A meeting and workshop for landowners, tenants and other agri-business professionals is scheduled to take place this Thursday evening (August 1st), in Guthrie Center. The Farmland Leasing Meeting will be held from 6-to 9-pm at the Farm Bureau Hall. The workshop will assist interested persons with current issues related to farmland ownership, management, and leasing agreements.

Each workshop attendee will receive a set of beneficial materials regarding farm leasing arrangements and farmland ownership. Topics to be covered include Iowa Cash Rental Rate Survey and Land Values Survey, comparison of different types of leases, lease termination, impacts of yields and prices, and more.

The meeting is being facilitated by ISU Farm Management Specialist Shane Ellis. The cost is $20 per person or $35 per couple. Pre-registration is preferred, and can be made by calling 641-747-2276.

U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the ag industry will suffer if congress fails to enact some sort of immigration reforms. “If you know what I know about the impact of the immigrant workforce on agriculture, you recognize that this is something that needs to get done,” Vilsack says. “We have had crops not harvested, crops not raised and crops actually leaving the United States and being grown elsewhere because we have a broken immigration system.”

America’s agricultural industry has been able to keep food prices low, in part, with cheap immigrant labor. In 2006, 77 percent of all agricultural workers in the United States were born in another country. Vilsack cites a recent study in the state of Georgia. “They’ve determined that their state has suffered $320 million annually of economic loss and roughly 3200 jobs that otherwise would have been filled weren’t being filled,” Vilsack says. “So if you start multiplying that by a lot of agricultural states around the country, you can see this lack of a comprehensive immigration bill is having an impact on the agricultural economy.”

Georgia enacted a state law in 2010 that made it harder for employers to hire illegal immigrants and directed police in Georgia to be more aggressive in checking for undocumented residents. A University of Georgia study found farmers in Georgia were 40 percent short of the fieldhands they needed to harvest crops in 2012. The immigration reform plan that recently cleared the U.S. Senate would grant legal resident status to current farm workers who entered the country illegally. Advocates say a separate guest worker program outlined in the bill will increase the flow of temporary farm workers into the U.S.

(Radio Iowa)