In 1978, the Report of the University of California Agricultural Issues Task Force, Agricultural Policy Challenges for California in the 198Os, stated, "In no other area of this report is information for policy decisions more lacking than for agricultural labor." California's agricultural labor force is extremely complex and in a constant state of fluctuation. With very few exceptions, agricultural employment is unstable, insecure, physically taxing and poorly remunerated; it provides, at best, a meager kind of existence plagued by chronic poverty, public neglect and diminished opportunities. California's agricultural labor force is also predominantly Latino of rural Mexican descent. These are circumstances that, in conjunction with research and policy apathy and limited public concern, make California farm workers and their families into an authentic underclass with sharp ethnic overtones.

California's large farm-working population is composed of domestic resident laborers -- United States citizens, and documented and undocumented immigrants -- and documented and undocumented foreign migrant laborers. However, we do not have accurate figures or data on the total number of farm workers or on the percentage representation of each type, much less changing trends before or after IRCA, or the effect of IRCA upon them. It might be assumed that domestic and external laborers constitute a complementary work force; the former provide permanent or semi-permanent, skilled and semi-skilled labor, and the latter seasonal unskilled work according to specific regions, crop systems and peak employment schedules. However, there is increasing evidence of severe competition between domestic and external workers for a limited number of farm jobs, a situation that reportedly has been exacerbated by IRCA and its special provisions for immigrant farm workers.

The flux in the composition of the agricultural labor force is usually attributed to a high turnover of workers from agricultural (rural) to service and industrial (urban) employment, and to the increasing supply of foreign labor driven by the economic crises and political strife of Central America. Given this "transition" interpretation of farm labor, little or no policy has been developed to deal with the specific needs and problems of the farm workers because their condition is perceived to be resolved within a generation or less through occupational and residential mobility. Recent research, however, indicates a process of rural sedentarization attributed to high rates of urban unemployment and deteriorating urban living conditions for Latinos. As a result, increasing numbers of U.S.-born offspring of rural immigrants are remaining in agriculture. Nonetheless, we know next to nothing about these processes.

Increasing the flux and complexity of the agricultural labor force is the fact that growing numbers of women and children have joined it. Indeed, recent reports indicate that as much as thirty to forty percent of the agricultural labor force may be made up of women (higher in certain specialty crops and agricultural processing industries), including both migrant and domestic workers but particularly the latter. They constitute, without exaggeration, a sub-underclass of the rural underclass due to their lower wages, greater job instability, and decreased opportunities for mobility. We have insufficient information to fully understand and act upon the problems that result from these important developments.

Given our "institutionalized" ignorance about these issues, organized research is urgently needed. The proposed development of research should initially focus on:

1. The size and composition of the agricultural labor force with particular emphasis on domestic and foreign farm workers, their socioeconomic characteristics and "lifestyles," their competitive and/or complementary interrelationships, and changing dynamics, including those provoked by IRCA

2. The processes of immigration, rural settlement and labor turnover from agriculture to industry and services with the specific purpose of assessing the need to replenish agricultural labor, and the specific ways 'RCA is affecting these processes.

3. The changing composition of the agricultural labor force relative to gender and age, and specific focus on the growing participation of women in farm and farm-related employment in order to correctly assess the specific and diverse problems and needs of the farm-working population.

Enlightened by research findings (statistical and descriptive data and analyses) new policy could be designed and executed and existing policy corrected with the purpose of stabilizing the agricultural labor force and making farm employment as compatible as possible to the conditions offered by other sectors of employment. California agriculture, which is endowed with unequaled natural, human and institutional resources, should continue to successfully and competitively develop within the framework of expanding national and international markets, and certainly should achieve a certain minimal degree of compatibility between economic prosperity and social justice. Slavery as a labor system peculiar to Southern plantation agriculture was disemboweled by a repulsed American society; similarly, the labor system that has arisen from California's successful agricultural development cannot, in good conscience, be allowed to prevail without substantial modifications.