A collaborative effort by researchers at the UConn College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, Farm Credit East, and the Connecticut Farm Bureau produced comprehensive reports outlining the current labor situation in the state’s agricultural and green industries.
The reports were prepared by Rigoberto Lopez, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE). Christopher Laughton, director of knowledge at Farm Credit East was co-author on the green industry report; and Luis Seoane, a Ph.D. student in ARE and Joan Nichols, director of the Connecticut Farm Bureau, collaborated on the agricultural industry labor report. The reports were created under the umbrella of the UConn Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy.
Connecticut’s robust green industry includes greenhouses, plant nurseries, floriculture, and landscaping businesses. Agriculture in the state includes livestock, fruit and vegetable farming, seafood, dairy products, tobacco, and wineries.
Across these operations, the researchers identified a common issue: a lack of labor availability.
These sectors have trouble filling the positions they need to maintain and grow their operations across the country.
“The labor problem is universal across all of agriculture,” Nichols says. “And not just in Connecticut, I think it’s a national problem as well.”
The researchers say agricultural and green industries have long had trouble staffing their operations, but the problem has become more severe in the past decade or so.
Connecticut’s economic landscape presents additional challenges. Many other sectors, like retail, can offer entry-level workers much more comfortable working conditions and, often, higher pay than agriculture. On top of that, the costs of production and living are higher in Connecticut than other states.
“There’s so many outside opportunities for workers, we’re not in rural Kansas, so it’s extra difficult,” Lopez says.
In other words, potential employees have lots of options when choosing a place to work. The national unemployment rate is 3.4%, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and there are approximately two job openings per every job seeker.
“Prospective employees can take their pick from multiple opportunities, typically,” Laughton says. “That means there are jobs out there that just aren’t going to get filled, beyond agriculture.”
One way many operations are looking to address these challenges is by turning to automation. Machines are an increasingly viable option to replace hard-to-come-by human labor in picking, packaging, and unloading products.
“Agriculture has not been exempted from what is happening in other industries where you have people being replaced by machines,” Lopez says. “That is the technical change that is happening and is probably a part of the future of agriculture in Connecticut and other places.”
Source: uconn.edu
Photo Credit: istock-pixeldigits
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