U.S. farmers go where workers are: Mexico

There isn't really much to add to the original story except to point out something the story doesn't. The wages he's paying are being spent in Mexico whereas before most were sent to Mexico, but some were spent in California

Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.

Farming since he was a teenager, Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in California's Imperial Valley, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many probably in the United States illegally.

But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now, about 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation.

"I'm as American red-blood as it gets," Scaroni said, "but I'm tired of fighting the fight on the immigration issue."

...

While there are benefits for Mexico, as American farmers bring the latest technology and techniques to the rich soil of its northern regions, economists say that thousands of middle-class jobs supporting agriculture are being lost in the United States. Some lawmakers in the United States also point to security risks when food for Americans is increasingly produced in foreign countries.

...

Scaroni expects recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages he pays farm workers here, $11 a day as opposed to about $9 an hour in California, although Mexican workers are less productive in their own country, he said.

Obviously labor is cheaper in Mexico, but at peak season Scaroni employs 5,000 workers who spend that $55,000 in daily pay in Mexico.

Oh yeah, everybody is less productive in Mexico because of the heat.

Via International Herald Tribue.