul 3, 12:11 AM ET

[Ditter]

What is the big deal, the same people who harvested last year are still here this year.

[dennisw]

My understanding is wheat is highly mechanized. It has no need or very little need for foreign workers
Produce and meatpacking is a whole 'nother deal. This is labor intensive and I would favor very strict guest worker program for such laborers

[JustaDumbBlonde]

;"My understanding is wheat is highly mechanized. It has no need or very little need for foreign workers."

True. Each crew harvesting wheat requires one person to operate the combine; one person operating a tractor pulling a grain cart; and at least two persons driving a trucks/grain trailers back and forth to the elevator.

Depending on factors such as how good the yield on the wheat and how good the access to the field with semi-trucks, and the length of wait at the elevator, you may need an additional tractor/grain cart.

Along with those people, a crew will usually have a person or two that drag around the fuel/grease trailer and other necessities. As compared to say ... harvesting produce ... wheat requires very little in the way labor, but the labor needs to be skilled. The machines and other equipment are extraordinarily expensive to buy and maintain and we don't let low-end labor around an operation such as this.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.***

A very good read till the last few chapters when he starts preaching Socialism and everyone starts calling everyone “Comrade”.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***We lost our wheat this year because of too much rain; that’s the breaks.***

Our last attempt at wheat farming on the High Plains of NM (1949-1950)ended when the WHITE HARVISTER took one crop and drought the second. He then went to road construction and oil field work. Best times of my young life.

[penowa]

"Total, complete, truck load size of BS alert on that story."

The only reason why a reporter would write this absolute CROCK is because he knows that most readers will buy it since they don't know a thing about farming (or where food comes from - duh! the grocery store? /s) The very worst part is that he's so certain nobody will expose him for the complete propagandist LIAR that he is, he chooses wheat harvesting which is, and has been, the most mechanized kind of farming for my whole lifetime. His readers are supposed to conjure up those pix they've seen of farmers (now replaced by Mexicans) with scythes hand chopping the wheat into bundles and making haystacks with pitchforks!

This story needs a TOTAL B.S alert, not to mention a BARF one!!!!

[dennisw]

Thanks!!!

[philetus]

Is it the independent farmers or the huge corporate “farmers”?

[rollin]

What a bunch of absolute non-sense. We have eight combines and the associated rolling stock running wheat harvest, corn harvest and soybean harvest in the Midwest.

Every one of the employees is an American citizen, born here, and only one has a Hispanic background. They make a lot more than $1,800 per month also with group health and life insurance benefits ... as well as being on the payroll 12 months a year with vacation time. To my knowledge in the last 40 years, we have never employed an illegal so we know that it can be done.

When we have someone quit or retire (some are college students), we have several more trying to get on the crew.

[ozzymandus]

News to me. The only “foriegners” I’ve ever seen on a wheat-cutting crew were Canadians working on a Canadian crew. I have met a few ex-South Africans in various agricultural jobs, since a lot of whites are leaving S.A. Wheat farming and harvesting requires operating complex and expensive equipment, you can’t just run down to Home Depot and grab a few Mexicans to fill out your crew.

[ozzymandus]

You’re confusing picking lettuce with driving a combine. This article is total BS. Nobody is going to put a $250,000 combine in the hands of anybody who doesn’t know how to run it.

[ozzymandus]

I get the feeling they guy who wrote the article doesn’t have the faintest clue about wheat harvesting. Unfortunately, some of the people commenting here don’t seem to either. Being on a harvest crew is a good summer adventure for a hard-working farm kid, not a magnet for unskilled illegal aliens.

[ggekko60506]

“..business would make capital investments to replace the workers with machinery...”

Bingo.

We have to ask more of our employers. Employers who have become addicted to a labor force that is tantamount to indentured servitude are doing the Nation a tremendous disservice.

Using a docile, vulnerable labor pool is a 19th century industrial strategy that should be discouraged at every turn by the Federal Government. What is needed is Capital Investment and Process Innovation. These are the factors that sustain a First World Economy.

The employers crying foul about the defeat of the latest Immigration Reform Bill are little more than rent seekers attempting to influence the political process for private gain. They should not accorded any sympathy from the Public.

[steve86]

I’ve lived my whole life here in the Columbia Basin and have never heard of recent immigrants having anything to do with wheat crops. Most other crops, yes. Also, very unlikely that a bottom end farm worker would be allowed to drive an old pickup, much less a combine.

[goldfinch]

how was the wheat raised before the hordes of illegals invaded???

Please read the article.

But just in case you don't...here is a short summary. Wheat is harvested using a machine called a combine. It is then hauled in trucks to grain elevators where it is sold. Most wheat farmers do not own combines because they cost upwards to $300,000 nor do they own the larger trucks that are used to haul the grain to the elevators.

Because of the specialized equipment required, farmer generally contract out the harvesting process. The combining crews used to be American farm kids who grew up knowing their way around machinery and were used to hard work. As the number of family farms has decreased, the available labor pool has become smaller.

As the article makes clear, combine crews are not made up of a large number of unskilled illegal workers. Crews are generally small. One operator for each combine and one for each truck. Generally, the owner of the equipment is also one of the operators.

I grew up on the great plains. My uncles used the same combine crew every year for decades...Americans, from Texas. I dated a guy who ran a combine crew in the summers. American, from the Dakotas. I have to admit, I am a little amazed that we are importing combine crews from the Great Briton. It boggles the mind...

[nwrep]

How about hiring Americans to do the harvest at fair wages?

"Fair wages" is unfair and out of proportion to the value they bring. In addition to the (outrageously high) minimum wages that most states have enacted, farmers are forced to pay American farm-workers crap like unemployment insurance, disability insurance, FICA/SS, and other taxes and benefits as local/state jurisdictions impose. That brings the cost of hiring an American worker to over $15/hour for farmers. Why should a farmer pay $15 to do work that a chimpanzee can do, which is what most of back-breaking farm work is?

I sure don't want to force our farmers to pay the outrageous "fair wages" that our laws have mandated.

[prairiebreeze]

Exactly correct on all counts. The piece is garbage.

[CountryBumpkin]

Well, well, Mr. Bjerga. Stated like a clever slave master. You did your best to obfuscate matters by tossing legal immigrants into the same pot with ILLEGAL ALIENS. Better try harder next time. And why not be more honest? You apparently support the creation of quasi-legalized indentured-servant subclass to suit your self-centered needs. That’s not America, bud. If you want to go back to the days of slavery, then you don’t belong here.

[mirado]

"It takes some serious mechanical smarts to service today’s combines.Look under the shields on the new John Deere machines,looks like a job for an aircraft mechanic.Add a GPS system,motion sensors on all drive shafts and a computer to monitor everything-it’s quite a complex machine."

It is indeed a complex machine, and enormously nice to operate. I'm a software developer person, and I also operate these machines. A lot of farmers do not even try to fix 'em, because they can't.

One would not want to have any Joe Blow operate these machines without previous experience or serious training.

[CHEE]

This is the way it was done, with a profit, in my day (circa 1960’s & 1970’s) We also seeded watermelons like this (1950’s) when I was in my teens - the $0.75 per hour (sun up to sun down) and board was GOOD money that lasted me through the school year. Those were the days.