Reforma agricola en usa

Agriculture & Immigration Reform
Agriculture labor requirements and the threat of higher food prices and rising imports took center stage when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack pushed immigrationreform during a Wednesday morning press conference. Vilsack argued against smaller, incremental reform as inadequate, saying a comprehensive approach is needed.
"We need to stop threatening thecompetitiveness of our agricultural economy with this broken immigration policy. I've met farmers and ranchers all over this country who are worried about the broken immigration system. They're unable tofind the necessary number of farm workers and sometimes they struggle to verify their work authorization papers. All the while, they wonder if they'll have enough help for the next harvest," he said.Also part of the press conference, Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), agreed on the importance of fixing the nation's broken immigration system. He stated that to dothat, we'll need comprehensive immigration reform. It's something we've been working on for a lot of years and the need is even greater now than when we started.
"From an agriculture perspective wemust be sure that we have an adequate agricultural workforce. That's a top priority for AFBF. About a third of those employed in agriculture, about one million workers, are hired. No one knows exactlyhow many of these workers are not authorized to work. They have the documents that employers are required to look at. But employers don't have the capability to verify those documents. That meansthere are a number of workers at risk if we move forward in this country and put more stringent restrictions in place."
Stallman pointed out that for agriculture this means that between $5 billion to $9billion per year of production is dependent on these workers. California accounts for some $3 billion and Florida $1 billion of that total. The majority of that is in specialty crops like fruits...