Brighton – Joe Petrocco is embarrassed by the pigweed sprouting wildly above his orderly rows of bluish-green cabbage heads.
Not just because it’s unsightly and sucks up nutrients from the soil. It’s a dead giveaway that Petrocco hardly has enough workers to pluck his cabbage, lettuce and onions, let alone weed the fields.
He is down to 240 workers from 300 last year.
“The weeds kinda got away from me here because of no people and no time,” Petrocco said. “Pretty ugly, isn’t it?”
Farmers across Colorado are complaining about a worker shortage, with some leaving fields fallow or food on the ground to rot. With a lack of illegal workers and a growing concern about the repercussions of hiring them, a record number of farmers have turned toward a federal guest-worker program they say is daunting and expensive.
“It’s a Colorado tragedy,” said Andy Grant of Grant Family Farms, an organic produce farm in Wellington. “There is a severe worker shortage. We and every other farmer that grows fresh products are losing crops because of it.”
The number of Colorado farmers applying for migrant workers has increased from 223 during last year’s peak application season – October through August – to 256 this season. Some applications represent hundreds of workers.
This year’s number is a record and is expected to climb higher, said Bill Thoennes, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
Applications from employers in the construction, landscaping and hotel industries also have spiked, up to 792 this year from 682 last peak season.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not provide up-to-date statistics on the number of guest workers in Colorado.
But Thoennes said more Colorado employers are turning toward “the formal route” of hiring migrant workers. They’re worried about a new law that requires the state to audit employers to make sure they have not hired undocumented workers, he said.
The state agency has done only a handful of audits, but in the fall, it will have the staff for random checks, he said.
Illegal immigrants, meanwhile, are most fearful of new laws that require law enforcement officers to check immigration status, even on a traffic stop for a broken taillight. They’re steering toward friendlier states during the harvest season because of Colorado’s crackdown on immigration, said Julien Ross, director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
Farmers are fed up with complicated immigration laws that keep changing, said Dawn Thilmany, an agricultural economics professor at Colorado State University.
“There is a lot more concern about using anybody who looks remotely like they might not have the right paperwork,” she said.
The only way for farmers to make sure they aren’t violating the law is to hire workers through the federal guest-worker program, called H2-A, Thilmany said. The program requires employers to recruit in Mexico, plus pay for transportation to and from Colorado, housing and meals until the first paycheck.
Resentment is building among farmers who feel like they’re paying extra for lawyers and other middlemen to get workers from Mexico, Thilmany said.
Petrocco, who planted 400 fewer acres this year because of worker and water shortages, said it costs him about $10 per hour per worker when he accounts for the added costs of the federal program. About $8.80 per hour makes it to the workers, who are in the fields 11 hours a day, seven days a week.
The days when illegal immigrants “came over for a few months to work and then just went back to Mexico” are ending, said Barb Marty, a state agricultural commissioner and board member for the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. Without help, she said, farmers will quit planting as many crops.
“We’re going to be shipping more food in from overseas and not knowing how it was processed or raised or what was put on it,” Marty said.
Two state lawmakers are proposing to hire a handful of state workers who could help farmers cut through the bureaucracy of hiring guest workers. Another option is enticing a private company to set up in Colorado to assist employers, said Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan.
“Right now, this program is a disaster,” she said. “I’ve heard from farmers that they submit their applications to the Chicago processing center and they just go into a black hole.”
Some Republicans argue that advocacy groups are exaggerating the effects of illegal immigration laws as a backlash, and that the state shouldn’t intervene in a federal program. Let the free market work, they argue.
Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany of Colorado Springs said complaints about a farm-worker shortage are blown out of proportion.
“Certainly we don’t need another amnesty bill to solve a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said.
As for Petrocco, he likes getting workers through the federal H2-A program. It’s the expense and a mountain of paperwork he can’t stand.
And Petrocco takes issue with anyone who argues that he could hire American workers if he would just pay more. For starters, the work is back-breaking hard and only seasonal.
“You come out here and realize where the food is coming from, you might change your opinion,” he said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
