For apple growers, pretty slim pickings on workers for harvest

YAKIMA, Wash. -- While much of the United States frets about undocumented immigrants, farmers in this famed apple-growing region east of the Cascade Range contend that they can no longer find enough.

During the past two years, Yakima-area apple growers were so short of the field hands they rely upon to prune and pick their prized crop that a few brought in workers from Thailand.

Others said they never did find enough workers and watched in anguish as precious fruit was left dangling on trees.

This summer, with farmers expecting a bountiful apple crop, they also predict that the worker shortage will worsen, threatening a hand-harvested industry valued at more than $1.5 billion in Washington. In the last big-crop year, growers employed an estimated 42,300 seasonal apple workers, according to state officials.

''I hear people saying we don't have enough workers now," said Larry Knudson, family apple farmer. And April is a slow month, he added. The farmers' labor problems are at least partly because of the tightening of security along the US-Mexico border in recent years. But they also illuminate a new reality: Undocumented immigrants are increasingly shunning agricultural work in favor of better-paying opportunities in other bottom-rung occupations.

The employers who are hiring undocumented immigrants away from farmers, notably in construction and manufacturing also often pay poor wages for backbreaking tasks. But they offer steadier hours than seasonal farm work, which has served as the first job in America for countless newcomers for a century.

''The trend line on labor supply, it's going down," said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League. ''If a grower can have people that come into his or her ranch on their own dime, who show [citizenship] documents that appear to be legitimate, it's never going to get better than that."

Citing field hand shortages in communities such as Yakima, national agribusiness organizations are lobbying Congress for a dramatically expanded and simplified ''guest worker" program.

Such a proposal, titled AgJobs, is part of the primary immigration bill the Senate is considering, and has garnered bipartisan support among Western governors and members of Congress. Supporters say a simplified guest worker program is crucial to guaranteeing a domestically grown food supply, because without it, many US crops will no longer be cultivated.

But some worker advocates question whether there is a true dearth of agricultural laborers, arguing that farmers would find ample help if they paid better.