Scarce Resource

Scarce Resource

Scarce Resource. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Normally when you think of scarce resources things like water come to mind but according to Dr. Karina Gallardo, Assistant Professor at WSU, labor is today’s scarce resource.

GALLARDO: Most of the tree fruit industry related people know how important is the tree fruit for the overall economy of the state. So we are talking about billions of dollars added to the economy in not only the value of the production but also in the number of jobs created

Gallardo was speaking at this years annual hort convention. She discusses why the topic of labor is so important to tree fruit.

GALLARDO: Tree fruit is categorized as labor intensive commodity. In general for U.S. agricultural crops labor represents about 17% of variable costs. But for tree fruit the story is different, it’s way much more than that. It’s about 48% of all variable costs so about half of the investment in variable costs goes to labor.

She says there has been a history of dependence on migrant labor.

GALLARDO: This is not new. The fact that 75% of all hire from workers in the United States were born in Mexico in 2009. It’s not news for the industry. Since Since the 1870’s it was Chinese immigrants, it was the Japanese later and it was the Mexican labor force who were the suppliers of labor for the industry. U.S. agriculture is still dependent on migrant labor.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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