It may be unfortunate, but there are simply no feasible alter-
natives until these jobs are mechanized out of existence.
Until full mechanization arrives, it is simply assumed that sufficient
numbers of workers will automatically be there to perform the declin-
ing number of tasks that need to be done by manual labor. Perhaps a
good example of this attitude can be found in the Payment-in-Kind
(PIK) program. While substantial objections have been voiced about
the effects of PIK on suppliers of seed, agricultural implements and
other production inputs, almost no concern has been devoted to the
effects of PIK on the employment of farmworkers. Yet these workers
— many of whom are not even eligible to collect unemployment com-
pensation — are expected to show up for jobs the next season they are
needed.
There is abundant evidence of the lack of attention to labor man-
agement as an appropriate topic within agricultural production. Courses
in personnel management are not commonly taught to aspiring farm
managers in colleges of agriculture. Only a handful of agricultural
employers have been active in professional personnel associations such
as the American Society of Personnel Administrators.
With a few recent exceptions, agricultural extension has not tried
to upjgrade the labor management skills of agricultural employers.
Few research dollars have been devoted to stabilizing agricultural em-
ployment or to improving the operation of agricultural labor markets.
USDA, which collects little information regarding agricultural labor,
recently reduced its survey efforts by more than half. Until this year,
agricultural labor policy has not even been on the agenda of the Na-
tional Public Policy Education Conference.
As is often the case with conventional wisdom, current perspectives
on agricultural labor are at variance with present day realities and
the general lack of attention paid to labor management within agri-
culture may be a grave oversight. Let us examine some of those real-
ities.
Reality #1: The Importance of Hired Labor in Agricultural Production
Actually, hired labor continues to be an important ingredient in
agricultural production. About 850 thousand farms employ some hired
labor. Although many employ only a few, obtaining this labor is crit-
ical to the timely performance of labor intensive tasks in the produc-
tion process. Further, the largest farms, which account for most of our
nation’s agricultural production, are also those most dependent on hired
labor.
In total, agriculture pays $12 billion annually in wages, or about
one in every 12 dollars of farm production expenses. On farms pro-
ducing fruits, vegetables, nursery stock, and a few other commodities,
the wage bill can account for as much as half or more of total produc-
tion expenses.
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