Labor Availability in an Integrated Agricultural System

The trend towards crop specialization and increased farm size in U.S. agricultural systems has had negative economic and environmental impacts. On large, specialized farms, bottlenecks in labor occur, and a significant amount of seasonal labor is underutilized. This study was conducted to determine if this labor could be allocated to the production of supplemental enterprises. A linear programming analysis confirmed that 2,807 hours of underutilized labor exists in a typical corn-soybean rotation and that integration of the supplemental crops evaluated in our study are feasible. Grazing of stalk residues alone did not make use of the underutilized labor, however, integration of two alternative cabbage production scenarios as well as an agroforestry alternative that included decorative woody florals made use of an additional 357 and 306 hours of the underutilized labor, respectively. The integration of supplemental alternative crops into an existing corn-soybean rotation has the ability to make use of underutilized labor and has potential to increase farm profitability and improve agronomic and environmental sustainability.