Report: Farm labor shortages may cost Georgia economy $391 million

By Jeremy Redmon

Oct 5, 2011

Georgia’s economy is projected to take a $391 million hit and shed about 3,260 jobs this year because of farm labor shortages, according to a report released Tuesday by the state’s agricultural industry.

The report does not cite the reasons for the worker shortages in Georgia’s $68.8 billion agricultural industry, the state’s largest. But many farmers complained this year that Georgia’s new immigration law -- House Bill 87 -- has scared away the migrant Hispanic workers they depend on, putting their crops at risk.

Some of the findings of the report, which was produced by the University of Georgia, were released Tuesday morning, just hours before the state's agriculture commissioner appeared on Capitol Hill at a hearing aimed at bridging the labor gap. Commissioner Gary Black acknowledged the state’s financial toll and said he was open to any number of proposals to deal with the problem so long as there is a strong guest-worker program.

“The economic losses were real,” Black, a Republican, said under questioning from the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security.

The author of HB 87, Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, responded to the report by saying "there are existing federal visa programs that provide a legal avenue for the agriculture industry to import as much migrant labor as necessary to supplement their domestic workforce," although he added that those "federal programs are bureaucratically and administratively cumbersome" and in need of improvement.

Georgia was one of several states to pass legislation cracking down on illegal immigration this year. Supporters of HB 87 say it will prevent illegal immigrants from taking jobs from U.S. citizens.

But farmers say many U.S. citizens won’t harvest crops in their fields because the work is physically taxing. Many instead hire migrant foreign workers. And many of them are in the country illegally.

After the Republican-controlled state Legislature passed HB 87, farmers reported having trouble finding enough people to harvest their crops. So they commissioned a study of their financial losses.

UGA's Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development completed the study for the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association and other state agricultural groups. The full report is expected to be released this week.

Researchers identified a shortage of 5,244 farm laborers and $74.9 million in losses from seven crops. They surveyed farmers representing nearly half of the acreage available for harvesting those seven crops last spring. Their losses resulted in an extra $106.5 million loss in other goods and services in Georgia plus 1,282 fewer jobs across the state, the report projected. Using these numbers and assuming the farmers they surveyed are representative of all Georgia farmers with the same crops, the researchers projected the state’s total yearly losses could be $391 million and 3,260 full-time jobs.

In Georgia, some farmers have been particularly critical of one provision in HB 87 that will require many of them to use the federal E-Verify program. The program helps employers ensure their newly hired employees can legally work in the United States. Legislation is pending in Congress to mandate E-Verify nationwide. At the same time, farmers say the federal guest-worker programs that are designed to help them temporarily employ foreign workers are cumbersome and costly.

“Georgia is the poster child for what can happen when mandatory E-Verify and enforcement legislation is passed without an adequate guest-worker program,” Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said in a prepared statement.

During his testimony Tuesday, Black pointed to some factors that could have contributed to the labor shortages, including "unusually high heat and lack of rain, which caused an unexpected rush in harvests.” He also told the Senate panel that “E-Verify is a real problem without fixing a guest-worker program.”

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the subcommittee, went further, declaring that state and national E-Verify laws “pose a potentially fatal threat to the livelihood of American farmers.”

Lawmakers’ solutions varied widely. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., promoted giving a "blue card" to current migrant agricultural workers allowing them to stay for five years with their families as long as they continue to do agricultural work. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., whose state has an E-Verify law similar to Georgia’s, said he would prefer letting guest workers stay for less than a year without their families to do seasonal farm jobs.

Eric Ruark, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said more robust enforcement of immigration law would tighten the labor market and allow wages to rise to the point where U.S. citizens would want the work. Feinstein contended that the difficult labor and often sweltering conditions keep U.S. citizens away, leaving migrants, in most cases, as the only workers willing to do it.

In Georgia, Ramsey said that while he is sensitive to the farmers’ concerns, the state must also protect taxpayer-funded resources.

“It is our obligation as state policymakers to address the financial and social burdens imposed by our federal government's failure to secure our nation's border,” Ramsey said.

The subcommittee in Washington also heard testimony from Connie Horner, who co-owns an organic blueberry farm in South Georgia. She told of the bureaucratic nightmares of the H-2A visa system and failed efforts with local, legal workers, who don’t last long and are ineffective.

“I need your help,” she said, “to make it easier to do what’s right.”

Spring agriculture losses

The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association released some findings from a study of the state’s farm labor shortages Tuesday. Here is a breakdown from the study of this year’s $74.9 million in crop losses: