Some US farms outsourced to Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

May 27, 2:54 AM EDT
Some US farms outsourced to Mexico

By JESSICA BERNSTEIN-WAX
Associated Press Writer

IRAPUATO, Mexico (AP) -- Antonio Martinez used to pay smugglers thousands of dollars each year to sneak him into the United States to manage farm crews. Now, the work comes to him.

Supervising lettuce pickers in central Mexico, Martinez earns just half of the $1,100 a week he made in the U.S. But the job has its advantages, including working without fear of immigration raids.

Martinez, now a legal employee of U.S.-owned VegPacker de Mexico, is exactly the kind of worker more American farm companies are seeking. Many have moved their fields to Mexico, where they can find qualified people, often with U.S. experience, who can't be deported.

"Because I never moved my family to the U.S., I was always alone there," said Martinez, 45, who could never get a work permit, even after 16 years in agriculture in California and Arizona. "When I got the opportunity to be close to my family, doing similar work, I didn't even have to think about it."

American companies now farm more than 45,000 acres of land in three Mexican states, employing about 11,000 people, a 2007 survey by the U.S. farm group Western Growers shows.




Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MEXICO_OFFSHORE_FARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-05-27-02-54-51

[Critters2]

1. Another reason to buy local, and seasonal.

Buy from farmers you know.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Support directly the fertile land near where you live

and the people who grow food upon it, for they are your personal emissaries to the Earth. They touch the land for you. When you are connected, you can have a stronger voice about how the people and the land are treated. When it is remote and corporate, both land and people are treated as capital assets to be used for creating profits for a corporation -- not for growing clean, nourishing food, providing dignified work at a living wage for human beings, ensuring humane care for farm animals, and supporting the overall environmental vitality (rather than the chemical and genetic destruction) of a plot of land. Those wholesome approaches tend to become secondary (at best) goals in the corporate-industrial farm model...not primary goals.

Here's a link leading to info on just how to realize that possibility...it's up to each of us...

http://www.chiron-communications.com/farms.html

[AlphaCentauri]

3. Now Mexicans will be able to export their US corporate crops

before there were all those limitations to trap the Mexican agricultural business from succeed, those were the days when the campesinos owned their land and work for it. Zapata gave them that land and now they have to lease it and go north to survive. I guess that all those barriers and restrictions to the Mexican farms exports to the US will be gone as long as the show is run by US corporations.

[truedelphi]

4. Your last sentence is so sad and so very true.

[OhioChick]

5. Kick

:kick:

[BearSquirrel2]

6. OH BULLSHIT!!!

You mean in the entire midwest, they can't find anyone competent to manage work crews????

What they mean is ... they can't find anyone to do it for the prices they would like to pay ... with fluent Spanish.