A Marion County farmer telephoned

recently, looking for workers. It was time to harvest bok choy cabbage, radishes and other spring vegetables, and the farmer's usual picking crew hadn't arrived from Mexico.

"His best workers didn't show up," said Fazio, director of the Washington Farm Labor Association.

It's becoming a familiar story. Across the Northwest, farmers are uncertain they'll have enough workers to harvest labor-intensive crops this year.

Fazio projects a 5 to 10 percent shortage of the roughly 50,000 cherry, pear and apple pickers needed this summer and fall to harvest what may be near-record crops. Although based in Washington state, Fazio said he often hears from Oregon farmers that the two states are in the same fix.

Predicting the labor situation is like "fortune telling," said Dallas Fridley, a regional economist with the

. He works primarily in Hood River and Wasco counties, where the agricultural labor force swells by up to 6,000 workers for the four-month pear and cherry harvests.

"It's a very real problem," he said.

The situation should clarify soon, as Oregon's strawberry harvest begins in early to mid-June. Although much diminished in acreage from decades past, the state's strawberry crop epitomizes the problem because it must be picked by hand, quickly, while berries are in prime condition.

At

, owner Matt Unger said he requires 70 to 80 pickers for strawberries in June, and about 60 in July and August when blueberries, blackberries and raspberries ripen.

"It looks like we have enough (pickers) right now," Unger said. "Ours is word of mouth -- we have the same people come back each year, and they bring friends."

Fazio, of the farm labor association, said complicated and contradictory "guest worker" and immigration policies are at the heart of the problem. Regulations discourage some workers from crossing the border legally, he said, while other government programs unintentionally encourage undocumented immigrants to stay, Fazio said.

The federal H-2A program is intended to provide temporary foreign workers when labor shortages threaten harvests, but even the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledges it is of little help and needs reform.

Even when farmers meet all requirements, they "still run the risk that because of bureaucratic delays beyond their control, they won't have a legal workforce in place when they need it," a

deputy secretary said in a news release.

The department estimated the national agricultural workforce at 1.2 million during its seasonal peak each July, and said 50 to 70 percent of workers were in the country illegally. The H-2A program legalized fewer than 10 percent of the workforce, the USDA said.

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