Advocates for migrant workers say the laborers produce more than the fruits and vegetables they nurture and pick on farms in and around Wayne County.

“They have a big impact on the local economy,” says Jim Schmidt, director of Farmworker Legal Services, a statewide non-profit that provides legal assistance to migrant and seasonal farm workers.

Local merchants might see that impact in rising bottom lines. Robin Delf, co-owner of Bob’s Big M in Wolcott, says that on some nights during the peak harvesting season as many as 200 migrant workers can join the regular customers heading into the market. “They come in on Fridays,” she says.

The worker’s purchases of food and other supplies can raise the market’s take for the day by as much as 15 percent, says Delf, who puts on two extra cashiers on Fridays to deal with the additional customers. In Wayne County, the peak harvesting season ranges from mid-August through the end of October.

While local merchants might say migrant workers can boost their bottom lines, real figures regarding the economic impact of such workers on New York’s communities are not available, in part due to the difficulty of counting those who generally work and live out of the public eye. Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program of Cornell University, estimates that most of the 4,000 agricultural laborers who work in Wayne County during the peak season are migrants.

Schmidt, who has worked on migrant labor issues for about 30 years, estimates that Wayne County farms employ about 6,000 migrant laborers during the season. He estimates that during that period the number of migrant workers comes to no more than 2,000 and 1,000 respectively in Oswego and Cayuga County. Those workers spend as 50 percent of their incomes on food, rent, and other goods or services in the communities in which they work, Schmidt estimates.

Some of that money comes to parts of Oswego County. Susan Hurlbut, co-owner of the Hannibal Quick Mart, says the influx of migrant laborers during harvest season increases traffic into her store.

“They usually cash their checks at the bank, and a lot of them come over here,” she says. “When the migrant workers leave in the fall, we know it.”

Unfortunately the wave of workers doesn’t float all boats. Down the road, Kim Fitzer, owner of Kim’s Village Café in Hannibal, says the seasonal influx of migrant labor doesn’t affect the traffic into her business. “I don’t get any of them in here,” Fitzer says. ###