Harvest Labor History

So I've been writing an article about the history of harvest labor, with a focus on the history of government policy, private employment agencies, and custom harvesting. It begins in the early 20th century with tens of thousands of harvest hands showing up in the Wheat Belt every summer in a chaotic environment of farmers trying to get enough help to get their wheat crop in and transient harvest workers from all over the country trying to find work. The confusion and chaos came because the harvest hands had to get there by rail and didn't always know where to start. There were often places that had too many workers (thereby driving down wages) and places that had too few workers (thereby driving wages up in those parts). The Kansas Free Employment Bureau was created in 1901 to try to remedy the many problems associated with recruiting harvest labor and moving it to the appropriate places once harvest began. This is a very abbreviated account of the early problems of harvest labor. World War I, the 1920s, the 1930s, WWII, and post-WWII each has a story of its own.

I was motivated to write about this because I recently rediscovered something I had written in 2003 after working on harvest with a few guys from South Africa. First of all, I had forgotten I even wrote this down, so it was nice to rediscover it. I wrote down some things about one man in particular because he such a fascinating personal migration history. The previous year he had worked on rice harvest in the U.S. South. Before that he had worked in Australia and at a Kibbutz in Israel! I think his regular profession in South Africa was working as a technician on movie sets. Does anybody know this guy? I have his full name written down somewhere. Perhaps I can find him on Facebook? The obvious point of this is that we now have a relatively new group of international seasonal harvest workers, each with his or her own personal story.