Regional Views on the Role of Immigrant Labor on U.S. and Southern Dairies

Rosson, C. Parr

doi:10.1017/s1074070800000341

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Among the variance‐reducing factors (in both models 1 and 2) are labor and land. Labor is an important input in dairy farming (Rosson 2012) and plays an important role in production risk management. A closer look at the data reveals that 64% of the total labor hours are paid or hired labor.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Milk Income over Feed Cost Margin, Margin Protection Program, and Farm Finances for a Sample of Wisconsin Dairies in 2000–2017

Skevas¹,

Thompson²,

Brown³

et al. 2020

Applied Eco Perspectives Pol

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The relationship between farm‐level milk income over feed cost (IOFC) margin and national margin, profit risk, and terminal stress risk are investigated using data on Wisconsin dairy farms over the period 2000–2017. Results show that farm‐specific IOFC margins were not highly correlated with the national margin, higher farm IOFC margin increased profit level and volatility but decreased downside risk, and farm terminal stress appears unaffected by either the margin or the related payments. These findings suggest that, for sample farms, a policy that targets IOFC margin might reduce downside risk of net farm income.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Milk Income over Feed Cost Margin, Margin Protection Program, and Farm Finances for a Sample of Wisconsin Dairies in 2000–2017

Skevas¹,

Thompson²,

Brown³

et al. 2020

Applied Eco Perspectives Pol

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show abstract

“…High labor turnover rates or labor shortages can have severe negative consequences for dairy operators, and it is believed that high injury and illness rates contribute to particularly high turnover and limited labor availability in the dairy industry (Hagevoort, Douphrate, and Reynolds 2013). Dairies experienced an average turnover rate of 11.9% in 2008, and farms reported that labor turnover led to reduced production, loss of cows and calves, and reduced herd and feed efficiency (Rosson 2012). Labor shortages are a major concern for most dairy producers.…”

Section: Labor Demand On Dairies and Immigrant Labor Supplymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More than 20% of farms with at least fifty head of milk cows said that they had experienced a labor shortage between 2007 and 2008 (Rosson et al 2009). Producers typically say that they respond to labor losses by increasing wages, increasing automation, reducing output, relocating their operation, or going out of business (Rosson 2012).…”

Section: Labor Demand On Dairies and Immigrant Labor Supplymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Technology Compensate for a Labor Shortage? Effects of 287(g) Immigration Policies on the U.S. Dairy Industry

Charlton¹,

Kostandini²

2020

American J Agri Economics

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We leverage spatial and temporal variation in the implementation of county-level 287(g) immigration enforcement policies as a quasi-experiment to measure the effects of an inward shift in the local immigrant labor supply on U.S. dairy operations. Our findings show that 287(g) policies cause production and labor expenditures per farm to decrease and labor efficiency to increase. The primary dairy operator is more likely to have off-farm income, and dairies are more likely to use select labor-saving technologies after 287(g) is implemented. Nevertheless, the number of dairies in operation, total milk production, and average dairy size in the county decline. Our findings indicate that the dairy industry became more labor efficient and technologically advanced as a result of the 287(g) program. However, total production declined. We conclude that technological gains in the dairy industry were insufficient to entirely offset the negative shock to production resulting from an inward shift in labor supply, at least in the short run. These findings are of importance for labor-intensive industries that could potentially experience an adverse labor supply shock.

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“…Dairy farming is nonetheless distinctive from other forms of food production in several crucial respects. First, unlike meatpacking and crop production, which often entail temporary work arrangements and high labor turnover rates, milk production depends on very low labor turnover (Adcock et al ; Mercier ; Rosson ; Schuenemann et al ). As one dairy farmer put it, “the last thing you want to do is bring a new worker into your barn every six months” (Duval qtd.…”

Section: Is Dairy Different?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For all of these reasons, skilled workers have proven so essential on dairy farms that even relatively low annual labor turnover rates, ranging from a high of 17.3 percent in the southeastern United States to a low of 9.4 percent in the Midwest (Rosson :273), reduce milk production. In 2014, “both milk production and herd health … decreased by about 1.8 percent as a result of employee turnover, while calf loss and cow death increased by about 1.7 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively” (Adcock et al :11).…”

Section: Quality For Quantitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Crafting Mass Dairy Production: Immigration and Community in Rural America

Garni

2017

Rural Sociology

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In many parts of rural America, agrofood producers compete for a larger share of global markets by mechanizing, deskilling, and flexibly relocating to reduce labor costs. They recruit new immigrant workers but sow transience rather than sustainable rural growth. The industrialization of U.S. dairy farming appears to be aligned with these processes, and yet the largescale dairy farmers who have replaced small craft producers face a paradox: The more they rationalize production on their farms, the more vulnerable their herds become to stress and illness, compromising production. Focusing on three competing dairies in Kansas, I examine how farmers variously organize work among immigrant employees to promote herd health while expanding their operations. Evidence from 22 months of ethnographic research and repeated interviews with farm owners, managers, employees, and extension agents suggests that enhancing production requires promoting employee citizenship at work-especially among immigrant employees possessing the fewest citizenship rights outside of work. In contrast to the high labor turnover endemic to other forms of industrialized food production, the distinctive human-animal relations central to dairying encourage farm owners and employees to cooperate, with promising results for farms and rural communities. * I thank Marcus Dominguez and Jill Applegate for their outstanding research assistance. I also thank L. Frank Weyher, Theresa Selfa, Luis Mendonca, and the three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on previous drafts of this work, and Cecilia Menj ıvar, Mario Cano, and Jessica Falcone for helpful conversations about the work.

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Regional Views on the Role of Immigrant Labor on U.S. and Southern Dairies

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Milk Income over Feed Cost Margin, Margin Protection Program, and Farm Finances for a Sample of Wisconsin Dairies in 2000–2017

Milk Income over Feed Cost Margin, Margin Protection Program, and Farm Finances for a Sample of Wisconsin Dairies in 2000–2017

Can Technology Compensate for a Labor Shortage? Effects of 287(g) Immigration Policies on the U.S. Dairy Industry

Crafting Mass Dairy Production: Immigration and Community in Rural America

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