Borneo Bulletin Digital

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Business 11
MONDAY, MAY 11, 2020
Harvesters struggle to recruit foreign workers
during pandemic
BELLE PLAINE, KANSAS (AP) — Kan-
sas harvester Mike Keimig is growing
increasingly anxious about whether
the foreign seasonal workers heneeds
to run his nine combines and drive
his grain trucks will arrive in time for
the start of the winter wheat harvest,
which is just weeks away.
His regular crewmostly comprises
farm kids from South Africa who
return to work for him every year,
but they are stuck overseas. The
paperwork for about half of the 20
agricultural worker visas he has ap-
plied for remains in limbo at the shut-
tered United States (US) Consulate
in Johannesburg.
The closure of embassies and
consulates due to the coronavirus
pandemic is not the only obstacle to
bringing in seasonal workers. Govern-
ments closed their borders. Overseas
workers who have visas cannot get
on a Œlight. And once they arrive,
they would face weeks of quarantine
before they could work.
“It will deŒinitely have a big impact
on our Œinances ... if we can’t get help
to run our equipment,” Keimig said.
“It would even have an effect on
the farmers.Well,maybe they can Œind
somebody besides us to do it, I don’t
know?” he said. “But I think it would
be a little tough because there are a
lot of us in the same situation.”
Harvester crews typically traverse
the nation with their combines and
grain trucks taking onworkwhere the
crops are ripening. They usually work
the same farms every season, saving
the farmers the cost of investing in
harvester equipment.
About 30 per cent of US harvest
operations use foreign workers on
their crews, according to Mandi
Sieren, operations manager for the
industry trade group US Custom
Harvesters Inc.
Temporary agricultural worker
H—2A visas have been largely spared
from immigration rollbacks because
agriculture is anessential industry, but
the workers cannot travel to the US
right now because of the restrictions
imposed to prevent the spread of the
coronavirus, Sieren said.
As for hiring locally, harvesters
“would absolutely love to hire Ameri-
cans but there are not very many
Americans who would leave home
for six to nine months at a time,”
she said.
As many as half of the workers
who harvest US wheat and other
grain crops are seasonal foreign
workers, said Ryan Haffner, a Kansas
harvester and board member for US
Custom Harvesters.
“We are always looking for Ameri-
can workers. I mean, that is a con-
stant search,” Haffner said. But many
Americans are “disconnected from
agriculture” and lack interest or the
skills required to work in farming.
“There are more people overseas
really that have an interest and still a
working knowledge of agriculture,”
he said.
Modern harvesting machines are
computerised and sophisticated, so
File photo shows winter wheat harvested in a ield farmed by Dalton and Carson North near McCracken, Kansas.
PHOTO: AP
it is not easy for the city-dwelling un-
employed to just pick up, adapt and
learn to operate them, Haffner said.
Typically, a third of Haffner’s crew of
up to 20 workers is American, while
the rest come from South Africa,
Europe and South America. He has
the agricultural worker visas for his
foreign workers for this harvest sea-
son, but was only able to get a few
of them into the US before corona-
virus restrictions effectively shut the
others out.
The harvest season begins in
mid-May in north-central Texas, be-
fore moving into Oklahoma, Kansas,
Colorado, Montana and North Da-
kota. In the summer, they cut mostly
wheat. In early fall, they harvest peas,
canola, soybeans, grain sorghumand
corn. Haffner cannot afford to miss
a season.
“I have got USD5 million worth of
equipment — I can’t not be there,”
Haffner said. “So we are going to
be there. We are going to get to our
customers. It is just going to bemuch
moredifŒicult intend to
get through it.”
Some harvesters are turning to
relatives and friends to work for a few
weeks or more until the foreign work-
ers canarrive. Somehavebeenable to
hire Americans for the whole season.
Others are trying to do as much as
they can themselves.
Don Kotapish, a 72-year-old farmer
who also does a bit of cutting for
others on the side, usually brings in a
couple of workers from South Africa
to help him on his 6,500-acre prop-
erty inBlueRapids, Kansas. He saidhe
has beenworking from6amuntil 9pm
or later every day because he has not
been able to hire any help. “Not only
are we short on help, but we aren’t
getting anything for our products,”
Kotapish said. “The cattleman and
the grain farmers are all in the same
situation. That adds more stress.”
Texas harvester Shorty Kulhanek
usually hires fewer than Œive seasonal
workers, and he has been able to pick
up some workers from Oklahoma,
Kansas, Wisconsin and Washington
this season. He said it was easier
to Œind Americans to join his crew
because so many people are out
of work.
Furthermore, Kulhanek’s applica-
tions for seasonal agricultural worker
visas have yet to be approved, and
he was told that might not happen
until July 15. “I can’t wait that long,”
he said. “I have to proceed with what
I can get.”