What's Wrong with Importing Agricultural Products?

Dean Baker is for it:

Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect: What's Wrong With Growing Produce in Mexico? The Washington Post tells us that farmers in Texas are having trouble getting enough workers because of restrictions on immigration. It then reports one farmer's warning that if Mexicans can't come over the border to work on farms here, then the produce will just be produced in Mexico and shipped over the border.

This invites the obvious response "so what?" I dont' see a problem with importing produce from Mexico. I also think it's probably better in general for Mexicans to have the opportunity to work in their own country than have to come to the United States to get a decent job. I realize that the farmer in the story may be out of business, but the government does not exist to guarantee farmers access to cheap labor.

Dean's beef is that Washington Post staff writer Sylvia Moreno commits one of the standard incompetences of Washington Post staff reporters covering economic issues. There are at least six groups of stakeholders: U.S. growers, U.S. unskilled workers, Mexican growers, Mexican unskilled workers, legal migrants, illegal migrants, and U.S. consumers. Ms. Moreno talks about only one of these seven groups--U.S. producers--and so gets the story wrong.

I'm still looking for anybody to tell me a reason that the Washington Post should publish a print edition tomorrow. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Comments

[wkwillis]

The other group of stakeholders is the support community for the farmers. You know, the store that sell pesticides to the farmer, the bank that holds the mortgage on the farm, the school that educates the farm worker's kids, the emergency room at the nearby hospital that covers the health care cost for the farmworker's family, the company that sells diesel to pump the water to irrigate the farm, etc.

[DCBob]

Brad, there is a very good reason for the Post to keep publishing - if it did not, the only major paper in the city would be the Washington Times. It would be like going from 'Soylent Green' to 'Night of the Living Dead.'

[Maurice Lanselle]

While I don't disagree with wkwillis that there are other non-cited stakeholders (aren't we all, eventually?), perhaps to say "the" other group is inappropriate; for all these others have (or should have) their counterparts in Mexico.

The "article" could (should?) be confused with propaganda because several core stakeholders were "neglected" in the article writer's text. The analysis makes this clear, quite concisely. Maybe not eleven, but definitely high pass.

[g]

Presumably it is profitable to print another edition of the Washington Post tomorrow.

Is this profitability an example of
(1) irrational agents
(2) price stickiness
(3) monopoly power
(4) asymmetric information
(5) market failure
(6) other
Discuss.

[bailey]

The answer's easy, Brad, to distrat Economists from the critically needed job of cleaning up their field of work.

[bigTom]

Presumably it is profitable to print another edition of the Washington Post tomorrow.

Simple inertia: Readers can't cancel subscriptions that fast. Nor can labor/material contracts be canceled on a moments notice. Plus most of the readers are oblivious to the drivel they are reading (or skipping over).

[Doug]

Best reason for the Washington Post to publish tomorrow. So I can read Dan Froomkin.

[mistah charley, ph.d.]

Froomkin is indeed the best part of the Washington Post - but they don't PRINT him, they put him on their website.

They probably wish they could get away with dropping him, but because they want to pretend they are NOT the Washington Times, so far they haven't.

[Ken Houghton]

Let me see if I have this straight: it's fine for us to "import" Mexican trucks (i.e., those that are not well-maintained, and will pollute our lands directly) and Mexican beef (not inspected locally, or barely spot-checked at best), but not Mexican produce (or, apparently, Mexican labourers).

Yes, that's absurd: but here's something even more absurd.

The assumption of "if Mexicans can't come over the border to work on farms here, then the produce will just be produced in Mexico and shipped over the border" is that there are equal production facilities on both sides, and that the difference is solely in a local labor shortage (US) and surplus (Mexico).

If there is a labour surplus, why are not Mexican farmers attempting to produce more now (they can export, after all)? The marginal cost of the next acre must be (definitional, if the 'threat' is to be believed) low enough that it will increase overall profit to the land owner. Unless there's a tariff--that is, that NAFTA really doesn't promote "free trade"--that is greater than the wage/xport differential between the two countries, this is a clear case where the produce SHOULD be produced in Mexico.

Why would the farmer (forget the WaPo) have us believe there a market failure here?