Mexico runs short of farmhands as workers stream to U.S.
ETZATLÁN, Mexico — 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 graying; 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 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 labor, business groups say job vacancies could top 1 million.
In a once-unthinkable move, Mexican farmers are now calling for a major guestworker 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.”
Mexico was long a nation of peasant farmers, who cultivated corn, beans, chiles and other crops. When U.S. employers struggled with labor shortages during World War II, 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.
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 laborers, 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.
In Jalisco, farmers say the exodus has compounded a labor shortage caused by the country’s declining birthrate and competition from other industries. They’re 10% to 15% below the number of crop pickers they need for the spring harvest.
Mares agrees a long-term labor solution is needed. But he has to worry about this season, these berries. Ninety percent of the fruit from his Green Gold Farms go to the United States, whose berry harvest won’t peak for months.
His company and others have teams of recruiters scouring the countryside, contacting potential workers via bullhorn, fliers and, increasingly, Facebook.
It can be a tough sell. The jobs they offer — six days a week of plucking berries — are exhausting. Harvesters, paid by the bucket, are in continuous motion. And the industry has a history of abuses.
These days, employers have to offer better conditions to attract workers. They’ve hiked harvesters’ salaries in the last few years by up to 100%. While wages still pale by U.S. standards, they’ve been enough to slash extreme poverty in many rural areas — “an extremely important development,” said Agustín Escobar, a Mexican agricultural researcher.