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Loss of Foreign Workers Would Hurt Agriculture

Study: A reduction in the foreign-born workforce would not be offset by native-born workers and permanent residents

Given a tight labor market, particularly in rural areas, the loss of foreign-born workers would lead to a drop in agricultural jobs, according to a study commissioned by the National Pork Producers Council and reported on in Farm Journal's Pork.

Economists with Iowa State University (ISU), using a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, determined that a reduction in the foreign-born workforce – prompted by a change in immigration policy – would not be offset by native-born workers and permanent residents. Instead, they found, the tighter supply of foreign-born workers would reduce overall demand for workers as production costs increase and would decrease agricultural output as farmers abandon labor-intensive operations.

The result would be a 3.4% to 5.5% decrease in the total number of farm workers.

Several factors have led to a severe labor shortage in agriculture, including a negative population growth rate in rural areas since 2010, an aging rural workforce increasingly unable or unwilling to do strenuous agricultural work, a decline in immigrants going into rural labor markets and an unemployment rate hovering near 4 percent (most economists consider 4 percent “full employment”), the ISU economists found.

Read the full report here.

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