A new Georgia immigration law cracks down hard on illegals and those who "knowingly harbor" them making it incredibly more risky to even possibly have an illegal as a worker.
Georgia ranks 6th in the country with 480,000 illegal immigrants estimated to be living there and the vast majority of them work in the farm industry.
What does this mean for the small farmer?
The report estimates that if Georgia farms were forced to install mechanized labor to replace that migrant labor scared away by the law, it would cost the average small farm $1.2 million per year -- a sum that could put most farms out of business -- or $800 million total.
Just stack this right on top of all the other things that small farms have to deal with of which we learned of a few from Food, Inc. This was a Republican pushed bill and how they can say that they're for the small business is beyond me. These costs go directly to the small business farmer.
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