At the World Pork Expo Thursday I attended an interesting discussion on Hispanic labor on swine farms, but really this could have been held at a dairy or cattlemen’s event, as well. Some interesting stats were handed to us. I’ll be writing more about it for the June 12 issue, but suffice it to say that the Latino workforce is here, is growing and somewhere between 2025 and 2050, Caucasian will be an official minority in the U.S. To me, immigration alone does not explain the whole picture. You have to look at family sizes, too. Because our generation and our children’s generations have determined that big families are just too stressful and ties us down too much, we had/have one, maybe two children, while Latino families have five and six. (Back in my college years, I remember a speaker saying that with two children per family unit, a population goes backward because, unfortunately, children die.) Since white families are averaging 1.3 children per family unit, while Latinos are averaging 3.1 … well, you do the math. Is this a bad thing? Not in my mind. It will likely mean my grandchildren will be bilingual, which is not a bad thing either. I have considered learning Spanish. Yes, migrant workers should learn to speak English, since they are in this country, especially in Iowa; but the reality is, they can’t learn it overnight. It takes time. Meanwhile, the more Latinos that are working on Iowa farms, the more likely I, as a reporter, will be encountering them as farm managers, maybe even eventually, as farm owners. I wouldn’t have to be fluent, but to have a few Spanish words would be helpful.

Another story in the making is that in Marshalltown there is a local foods initiative underway to help these new Iowans to start what we used to call "truck farms." These are large four- and five-acre vegetable gardens. Since the produce is trucked to town -- a truck farm. The Latinos coming up to this country have a strong agrarian background. Some even hold degrees in agronomy and seed technology. They want to get out of the packing houses and into the fields and grow crops — who wouldn't?. The effort in Marshalltown is working on finding them local markets for their produce including restaurants, schools, hospitals and nursing homes. If this effort is successful, the long-range goal is to repeat this process around the state to solve the problem of what is identified as "food deserts" in Iowa. A food desert is any area in which the people of that area must drive more than 30 miles in one direction to purchase food. If Latino Iowans can step in and fulfill those needs, finding pride in their work and providing for their own families, then this is a good thing.

What do you think?