Guess who is short of farm workers?

By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Let's file this one in the "you can't make this up" category.

Down Mexico way, they are running out of farm workers.

This is the story:

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.

How long before the Mexican government of Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador starts calling for Mexicans to come home and pick some strawberries?

Like everything, this one is a bit complicado.

First, it's more lucrative to go north, cut grass or whatever, and send $100 to your mom than to do back-breaking labor at home to earn much less than that.

They call that cash remesas, or remittances, and for Mexico, it adds up to $60 billion a year.

It keeps a lot of families going!

Second, does Mexico want remesas or Mexicans working on their farms? It's a tough call no matter how much they miss their people.

Another problem is that Mexicans are not having babies like they used to. It's around two per woman, down from six a generation ago.

In other words, there are fewer workers coming up and most of them would rather go north than pick strawberries in Irapuato, the strawberry capital of Mexico.

So some in Mexico are calling for a guest-worker program to fill those jobs.

You can't make this up but it is the way it is.

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Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License