By DOUG GRAVES

Ohio Correspondent

SWANTON, Ohio — For decades, farmers in Ohio and other states have relied on migrant labor from spring to fall. Depending on how quickly they progress, field workers can earn up to $18 an hour, compared with Ohio’s $8.30 minimum hourly wage.

The state’s agricultural industry heavily depends on an ever-increasing number of migrant workers from Mexico and Central America. However, seven in 10 field workers nationwide are undocumented, according to estimates by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Labor shortages in agriculture are a decades-old issue, but this year stood out. According to survey from Ohio State University extension educators, it was the toughest year for staffing farm operations in at least two of the counties that hire the most migrant workers – Sandusky and Huron.

“Last fall in Huron County, the top vegetable-producing region in the state, one farming business ran 100 employees short and another was down by 60,” said Bob Filbrun, manager of OSU’s Muck Crops Agricultural Research Station in the county.

“Several fields or partial fields in Sandusky County went unharvested because not enough staff could get to them before they rotted,” added Allen Gahler, the county’s extension educator. “Crops such as tomatoes, cabbages and peppers need to be harvested right on time or they get overripe and spoil.”

Desperate to fill orders, some companies had to eliminate weeding in Huron County fields to focus on tending and harvesting their crop. As a result, weeds spread quickly, dispersing seeds and creating challenges for planting next year.

“Everyone is losing crops in the fields,” said Ben Wiers, owner of Wiers Farm in Huron County, which grows and sells 45 different types of vegetables. “When you don’t weed, you can’t harvest. The weeds choke out the crop.”

Last fall, Wiers Farms upped its hourly pay and offered workers more opportunities to be paid piecemeal, based on how much they harvest. Now the company’s average hourly pay is between $11-$12.

Migrant workers in Huron County labor in the muck, a soil rich in organic matter that’s ideal for growing vegetables – but not so ideal to work in. The blackness of the muck radiates the sun’s heat and the constant wind kicks up the gritty soil that workers breathe, smell and wear all day.

“Typically, migrant workers arrive in Ohio in May, after having worked in southern states. But this year, some were reluctant to move from state to state or to come to the U.S. at all, for fear of being stopped,” Filbrun explained.

According to a 2012 report by the Ohio Commission on Hispanic/Latino Affairs, Huron County hires the third-highest number of migrant workers in the state, topped only by Sandusky and Lake counties.

Filbrun said another factor combating a farmer’s use of migrant workers is that many factory positions offer day shifts and air-conditioning, and they pay about the same as the workers in the field earn.

Businesses have the option of hiring H-2A immigrant workers – residents of foreign countries who are given a temporary work visa that typically coincides with the harvest seasons for the crops with which they work. But for small and mid-size farming operations, hiring H-2A workers is not feasible because the farms have to provide shelter and conduct a great deal of paperwork that takes time away from running their businesses.

“Labor is always going to be an issue,” Filbrun said. “It may get worse. It might get slightly better, but it’s not going to go away.”

Other parts of the state are feeling the brunt of the labor shortage, too. At the small family farm of Johnston Fruit Farms in Fulton County, strawberries are the lure. There, many migrant workers arrive in the fall to help dig potatoes, harvest tomatoes and pick strawberries before returning home at the end of the harvest season. Finding work is not a challenge for these workers, who have long been in demand in the heartland.

But in recent years, Ohio’s migrant workforce had dwindled, with dire consequences for small to mid-size growers like Johnston.

As the U.S. has sought to curb the inflow of illegal immigrant workers, farmers have increasingly turned to federal programs like the H-2A guest worker visa.

But in Ohio, where migrant workers make up a large portion of the ag labor force, federal programs are not always feasible, local farmers and experts say, leaving farmers and workers to weight two fears: going broke or breaking the law.

In Ohio, labor shortage in agriculture is a decades-old issue, but the decline in migrant workers is more recent. The number of migrant workers checking into government jobs help centers has more than halved since 2013, according to data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

In the department’s 2013 program year, nearly 2,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers checked into the centers, records show. In 2017, roughly 700 did.

Because so many foreign-born workers are undocumented (about 7,000, according to Ohio’s Latin Affairs Commission), there are no official statistics on the number of migrant workers currently in Ohio. But in a 2012 study, the commission found that migrant labor was used in farming roughly 50,000 acres of vegetables and fruits, working crops worth $281 million.