We should be thinking about protecting ourselves from future food shortages by strengthening our internal food production.

Today, over 50% of our internal agricultural labor is illegal, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Said another way, more than 800,000 of the 1.6 million agro workers who work on our crops and livestock each year are foreigners without legal permission to work. If you still haven’t seen the light, here’s the bottom line: there’s a potentially disastrous weakness in our food production system because we’re dependent on foreign food imports, undocumented foreign workers, and a shortage of American workers.

Instead of blaming the farmers, or screaming at our politicians for not protecting our borders, we should be truly responsible by getting off our butts.

First, by coaching our kids to go into farming. Next, we should be aware of economic realities which have been in place since the 1940s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the Bracero Program in 1941 and, as a result, Mexican agro labor carried the day while we fought in Europe and in the Pacific. After our soldiers returned, we went on to build an industrial America unparalleled in modern times.

We were able to do this because we had the help of Mexican agro labor. Today, we are producing 25% of the world’s economic output even though we are 5% of the world’s population. It’s time to humbly admit that we need Mexican agro labor and that they should work for us legally. It’s also time to sympathize with the plight of our farmers.

This is why. Imagine that you’re the owner of a dairy farm with 500 cows of which 100 are dealing with the onset of labor. You don’t have enough American workers to care for the herd, much less these pregnant cows. You’re told that you can get help from Mexico but it will not arrive in less than six months. If you’re lucky. The H-2A Program, the politically-correct, yet inefficient portal to bring these workers in, requires you to go through a paper-intensive, deadline-ridden process that kills 40% of all applications.

Our farmers have more important things to do than to chase after the H-2A Program. They don’t have time to go through three government agencies in order to bring a Mexican worker for seasonal work. Producing crops, milk and eggs, meat and poultry, not to mention thousands of other products, is much more important. So they use an illegal work force, and should we blame them?

The H-2A Program should be blasted away. We should be using our great native intelligence to come up with practical – yes, practical – solutions instead of falling prey to fear-mongers who don’t know what they’re talking about. Let’s get real about our future, our children’s future.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Protect-Our-Food-Production—The-H-2A-Program-Should-Be-Blasted-Away!&id=4496219