LOST POTATOES

Immigration and Education Key Indicators of West’s Ag Economy

By Headwaters News, 9-19-06

It’s clear from the headlines that the West’s agriculture economy is being eaten away by development. What’s not so clear is what is happening with what’s left of that economy, and how the change is affecting the Old West.

One of the biggest factors affecting today’s agricultural economy, besides finding land that isn’t being used to cultivate condos and office space, is finding people to do the work. In recent years, immigrants, both legal and illegal, have handled much of the region’s agricultural work. But with the U.S. Congress mired in stalled reform bills and states passing their own measure that differ from one to another, that labor pool isn’t as reliable as it once was.

In Idaho, reports the Associated Press, potato farmers are stuck with plenty of spuds but no help to pick them. Immigrants are scared away at the border by talks of more troops and bigger fences. Meanwhile, when and if immigrants do make it into the United States, the rules to live are confusing and varying, depending on which state you end up in.

Idaho farmers, the story says, are clamoring for some real reform that includes a guest-worker program, which would be beneficial to the farmers and the Mexicans. They say Idaho lawmakers in Congress aren’t delivering.

Next door in Montana, reports the Montana Standard, a U.S. Department of Labor program is performing just the service the Idaho potato farmers seem to need. Montana farmers can apply to the federal program to find Mexican workers, who can legally come north and work for several months.

Rupert, Idaho, -based Snake River Farmers Inc. helped bring 215 Mexicans to Montana this year. If and how that company is helping Idaho farmers find workers is unclear, but by virtue of the many frustrated potato farmers, it seems a safe bet to say that, at the very least, many farmers may not even be aware of the program.

Many of these jobs were once filled by locals, but as times have changes, so has the work force. As many ranchers and farmers look to immigrants to fill the worker voids, the rest of the culture is shifting around them. And one place that shift is becoming more prominent is in education.

In Idaho’s Treasure Valley, as development continues to consume agricultural land, high schools are replacing their agricultural education classes with urban ones. Classes in livestock management and crop growth have been replaced with classes in landscaping, home repair and golf course maintenance, reports the Associated Press.

Some teachers are glad to see the change finally come, others are struggling to learn the new skills they now have to teach, and some want to keep teaching the old classes, afraid the Old West skills will otherwise be lost.

A similar shift is taking place in Montana, at the college level, reports today’s New York Times. The University of Montana is firing up the locomotive and traveling old rail lines (thanks to local billionaire and railroad-man Dennis Washington) to recruit high school students to the Missoula campus.

College attendance rates in the state are still below 50 percent. For years, that low attendance rate was not of a concern because the mining, timber and agriculture industries paid good wages and didn’t require education beyond high school. But times have certainly changed in the state, and educators and state officials don’t want its young work force to slip behind.

The train is admittedly a gimmick, but one that appears to be working, at least to attract attention from students and their families. And so is a plan to help low-income students afford the education, though that’s not so much a gimmick as a real need.

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