New book draws attention to the difficulty of farm work and the shortage of laborers

An upstate New York agriculture reporter recently set out to determine if farm work was too hard for most Americans, as some claim. Tom Rivers, a reporter with the Batavia Daily News, decided "in the course of one long Western New York summer, he would find employment at as many local farms as he could. He would work as hard as he could. And he would write about the experience as it happened," Charity Vogel of The Buffalo News reports. His six-month journey turned into numerous stories for the newspaper and a book, "Farm Hands."

"People have these radically old-fashioned ideas about what farms are," Rivers told Vogel. "I don't want to be disparaging -- but it would take an exceptional American to be able to do these jobs today. I'd be curious to see whether any of the Buffalo Bills could last until noon." Rivers said he hoped to draw attention to labor troubles for farmers who say they have a tough time finding reliable labor. Some argue migrant labor and the legalization of immigrant workers is the only solution, Vogel writes.

"We are in challenging immigration waters," Rivers told Vogel. "The big issue here was just drawing attention to the workers." When contacted by The Buffalo News, executives at the American Farm Bureau offices in Washington, D.C., said they already had copies of Rivers' book. "Any time you make stuff real and valid, and explicit, it helps people understand it. There's no question about that," Paul Schlegel, the bureau's director of public policy, told Vogel. "It can only help people to get an accurate understanding." (Read more)