Crops rotting in the fields

An interesting little report in this morning's Grauniad about migrant labour in the US.

The core of the story is this:

Agricultural labourers, almost exclusively Latinos and at least two-thirds of them undocumented, are moving into more stable, less harsh employment.

The migration from agriculture is taking its toll on one of the largest industries in the US - and particularly on California's $32bn a year sector. Faced with an exodus of labour to the construction industry as well as to the leisure and retail sectors, farmers are struggling to get their crops in. Ten percent of the cauliflower and broccoli harvest has been left to rot this year, and some estimates put the likely loss of the winter harvest as high as 50%.

American commercial agriculture is dependent on cheap labour, mostly illegal migrants from Mexico and Central America. Those migrants, and legal ones like those mentioned in the story, are shifting to less arduous, better paid (though 'better' is a relative term) in construction and in the cities. There's a crisis brewing, I'd say. And the cure is not a 'guest worker' programme, which would be a palliative but not a solution.