California's New Drought: Shortage of Fieldworkers Jonathan Gonzalez - Eyewitness News
go to original November 21, 2013

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Plagued for years with a lack of water, growers across California are now facing a new kind of drought. A labor shortage.

"That's one of the things that happened this year. Our crops were early and our workers were not early,” said Joe Del Bosque, a farmer in Firebaugh, the heartland of Fresno County. “The people were still trying to get across the border. We just did not have enough labor to get our crops picked in that time period and we lost some of our crop.”

Del Bosque said he lost $140,000 in just a couple of days during his cantaloupe season, as the fruit sat unpicked for just two more days than normal.

“The asparagus, toward the end of our season, we had to cut our season short because we didn't have enough workers,” Del Bosque said. “We actually stopped two or three days before the end of the season, and, again, I don't have the numbers there, but it was again, probably in the tens of thousands.”

Fields across California are facing about a 20 percent decrease in labor over the last several years. Del Bosque said the shortage is caused by several different factors.

Read the rest at Bakersfield Now

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