How do you say 'milk the cows' in Spanish?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Immigrant workers aren't only found on dairy farms in the southern and western United States. A couple of years ago agricultural services in New York state were offering farmers seminars on how to communicate with Hispanic workers.

A recently released survey of more than 5,000 U.S. dairy farms reveals that immigrant labour is a key contributor to running those businesses. Conducted by the National Milk Producers Federation last year, the study says that immigrant labour, mostly from Mexico, accounted for 41 per cent of an estimated 138,000 full-time employees on dairy farms. They were paid an average of $10 an hour – about the same as cashiers in stores, and better than fast food workers, but less than workers on ranches, landscape companies and in slaughterhouses.

Immigrant workers are critical to the dairy industry, the study says. Analysis of economic "simulations" shows that a 50 per cent loss of foreign workers would knock off 2,266 farms, cut the national herd by 673,000 cows and result in a 7.9 per cent drop in milk production from the 185.6 billion pounds produced in 2007. A complete loss of foreign labour would cut milk production by 29.5 billion pounds because 4,532 farms would be eliminated. The average farm in ­­the study milked 297 cows.

The study said that a 50 per cent cut in foreign labour would increase retail milk prices by more than 30 per cent. Send all the foreign workers elsewhere and retail milk prices would rise by 60 per cent. And removing even half of the workers would also eliminate nearly 133,000 U.S. jobs, "those held by immigrant and native-born U.S. workers alike."

Farms with less than 50 cows were removed from the study, even though they account for more than 45 per cent of all U.S. dairy farms. They represent only 7.4 per cent of milking cows and 6.7 per cent of milk production.

The study supports a need for immigration reform in the United States. But there were no figures in the study to reflect the suffering dairy farm operators are now undergoing.

All those workers are helping to contribute to a milk glut, and current prices less than US$12 for a hundred pounds of milk are far below the cost of production.