Immigrants are vital to the success of U.S. agriculture. Foreign laborers comprise 73 percent of hired farm laborers in the U.S. as of 2014, and approximately two-thirds of these are specifically Mexican (USDA 2016). Additionally, almost half of all foreign farm laborers in the U.S. are unauthorized and undocumented (USDA 2016). Therefore, shifts in U.S. immigration policy, attitudes towards undocumented immigrants, and socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. and Mexico have drastically influenced the availability of hired workers for U.S. farms. Measures to address these issues—such as E-Verify to inhibit illegal employment of irregular migrants and H-2A legislation to provide an alternative legal path—seem unlikely to completely alleviate the shortage of agricultural laborers, putting significant stress on the U.S. agricultural system.
The impact of foreign workers’ availability on horticulture—and in particular its correlation with mechanization or lack-thereof—has been well-documented (e.g. Martin 2012; Martin and Calvin 2010). However, the effect on commodity crops has been deemed largely irrelevant due to already high levels of mechanization in these systems (MacDonald 2013; Martin 2012). This leads to the assumption that labor shortages aggravated by the current political and economic climate will have minimal impact on the viability of U.S. commodity crops. However, the problem of herbicide resistant weeds is challenging this assumption. Many weed species have become resistant to popular herbicides, and no new herbicide mode of action appears to be forthcoming. Thus, controlling herbicide resistance in commodity crops increasingly requires removing weeds through manual labor—a role traditionally filled by Mexican immigrants.
Using focus group data with farmers from four states (Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, and North Carolina), we address the issue of U.S. foreign farm laborer dynamics in relation to herbicide resistance and commodity crops. Within our focus groups, labor shortages emerged as a relevant barrier to herbicide resistant weed control, leading to significant challenges and concerns. Drawing on theory from Friedland, Barton and Thomas (1981), we investigate how this decrease in immigrant labor, specifically from Mexico, is impacting reliance on technological innovation in the herbicide industry and creating a counterpart to labor struggles and mechanization trends in horticulture.
Lastly, we contrast the potential policy and practice implications for controlling herbicide resistant weeds in the US with the situation in Canada, thereby demonstrating the impact of different immigration histories, policies, and programs. This provides wider insight to the role migrant laborers have in shaping agricultural practices in North America.
