Farm groups agreed on a rolling visa limit for immigrant farmworkers and minimum wages for laborers, resolving sticking points on the path toward revised U.S. immigration law.
The state’s $43.5 billion-a-year farm industry depends on a shadow workforce of undocumented Mexican immigrants that’s eroding under economic improvements back home and tighter U.S. border controls.
Farmers in California’s Central Valley, the world’s most productive agricultural region, will get none of the water they requested this year from a federally controlled system because of the drought gripping the state.
Freezing weather across the U.S. will damage crops from winter wheat to oranges and is threatening livestock, sending cattle futures to an all-time high.
