I live near Sacramento, California's breadbasket and have interviewed many migrant farm workers who are losing work to Bush's tyrannical caprice on immigration. Perfectly good food is rotting all over the central valley, with more than enough to feed this country. The last thing we need in this energy crisis is to expand filthy hog farms, emit more CO2 with food travel and global trade. Anybody with me?

Gosh golly gee- no, the last thing we need is another 100 million people by 2060 because of illegal immigration. Oh by the way they will all need food and housing. Talk about the need for development and hog farms!

hey ecojules,
I'm first generation Hungarian-American. My father was a freedom fighter in Hungary after WW2. He came to this country & was a LEGAL immigrant for 52 years BEFORE he got his citizenship. The only reason he got it was because he was going back to Hungary to see his remaining family one more time before they all take that leap into the great by & by. He's never had any trouble with the law (the occasional speeding ticket not withstanding) worked hard all his life (at one time working 3 jobs to keep food on the table & a roof over his family's heads) & he did it LEGALLY. Is there something about LEGAL you don't understand? Oh, by the way, I don't have a problem picking fruits & veggies to make a couple of bucks. it's honest LEGAL work. Enjoyable too & usually close enough to an area where I can go backpacking when I'm done & rest my bones after a few weeks of intense picking & grinning. Nothing personal but maybe, say, try looking a little deeper...the answer is already there it's just not enforced...    lutz

Seasonal agricultural work has always been for a 'class' of people who don't seem qualified to do anything else.  In the States, it used to be college students (me included)!--though many of Grist's bloggers would be glad that Starbucks now provides a less backbreaking alternative.  The experience in London, where I now live, is that 'farm jobs' will not be accepted by local people (so much for 'local farming'!) but only by the East Europeans who are used to this 'traditional' labour and treat it a bit ironically, as hops-gathering was once done in England (a rural holiday for the bohemian and upper classes.  Hops is a fragrant crop and part of the beer industry).  In most British rural areas, you don't disqualify yourself from unemployment benefit if it's a harvesting job you've refused to accept.

Tom, you cite the rise in imports in vegetable etc production (against the rise in exports from the large-scale US crops like wheat).  This has a lot to do with the quality of arable soil in the States -- the black stuff trickling through your fingers couldn't grow beans.  Americans have over-used this resource (soil) and are thrown back onto the supplements to thrive (ie. chemical additions to the soil). But it's not just labour that is cheaper overseas, it's also soil that is better and less expensive to farm.  A rather scary piece I read recently said that the food tastes of European cities will look to the resources of EU farms in Poland, Romania, and so on -- where the soil is still like the soil of Britain in the 19th century.  Where in the States do you have 19th-century soil?--without mangling your wilderness areas?

More to say, but another time.  My plea is for Grist to use its great forum to put the questions in a bigger policy picture.

Fifty and more years ago farmers found Americans to bring in crops in the summer and fall. These citizens were mostly high-school and college kids. Today, thanks to bad parenting and bad government, many teens are at the mall, at summer camp, anywhere except in a productive job. Many jurisdictions don't even allow younger teenagers to work. The exceptions are the kids of our farmers, who - in the main - still believe in hard work, and do a great job keeping our bellies full.

As usual your article gets in some Bush bashing. You might have mentioned the President's proposals for immigation reform, including a guest worker program. Proposals that were shot down by Democrats and Repubicans, who cried for "enforcing our immigation laws" without easing entry for guest workers. Years ago, we could have expected better from the Democrats. You should have assigned this failure to provide a proper agricultural workforce Congress, not to the President.

It's ironic, isn't it, that paying farmworkers enough to make the jobs more realistic for US workers to take on brings the price of food up so much companies won't buy it so instead they import cheaper food from countries that pay their workers much less than illegals here make combined with more toxics. The same thing seems to be happening with toys. No one wanted to pay higher prices for quality goods, forcing US manufacturers making high quality but more expensive toys, out of business. Now we discover that the cheap toys are toxic for our children and parents are looking everywhere for those quality US toys and discovering they closed up shop. Cheap always has a hidden cost. We need to stop demanding cheap, cheap, cheap, and look at what's safe and sustainable. Our kids have too much stuff anyway. And we can be just as healthy on local beans and squash as on imported asparagus and mangos (much as I love mangos).

the reason the school year is set the way it is, is so that kids can harvest their families' fall crops, right?
Why can't the apple growers in the Hudson Valley hire teenagers and other minimum-wagers to pick their apples? Can they hire youth/church groups to pick their apples in exchange for a sizeable donation to their group (which is less than they pay their illegals)? Do they really pay that little for the illegals? (Probably, and that's just wrong.)

The alternative is more imported, possibly unsafe, fruits and veggies: "the import share of U.S. vegetable consumption has been rising steadily, from about 7 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2005. Fruit imports (excluding bananas) as a percentage of consumption have also doubled, rising from 12 percent in 1992-1994 to 24 percent in 2002-2004."

Trying to eat in-season local produce helps, but since there are fewer family farms, it's not so easy.

We need a major overhaul on our tax systems.  A progressive income tax.  Don't tax anyone who makes less than $50,000.  And, of course, tax the people at the top a lot more than they're paying now.  Also, property taxes should be changed.  They've been fine-tuned to benefit the rich, non-producing members of society.  Here in Vermont they've got this BS they call "current" use, which they use to give tax breaks to prop up the continuously failing timber and dairy industries.  But you have to own at least 25 acres.  Now...what if tomorrow I wanted to start a 20 acre veggie farm?  20 acres is a lot of land!  (just ask a Chinese or Guatemalan peasant).  But no, I wouldn't be in "current use", even if I use every square inch for agricultural/forest production.  And, of course, since the second home owners keep flooding into the state (since their taxes are way too low), the land prices are driven up.  So for anyone wanting to get into farming and produce food locally, it's nearly impossible just to get started because you've got outrageous land prices and property taxes.  
     Anyways, the whole system has been gamed to exploit as many people as possible and get the poorest to bear the heaviest burdens.  The people in Norwich, VT and Hanover, NH, can eat their organic, free-range, shade-grown, local foie gras and brie because they've got beaucoup buck...but not many other Vermonters can afford to buy into the "local food" movement right now because their are some huge problems built into the system.  I'm sure other states are dealing with the same issues.  I say tax the hell out of the second (3rd/4th/5th) home-owners and tourists.  Everybody is working so hard to pull tourism into the state but they're doing the same thing Vermont was doing back in the 1840s with their economy, they're putting all their eggs in one basket.  Back then, it was sheep farming and they devastated the state before leaving it dirt poor for the next century.
     Anyways, if people are going to produce their own food, they need land to start with.  And they need to be able to afford to grow the food.  A lot of people would do it for the love of it with their own labor (forget importing illegal labor) if they could just get by.