US agriculture has a well-broadcast labor shortage that has been building for decades. The crunch was so bad in the 1960s that the US government actually devised a program to recruit high school athletes to work farm fields during the summer. A program like that today would no doubt draw immediate ridicule as we all know that kids these days are allergic to hard work! Well, for all you who believe the kids of yesteryear were made of tougher metal, you may want to skip this story about America’s “A-TEAM” initiative.
The brainchild of the A-TEAM, which stood for “Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower,” was Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz. The Secretary was confronted with a looming farm labor crisis brought on by the termination of the “Bracero Program.” The Bracero Program, started in World War II, was an agreement that brought Mexican men to collect harvests across the US.
When the Bracero Program was terminated in 1964, US farmers raised alarms about a lack of labor to harvest crops. Amid warnings that food would be rotting in the fields unless the program was allowed to continue, Wirtz refused to budge, believing the work could be done by Americans.
Ending the Bracero Program meant the loss of some 70,000 Mexican farm workers. But Wirtz pointed to the 550,000 young people, 16 to 21 years old, who were unemployed in the states losing those workers. About 200,000 of those were boys on vacation from high school or college. “They can do the work. They are entitled to a chance at it,” Wirtz said when announcing the program.
These were the details, per the newspapers on May 5, 1965:
“The plan is to have participating high schools get in touch with state employment offices, which, in turn, will ascertain the growers’ needs for labor. The employment offices will put the high schools in touch with the growers. Teams of 20 to 30 athletically inclined boys will be made up, with the high schools assigning a supervisor to each group. The teams will be provided by the growers with transportation to the farms. They will be asked to go a maximum of 350 miles from home. If the boys work for growers who have asked for foreign workers, they will be paid a minimum of $1.15 to $1.40 an hour the wages fixed by the Labor Department that such growers must first offer domestic workers before they can get foreign workers. They will also get three meals a day for a maximum of $2.25 and be covered by workmen’s compensation or its equivalent.”
Wirtz hoped to recruit as many as 25,000 teens to work on farms that summer and launched a publicity blitz featuring prominent sports figures like Sandy Koufax and 1964 Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte, all urging lettermen to spend their summer “becoming men” in the fields. Advertisements blared the slogan “Farm Work Builds Men!” in magazines and radio spots nationwide.
The initial response was enthusiastic. Over 18,000 teenagers signed up, inspired by images of athletic camaraderie, the promise of good wages, and a parent-free summer. Local newspapers celebrated as buses filled with clean-cut teens rolled out across the country. Many athletes, along with their coaches, believed they were embarking on a character-building experience that might even be fun.
In reality, fewer than 3,300 teens actually followed through and made it to farms, and there were problems from the start. Teens complained that conditions were far harsher than expected, particularly the heat. Some boys went on strike or simply walked out.
By the end of the summer, more than half the participants had dropped out, and many finished without receiving any pay at all. A few teams did complete their assignments, but they were rare exceptions. Growers were frustrated by the teens’ slow pace and lack of expertise. One supervisor explained, “It’s tough labor. And for kids who have never done it, it’s impossible.”
The A-TEAM experiment was judged a colossal failure. Lawmakers and agricultural leaders recognized that American youth — even the strongest athletes — were uninterested and unsuited for the grueling labor of summer harvests, particularly at minimum wage and in uncomfortable conditions. The program was shelved after the 1965 experiment and the federal government has never attempted to revive it.
