"Today, foreign workers — both documented and undocumented — play a disproportionate role in ensuring a reliable supply of food for American households (Figure 1). The farm labor scarcity problem is particularly acute for sectors such as specialty crops (fruits and vegetables), the green industry, and livestock, which are heavily reliant on labor.[6] Mechanization is a potential alternative, but it is capital intensive, still in primitive stages, and may take a long time to be a practical solution.
To make matters worse, the number of migrant workers — both shuttle and follow-the-crop — has declined steadily since the 1990s, while the number of settled non-migrant workers has grown.[7] This is particularly damaging to those agricultural sectors that require a mobile workforce. The reduction in the number of farmworkers is due to a variety of factors, including an increase in border and internal immigration enforcement and the aging of agricultural workers.[8] Moreover, economic growth in Mexico has decreased the interest of Mexican workers in agricultural jobs, both in Mexico and the U.S., as the income gap between the two countries has lessened.[9]"
~ Alejandro Gutiérrez-Li
"Feeding America: How Immigrants Sustain US Agriculture"
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/feeding-america-how-immigrants-sustain-us-agriculture
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