As its workers stream to the U.S., Mexico runs short of farmhands
WE’RE TALKING ABOUT MEXICO HAVING 1.5 MILLION UNFILLED JOB OPENINGS. PEOPLE IN SEARCH OF A BETTER LIFE COULD FILL AT LEAST PART OF THAT. — GIOVANNI LEPRI, THE MEXICO REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE OFFICE OF THE U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES
For decades, Mexicans crossed the border to pick Americans’ lettuce, grapes and strawberries. Mexico had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of farmhands — tough, hard-working men who did the jobs most Americans didn’t want.
But the country is running short of farmworkers.
The workforce is greying; nearly three-quarters of Mexican campesinos are over 45. Young people are turning up their noses at farm jobs. And those willing to do migrant work have other options. Nearly 300,000 a year travel to the United States on seasonal agricultural visas, a fourfold increase in a decade.
“They’re taking a significant percentage of the available workers,” fretted Aldo Mares, a farm executive here in Jalisco state. He’s had to scramble this season to find workers to pick his juicy strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.
The worker shortage reflects a paradox often overlooked in the supercharged U.S. immigration debate. Even as American politicians outdo each other in proposals to fortify the border with Mexico, economic forces are pulling the two sides closer. The U.S. appetite for made-in-mexico goods, from avocados to automobiles to airplane parts, is growing so fast that it’s straining the workforce that produces them.
That’s particularly clear in agriculture. The companies that put berries on Americans’ tables, such as Driscoll’s and Naturipe Farms, work with growers on both sides of the border, taking advantage of different harvest seasons. But in Mexico, the farms are competing with manufacturers for workers. In a land once known for cheap, abundant labour, business groups say job vacancies could top one million.
In a once-unthinkable move, Mexican farmers are now calling for a major guest-worker program of their own. The government is taking the first step, planning to soon open a database of 14,000 jobs in agriculture and other sectors to non-mexicans.
While wages here remain well below U.S. levels, employers hope some migrants might be willing to swap the American Dream for a Mexican one.
“We’re talking about Mexico having 1.5 million unfilled job openings,” said Giovanni Lepri, the Mexico representative for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “People in search of a better life could fill at least part of that.”
NOW MEXICO’S AN AGRICULTURAL SUPERPOWER, TOO
A shortage of Mexican farmworkers might seem startling — like Italy running out of pizza chefs, or Colombia lacking coffee producers.
Mexico was long a nation of peasant farmers, who cultivated corn, beans, chiles and other crops. When U.S. employers struggled with labour shortages during the Second World War, they turned to Mexico. Millions of farmworkers went north on temporary visas between 1942 and 1964 under the bracero program, putting an indelible mark on U.S. agriculture. Even today, two-thirds of employees on American farms are Mexican-born.
But thanks to free-trade treaties, Mexico has become a major agricultural power of its own. Its exports to the United States — its top customer — doubled over the past decade to reach $45 billion in 2023.
Mares, 49, is typical of the new era of ag CEOS. He’s a city boy from Guadalajara who studied business administration. In the 1990s, as the North American Free Trade Agreement kicked in, a professor told his class that 40 per cent of them would wind up in agriculture.
“We said, ‘He’s crazy,’” Mares said. “And here I am.”
The countryside of Jalisco, once planted with corn and sugar cane, is now a shimmering white sea of plastic tunnels, filled with genetically supercharged berry bushes — many shipped south by U.S. companies.
Finding workers to pick all that fruit is increasingly difficult.
In the poorer south, which is the traditional source of Mexico’s migrant labourers, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has launched big infrastructure projects, leading to a boom in construction jobs.
In the industrialized north, the brisk cross-border trade has created more factory work. Mexico surged past China last year to become the No. 1 source of imports to the United States.
“The strong U.S. economy drives the Mexican labour market,” said Raymond Robertson, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics and Public Policy at Texas A&M University.
That integration is especially evident in agriculture. The number of H2-A temporary visas issued by the U.S. government to farmworkers has skyrocketed from around 74,000 in 2013 to 311,000 last year. The vast majority go to Mexicans. Another 26,000 Mexicans go to Canada on similar visas. American farmers say they need the Mexican workers, even at a time of record migration, since many of those crossing the U.S. border are city dwellers from places like Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador.
In Jalisco, farmers say the exodus has compounded a labour shortage caused by the country’s declining birthrate and competition from other industries. They’re 10 to 15 per cent below the number of crop pickers they need for the spring harvest.
“Mexico has to think seriously about what to do about workers,” said Juan Cortina, president of the National Agricultural Council, which represents farm producers. “We need temporary work visas for our neighbours to the south.”