{"id":45427,"date":"2021-08-04T13:18:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T19:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lawmakers-labor-shortage-could-wreak-havoc-on-chile-harvest\/"},"modified":"2021-08-04T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T19:18:00","slug":"lawmakers-labor-shortage-could-wreak-havoc-on-chile-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lawmakers-labor-shortage-could-wreak-havoc-on-chile-harvest\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers: Labor shortage could wreak havoc on chile harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Green
Green and red chile ristras on display at a roadside stand in Hatch, N.M. (Susan Montoya Bryan\/Associated Press)<\/span>Susan Montoya Bryan<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) \u2014 New Mexico prides itself on having the best chile in the world, but a shortage of farmhands could leave a big portion of this year\u2019s bumper crop rotting on the vine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have one of the best chile crops the state has ever seen because the weather just set up perfectly in most areas,\u201d Joram Robbs, executive director of the New Mexico Chile Association, told<\/a> the Santa Fe New Mexican on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some farmers that got hit by monsoons in a negative way, but there\u2019s tons of chile on these plants, so we\u2019re going to see a huge loss if we don\u2019t get it picked,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some Republican lawmakers and farmers in the Hatch Valley are blaming the labor shortage on the extra unemployment insurance benefit payments they believe are keeping workers at home instead of in the field, and they\u2019re urging Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to \u201cimmediately\u201d cut them off.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the governor, Sen. Crystal Diamond of Elephant Butte and Reps. Rebecca Dow of Truth or Consequences and Luis Terrazas of Silver City contend the supplemental unemployment benefits are responsible for a lack of workers \u201cin virtually every area of our state\u2019s economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRed and green chile are the iconic crop of our state and your administration\u2019s lackluster response to this problem may cost our state a valuable crop season for these family farms and may drive some out of business altogether,\u201d they wrote. \u201cPeople in southern New Mexico are witnessing firsthand how the chile industry is becoming a casualty of our flawed supplemental unemployment insurance program. Though the chile farmers of our state may bear the early burden of this labor shortage, it is not long before other agricultural industries feel the effects of this policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A basket of fresh harvested green chile waiting to be roasted July 12 at Grajeda Hatch Chile Market in Hatch, New Mexico. (AP Photo\/Susan Montoya Bryan)<\/span>Susan Montoya Bryan<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s already happening, said Joe Paul Lack, who grows chile in addition to onions and pecans. He said he\u2019ll probably only be able to harvest half of the 80 acres of onions he grew this year because he doesn\u2019t have enough workers to do the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were probably 20% short last year, but we\u2019re more than 50% short this year on our help,\u201d he said. \u201cYou go around in Hatch and just look up and down the streets, there\u2019s plenty of people; there\u2019s just nobody working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lack said he asks past employees why they aren\u2019t working for him now and that they tell him they don\u2019t need the money because they\u2019re collecting unemployment, including an extra $300-a-week payment set to expire in September.<\/p>\n

Nora Meyers Sackett, the governor\u2019s spokeswoman, wrote in an email that there is no evidence that the federal unemployment supplement is somehow singlehandedly driving or solely responsible for workforce re-entry issues in New Mexico or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

She pointed to a working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that found the $300 weekly supplement \u201chas been making a small but likely noticeable contribution to job-finding rates and employers\u2019 perceptions of worker availability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Sackett said the Lujan Grisham administration is considering a variety of ideas to help chile farmers, including the possibility of assigning federal stimulus funds to support temporary wage supplements for farm workers.<\/p>\n

Lt. Gov. Howie Morales and Agriculture Secretary Jeff Witte met with farmers and the New Mexico Chile Association this week to discuss industry concerns and identify possible solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose conversations about the issue have been productive and are ongoing,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAs anyone in the industry will tell you, labor has been an issue in agriculture for a long time; the pandemic has only exacerbated the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Republican lawmakers believe the extra unemployment insurance benefit payments are keeping people at home instead of going to work.<\/p>\n

In an action some consider an incentive to get the unemployed to return to work, other states, primarily those led by Republican governors, stopped paying the $300-a-week federal supplemental benefit. New Mexico will keep it in place until it expires in September.<\/p>\n

Lujan Grisham said in June that ending the benefit early was \u201cpunitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we do want to incentivize workers to go to work,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n

Gary Shiflett, who has been farming for 43 years, said \u201cnobody\u2019s gonna get out and work as long as the government keeps giving everybody money.\u201d He said what could end up happening is New Mexico chile farmers could go out of business, ending the state\u2019s reputation for having the best chile in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur governor, I\u2019m sorry, but she\u2019s horrible,\u201d he said. \u201cShe don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A large bowl of roasted green chile at a market July 12 in Hatch, New Mexico. Farmers say the season is shaping up to be a good one thanks to recent rain and cooler temperatures. (AP Photo\/Susan Montoya Bryan)<\/span>Susan Montoya Bryan<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Robbs, the head of the chile association, said farmers usually start harvesting crops the first or second week of August.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a little bit too late on this problem; it took everybody by surprise,\u201d he added. \u201cI guess we should have seen it coming. But we were hopeful that there would be workers once the state opened back up. But there\u2019s not. They\u2019re staying at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robbs said the association \u201chas gotten a lot of pushback on social media\u201d from people asking why employers in the chile industry don\u2019t offer higher wages.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only so much that these farmers and processors can pay until they\u2019re making negative income,\u201d he said. \u201cBusinesses can\u2019t just pass on costs like that when they\u2019re in the produce industry. Where does it stop? Where\u2019s the threshold when people stop buying chile?\u201d<\/p>\n

Diamond, the state senator, said she\u2019s been hearing from concerned farmers not just in the Hatch Valley but across Do\u00f1a Ana County, as well as Luna and Sierra counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of them are echoing the same concern that this labor shortage is threatening the entire chile harvest this year as a whole,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re going into chile season within days, and we do not have a workforce, and so they\u2019re afraid that that window is going to come just too late. So, we have two problems: Either there just won\u2019t be chile available, or what little chile is available, the cost will be passed on to consumers, which is a concern for all New Mexicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

House Republicans attacked the governor on Twitter, saying the state\u2019s chile crop \u201cis being left to rot by (Lujan Grisham\u2019s) economic failures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diamond said the issue isn\u2019t political.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a D or an R issue,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a red or green issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

and red chile ristras on display at a roadside stand in Hatch, N.M. (Susan Montoya Bryan\/Associated Press)Susan Montoya Bryan SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) \u2014 New Mexico prides itself on having the best chile in the world, but a shortage of farmhands could leave a big portion of this year\u2019s bumper crop rotting on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,438,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-food","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45427"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}