Why won't more Americans harvest crops?

The New York Times this week asks the question: What happened to the American work ethic? The question and resulting debate is a follow-up to recent stories about American farmers' inability to find local workers for harvesting jobs usually occupied by migrant workers from Mexico who enter the country legally through the agricultural visa program, H-2A. (Times photo by Matthew Staver: Jose Luis harvests onions in John Harold's onion field near Olathe, Colo.)

In the introduction to the debate, it's reasoned that many unemployed Americans would rather collect unemployment benefits than take a temporary job "that they cannot or will not do, for whatever reason." One debater, Tom Lutz, author of Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums, doesn't necessarily think unemployment benefits makes one lazy. He argues that these benefits would provide more money to an unemployed worker while they attempt to "get back on their feet," and that working for cheap on a farm could prevent them from receiving those benefits.

The other debaters discuss different factors that keep Americans out of the fields. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead of the Institute for American Values writes that Americans' work ethic is as strong as ever, it's just that the work we do now -- sitting behind desks flexing minds rather than muscles -- is making us "softer." Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, says wages and benefits have a direct correlation to effort and enthusiasm. Nicolette Niman, a lawyer and livestock rancher, blames the lack of work ethic on the perception that agriculture is increasingly mechanized: "The farmer’s hands, knowledge and husbandry have been replaced by machines, capital goods, pharmaceuticals and fossil fuels, used directly (to power farm equipment) and indirectly (to manufacture chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides)." Philip Martin, a labor economist, also engages in the "man vs. machine" debate. (Read more)