The Latinization of the American farm

■"The Changing Face of Farm Labor: Frederick Dairy Reflects Growing Importance of Latino Immigrants," by Frederick Kunkle, Washington Post, 15 September 2005, p. B1.

Interesting piece on how a growing percentage of farm laborers (the hired hands who tend to work more in high-tempo seasons, meaning they're let go in winters) in the U.S. are Hispanics. It fits as a classic "3-D" job (dirty, dangerous, difficult). We tend to romanticize laboring on farms, but having done it in my youth, it's anything but (I'll never forget the black dust I would find in my hankerchief at day's end, occupationally very hazardous [show me an old farmer and I'll show you a guy missing several digits on his fingers], and bone tiring). Talking to friends back home in WI recently, I hear the same thing time and time again: parents can't talk their kids into following them in the farm life. So the only people buying farms around my hometown of Boscobel right now are: 1) urban upper-class looking for second homes and 2) Amish.

Those who survive often do so with non-family hired hands, and those hands are increasingly brown.

Ironic yes? You want to save the family farm, you better let in some farmers.