US dairy labour: Mass deportation of illegal workers
As in other US agricultural sectors like meat processing and the poultry sectors, the use of illegal immigrant labour in the US dairy industry is very common. There is a strong reliance on these workers because it’s very difficult to find Americans to take on these jobs.
President-elect Trump’s plans for mass deportation of illegal migrants will greatly impact the dairy industry. Trump has stated that he will begin, after his inauguration 20 January, with criminal illegals and then deport others.
An article in media outlet Stateline quotes dairy farmer Bruce Lampman in Idaho, who said “we have 5-6 employees that do the work that nobody else will do. We wouldn’t survive without them.”
Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, stated that the ability of the US to feed itself as a country is completely jeopardised if mass deportations proceed.
By the numbers
As recently noted in Farm Policy News (produced by Illinois State University’s Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics), the percentage of immigrant workers at dairy farms could be as high as 80% in the US, but it’s uncertain how many are illegal.
Indeed, it’s hard to find good data. In 2015, scientists at Texas A&M University did a survey of dairy farmers and estimated from the results that a 50% labour loss would result in higher milk prices that could reduce fluid milk sales by dairies by US$5.8 billion while the economic loss throughout the US economy would US$16 billion.
Only solution?
Rapidly making illegal workers legal seems to be the only viable option. The National Milk Producers Federation recently stated that it “strongly supports efforts to pass agriculture labour reform that provides permanent legal status to current workers…and gives dairy farmers access to a workable guestworker programme.”
The Federation stated: “Dairy farmers continue to face the same shortage of domestic workers as all of agriculture, but they do not have access to the H-2A farmworker programme, which only provides for seasonal labour rather than the year-round workers dairy needs. Dairy farms will not be able to survive, let alone thrive, without a steady, reliable workforce.”
“Dairy farmers cannot lose their current workers without massive disruption to their farms and to rural economies. Employees who have been working on dairy farms for years should be able to continue working and earn permanent legal status, as should their immediate families.”
Join 13,000+ subscribers
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated about all the need-to-know content in the dairy sector, two times a week.
