Central Kentucky's few remaining small tobacco farmers having difficulty finding harvest labor

The good news for some Kentucky tobacco-growing counties is that this year's crop is one of the better they've seen in a while. The bad news is that the migrant labor that was once abundant in those parts isn't as available as before. Leslie Moore of the Central Kentucky News-Journal reports that in Taylor County, "finding workers to cut and house this season’s predicted 2,500 pounds of tobacco has been a labor in itself."  (Moore photo)

Pat Hardesty, the county extension agent for agriculture, told Moore the number of migrant workers who help with the harvest has dwindled because there are simply not enough small farms now in the area to keep them employed for long. “Some of our smaller producers have been waiting on crews or they’ve been trying to get local help, which is very difficult,” Hardesty said. “That’s why the migrants are here, because we can’t get enough local labor to get the crop in.” He said migrant workers aren't taking jobs away from Americans: “I promise you, if a tobacco producer here in Taylor County could get local, dependable help, there wouldn’t be migrants here.” Local farmer Aaron Newcome agreed that finding steady local help this year has been difficult. On any given day, he told Moore he has no idea how many workers will show up or how long they will stay.

As a killing frost loomed, Hardesty explained to Moore that speed is of the essence. If frost hits tobacco, the crop's quality is reduced and acres of it can be wasted.

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Rural unemployment drops, but number of jobs doesn't change

The unemployment rate in rural and exurban counties dropped slightly in August, the Daily Yonder reports. It fell to 7.99 percent in rural counties and 7.6 in exurban, which are counties within metropolitan areas, but with half the residents living in rural settings, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The rural rate in July was 8.4 percent, and 8 percent in exurban. Almost nine out of 10 rural counties reported lower unemployment rates this year. (Yonder map shows rural, exurban unemployment change from Aug. 2011 to Aug. 2012; Blue counties had a decrease, orange had an increase.)

"Just because unemployment rates are lower, however, doesn't mean that there's been a boom in rural employment," Yonder Co-Editor Bill Bishop reports. There are slightly fewer people employed in rural counties this August than last August. The number of jobs in rural counties has decreased by almost 3,200 over the past year, according to the BLS. Bishop writes the rural unemployment rate has dropped because the workforce has dropped by almost 230,000 people. The workforce in exurban and urban counties increased during that period.

Four of the 10 rural counties with the largest unemployment increases over the last year were Appalachian coal-producing counties in Kentucky, where coal companies have laid off miners due to power-plant competition from natural gas. West Virginia's Boone County had the greatest unemployment increase. The rest of the top counties with the largest unemployment increases come from Nebraska, Louisiana and Colorado. Almost half the 50 counties with the largest declines in unemployment rates were in Mississippi. (Read more)

Child farm-labor rules, unchanged after lobbying, probably affect more children than statistics indicate

The recent debate about child farm-labor laws revolved around what many farm families said was an integral part of growing up on a farm: helping out around the fields. What many may have overlooked, though, is that the children of migrant workers don't grow up on farms; they just work on them. And advocates say "lax enforcement of underage labor laws and inadequate safety rules for teens are threatening the long-term health of thousands" of those migrant children, Anthony Schick of The Oregonian reports. (Oregonian photo by Faith Cathcart: Diana Cristal Mendoza Sanchez, 12, picks blackberries)

Farm lobbyists have blocked tighter restrictions on the work children may legally do, and efforts for closer monitoring have failed, Schick writes. The industry won a huge victory when the Obama administration stopped the Labor Department's plan to revise child labor rules written in 1974 and adopt in regulation a policy adopted by the second Bush administration more than 10 years ago. Most child labor in heavy agricultural states is largely hidden "because official data do not include underage workers," Schick reports. "Visits to fields and interviews with farmworkers indicate it is far more widespread than statistics show."

Schick continues: "Nearly everyone involved has an incentive to allow underage labor. Farmers need crops picked, farmworkers need money children bring home and advocates for workers risk alienating whole families if they broach the subject. The tenuous residency status of many Mexican-born workers also plays a role." Even though parents and farm owners say the jobs children do are relatively safe, but Schick reports that all children working on farms face "significant risks:" Child farmworkers suffer fatal injuries four times as often as in other industries, extreme heat, repetitive strain and exposure to toxic substances can create chronic health problems. (Read more)

Alabama's Hispanic farmworkers being replaced by African and Haitian refugees

Alabama farmers are turning to a different set of immigrants to help harvest after the state's controversial immigration law requiring police to check status drove many Hispanics to other states and caused a labor shortage. African and Haitian refugees, which were brought to the U.S. legally by labor brokers, are filling the gap, Margaret Newkirk of Bloomberg News reports.

Most of the refugees were recruited by poultry companies, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They sought refugees because not enough local residents were interested or qualified to work in the plants, Wayne Farms spokesman Frank Singleton told Newkirk. The poultry company spent $5 million to replace and retrain workers after most of its Hispanic workers left. Alabama doesn't track the number of refugees who came to fill jobs, but it had about 95,000 illegal Hispanic immigrants in the workforce in 2010. (Read more)

Researchers look to make farm labor safer for kids

With the help of a tractor-driving simulator, researchers at the University of Iowa and the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin hope to prevent young people from dying in tractor accidents by determining when they can safely operate farm equipment. Results of the study could eventually be used to revise voluntary guidelines for parents and employers about when youth are ready to use certain equipment. (Associated Press photo by Nati Harnik: Mark Gregoricka, 12, operates simulator)

There was much national debate earlier this year about the safety of children working on farms after the Obama administration proposed child farm labor rules that would have restricted the kinds of work children under 18 and 16 could do on non-family farms and adopted a narrower definition of "family farm" that had been used informally for a decade. The proposal was dropped, but the fact remains that teenagers are four times more likely to die on a farm than in any other workplace.

Researchers are studying cognitive development skills in youth while they drive tractors, because children of different ages process information and make decisions differently, The Associated Press reports. Eighty-eight children, aged 10 to 17, will perform a variety of simulated tasks while their speeds, use of brakes, accelerations and eye movements are recorded. The hope is that the simulator can pinpoint differences in the children's performance. (Read more)

Western farmers report shortage of farm laborers, blame more stringent border controls

There's a shortage of farm labor in the West, and many blame stronger border controls and a stagnant guest-worker program. The Western Growers Association reports its members are experiencing a 20 percent drop in laborers this year. (Getty Images photo)

The lack of workers is forcing farmers to pay more for the labor they do get and to not harvest some crops, reports Jane Wells of CNBC. California farmer Craig Underwood said some of his crops have been "left in the field" because there weren't enough people to pick them. He's also paying pickers about $9.25 an hour to harvest peppers, Wells reports. Underwood also said much of his workforce is aging and they aren't being replaced because "migratory flows between Mexico and the United States have come to a halt." (Read more)

Rural incomes are lower because jobs in rural areas require fewer skills, researchers confirm

Rural residents have lower incomes than those employed in the cities. The Daily Yonder's Bill Bishop reports that three economists, working through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have figured out why, at least in part. As you might expect, they have concluded that the occupations found in rural areas require fewer skills than those found in the cities. (Detail of Diego Rivera mural, Detroit Institute of Art)

“We find that the occupation clusters most prevalent in urban areas — scientists, engineers, and executives — are characterized by high levels of social and resource-management skills, as well as the ability to generate ideas and solve complex problems,” write Jaison Abel, Todd Gabe and Kevin Stolarick. “By contrast, the occupation clusters that are most prevalent in rural areas — machinists, makers, and laborers — are among the lowest in terms of required skills. These differences in the skill content of work shed light on the pattern of earnings observed across the urban-rural hierarchy."

Their findings further explain why young people with college degrees are reluctant to move back to rural communities. Jobs in those communities simply do not pay what can be earned in central cities. Still, compensation favors these city occupations, the economists find. Executives earn the most in the cities, far more than engineers or scientists. Executives living in rural areas don't earn the same premium. In fact, notes Bruce Ross of The Record Searchlight after looking at the data, "for each high skill occupation, wages fell as the community became more rural. Every occupational group had lower wages in rural areas than in cities, but the rural penalty was higher among the most skilled jobs."

The economists finally add that there is something about urban areas that facilitate high-skilled employment and higher wages: “The dimensions of social and complex problem-solving skills are apt to benefit from the flows of ideas and knowledge that are facilitated by dense urban environments.” The economists' report is here.

Labor Dept. reacts to black-lung series with team to study how to improve coal-dust enforcement

The recent revelations by the combined work of three news organizations about the resurgence of black-lung disease in coal miners in Appalachia at first seemed to fall on deaf ears. This riled one of the reporters, Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette, who wrote early last Friday of his disgust that there had been no immediate outrage over the hard fact made plain: It was clear that miners had been made promises that weren't kept and had been lied to for decade. By Monday, he was updating with some reaction to the question he asked: Where is the outrage? (Undated photo: West Virginia University collection)

Now, the Gazette, NPR and the Center for Public Integrity, the organizations which did the stories, hear that the Mine Safety and Health Administration and its parent agency, the Labor Department, "are putting together a team of agency experts and lawyers to specifically consider how to bolster coal mine dust enforcement given the statutory and regulatory weaknesses detailed " in the stories, NPR's Howard Berkes writes. "The effort includes discussion of how the agency might be more aggressive in filing civil and criminal actions against mining companies that violate coal mine dust standards, according to an internal Labor Department communication obtained by NPR."

Another new development, Ward reports, was a filing of a new lawsuit against Alpha Natural Resources by miner Terry Evan Lilly, "who alleges that mining practices — including cheating on respirable dust sampling — led to him getting the most serious form of black lung disease. Among other things, the suit filed by Morgantown lawyer Al Karlin accuses mine management where he worked" of instructing miners to hang air sampling pumps designed to measure dust exposures in areas where the air was clean instead of keeping the sampling pumps with them in the air where they were actually working. One of the mines Lilly worked at was Upper Big Branch, where 29 miners died in an explosion two years ago. The mine was owned by Massey Energy, which Alpha bought. Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin confirmed to Ward that his office is examining "potential criminal violations related to dust-cheating, as part of its continuing probe of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster," Ward reports.

The Appalachian News-Express, a thrice-weekly in Pikeville, Ky., has some ideas for solving the black-lung problem: "First and foremost, stop letting the coal companies — who are chafing against the regulations to begin with — report their own dust sampling data to determine if the regulations are being complied with. There’s simply too much opportunity, and temptation, for companies to massage their data to suggest compliance. Second, if companies are found in violation of the coal dust standards, enforce those violations. MSHA needs to stop granting extensions when violations are found that allow unsafe coal dust levels to persist for weeks, or even months, before being corrected.
Last, increasing the fines for violations of coal dust standards may convince coal companies that complying with the regulations is more cost-effective than breaking them. And if we directed the increased revenues from fines to help pay for the health care costs of black lung victims, it’s a win-win situation." (Read more, subscription required)