Beyond Borders: A History of Mexican Migration to the United States (Viewpoints / Puntos de Vista) by Henderson Timothy J

Author:Henderson, Timothy J. [Henderson, Timothy J.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

Undoubtedly the greatest beneficiaries of the program were precisely those individuals that the program was intended to benefit, namely large agribusiness interests, who represented only about 2 percent of all farmers in the United States. It gave them a major competitive edge against their rivals, such that the heyday of the Bracero Program coincided with a drastic decrease in the numbers of family farms. The total number of farms in California declined from 137,000 to 99,000 between 1950 and 1960, while total acreage under cultivation decreased by some 313,000 acres, most of the loss being sustained by farms under 500 acres. During that same decade, cotton farming was able to transition from a plantation system using massive numbers of sharecroppers and migrant pickers to a fully mechanized and modern farming system. Without the Bracero Program, it is likely that cotton farming would have faced a serious crisis, for from the 1940s onward it proved difficult to persuade domestic workers to pick cotton, even while substantial amounts of labor were required while the industry was in the process of mechanization. The Bracero Program helped to make that transition possible. By 1964, the last year of the Bracero Program, three quarters of American cotton was being harvested by machine. In the final analysis, the Bracero Program amounted to a massive government subsidy to powerful farming interests.

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