Tree planters feel pinch of cuts
By Nancy Cole, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
LITTLE ROCK - Some tree-planting contractors in Arkansas are going out of business because of a shortage of H-2B guest-worker visas.
"It put me out of business," said Chuck Hoover, a Monticello-based forestry contractor who began hiring H-2B workers in 1999.
"I'm not the only one," he said. "I've got two other friends that live here pretty close to me and they didn't get their help either."
Those wanting their land planted with seedlings will be served, if a bit late this year, said Allan Murray, who manages the Arkansas Forestry Commission's Baucum Nursery just east of LittleRock. That's because some landowners were hesitant to commit to seedlings because of the uncertainty of the Farm Bill and itsreforestation incentives, and high grain prices make farming more attractive than trees, he said.
Hoover wanted to employ 40H-2B planters from Mexico but received none. The inability to plant seedlings jeopardizes the demand for Hoover's other work, which involves spraying, burning and ripping land to prepare it for planting.
"The only way that's going to pay off is if the land gets trees planted on it," Hoover said.
Finding U.S. workers to plant seedlings has become increasingly difficult during the past 45 years, said Bryan Davis, a forester with Little Rock-based Davis DuBose Forestry Real Estate Consultants.
"As the years went by, there were other, better jobs," and localpeople no longer want to do strenuous stoop labor, Davis said.
The problems with hiring foreign workers are rooted in federal legislation.
Section H-2B of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 permits nonimmigrant foreigners to enter the United States each year to perform temporary services on a seasonal basis. Forestry, construction, hospitality, fisheries, landscaping and golf course maintenance are just a few of the sectors that use H-2B workers.
In subsequent years, the number of H-2B visas that could be issued was capped at 66,000 per fiscal year - one half starting Oct. 1, the other half starting April 1 - but demand grew.
In 2005, demand for H-2B visas exceeded the supply so Congress exempted returning workers - those who had worked in theUnited States in any of the previous three years - from the cap.
Because the returning-worker exemption expired last Sept. 30, many in U.S. forestry feared an H-2B worker shortage. An attempt was made to extend the exemption - the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2007, S.B. 988 and H.B. 1843, but the legislation failed.
"Some people did not get crews, and some crews were smaller," said Mark Chupp, who manages ArborGen LLC's Fred C. Gragg SuperTree Nursery near Bluff City in Nevada County. As a result, tree planting "this year may go deep into March," Chupp said.
Tree seedlings usually are planted in Arkansas from December to late February or early March.
"It's a very tight schedule," said Pete Prutzman, a senior forester with Kingwood Forestry Services Inc. in Arkadelphia.
"We try to plant when the seedlings we're planting are dormant," he said.
Although Kingwood's clients had no trouble getting their seedlings planted, Prutzman said he heard widespread reports of contractors having problems.
"We were braced for it to be a lot worse," said Kevin Richardson, who manages Weyerhaeuser's Magnolia Regeneration Center in Columbia County. Some smaller seedling sales had to be canceled, because of a shortage of tree planters, but it was mostly "business as usual" for the large companies, he said.
Plum Creek Timber Co. Inc., Arkansas's largest private timberland owner, with about 905,000 acres, got all its trees planted, said Peter Remoy, a Crossett-based manager for the company. Crews were delayed in starting work in Arkansas, so it took longer than normal this year to plant about 40,000 acres, Remoy said.
Demand for H-2B workers continues to be strong, said Ian Thomas Hardin, an attorney with Immigration Law Associates ofCape Girardeau, Mo.
The 33,000 cap for the first half of fiscal year 2008 was met Oct. 1 and, "by the first week of January, the April ones were already gone," Hardin said.
In Arkansas, requests for more than 8,000 H-2B workers were filed in 2006 and nearly 7,000 in 2007, representing more than 10 percent of the national quota.
The Forest Landowners Association (FLA), which represents private, nonindustrial landowners, has petitioned the U.S. Department of Labor to permit tree planters to enter the country under H-2A visas. A companion of the H-2B program, H-2A, which is designed for agricultural laborers, has no annual visa cap. Read FLA's letter to the Department of Labor online.
"I don't think we got hurt this year ... but I'm really afraid that [H-2B shortages] might hurt us in years to come," said Scott Jones, executive vice president of the Atlanta-based Forest Landowners Association.
H-2A looks like a good fix, he said.
You guys do a lot of good for the nation. It's not funny that the family farm, vineard is going the corporate way. Lots of profit in corporate farming, must be otherwise they would not be buying up the small, medium and even large family farms. I was sad to learn that after many years in the wine and vineard business, one of the true founding family vineard and winery was sold to a commercial operation. Since the sale has not been made public yet, I won't name the winery but for those of us to follow great wines and understand the histroy of Napa it will be a shock.
