DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. As we said, there's a labor shortage on farms in the U.S., and this has huge agricultural implications. The Mexican workers who came to the U.S. decades ago to pick crops are aging, and their children and grandchildren are finding opportunities in other sectors. And this all raises questions over who is supposed to replace them.

I spoke with NPR's Ximena Bustillo, who reports on food and farm policy, and NPR's Andrea Hsu, who covers labor. This summer, they visited some farms to see how all of this is playing out. And I asked Ximena to start by telling me where they went.

XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Well, we went to Washington state, which is famous for its apples, cherries and hops, and we specifically traveled to the Yakima Valley. In these towns, you can see how dominant agriculture is to the communities. Right next to a playground, there's an apple processing plant. And right next to a school, there's a hops field. We were there specifically at the start of cherry season, and we got to get up right before sunrise as the harvest was just starting.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. (Speaking Spanish).

BUSTILLO: You can hear the workers moving fast...

DETROW: Yeah.

BUSTILLO: ...Carrying big ladders. And they get paid based on how much they pick. And the season is short, only a couple of weeks or months. But one of the problems we kept hearing is just how these kinds of farms don't have enough workers.

DETROW: OK. So Andrea, who is doing the picking, then?

ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: It's a majority-Latino workforce, and you can hear Spanish spoken on most of these farms. But beyond that, you can break down the workforce into two different groups. There are those workers who have been in the U.S. for a long time and settled in the area. Some of them are documented. Some are not. And then there are these guest workers who have been brought to the U.S. for the harvest season through a federal visa program called the H-2A program. And nationally, we have seen a huge increase in these guest workers. And in a place like Washington state, the growth has just exploded over the past decade by, you know, something like 500%.

DETROW: That is a very large increase. What's going on there?

HSU: Well, as Ximena mentioned, farmers say they cannot find enough workers to bring in the harvest. It's actually their top concern. And, Scott, you know, this wasn't always a problem. Decades ago, there used to be, you know, whole families of Mexican farmworkers who would migrate around the U.S. They'd start in Texas, they'd make their way up through California, eventually make it to Washington state. But after 9/11, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border became much riskier. And then gradually, over time, instead of moving throughout the year, some of these families started to settle in one place. These migrant workers, they put their kids in school. They started seeing other opportunities for them.

DETROW: And I guess that makes sense. That's, like, the archetypal American experience, right? You come as an immigrant, you work in one field and you hope your kids advance and move forward and do something different and keep growing.

HSU: Yes, exactly. And we met a really interesting woman whose life story kind of explains the labor shortages we're seeing now.

DETROW: OK.

HSU: Delores Gonzalez works for the local school district as a migrant advocate. Her job is to make sure migrant kids are coming to school. But for most of her life, she was a farmworker. She was born in Arizona to parents who were farmworkers. She traveled around with her parents and grandparents, actually, migrating from place to place.

DELORES GONZALEZ: Remember, this was in the 1960s, when we could miss school and work, and I could still pick cherries and everything at the age of 9.

HSU: She grew up, married another farmworker, and they raised their own kids, you know, kind of the way they were raised, taking them to the cherry field, sticking them in a cherry bin all day long when they were young. And, you know, she was really proud of the work that she did. But she knew she wanted something different for her own kids.

GONZALEZ: They would still work the fields with us in the summer, but at the same time, I planted the seed since they were little that they were going to go to college.

HSU: And then when her oldest was about to graduate from high school, Delores said something clicked. She realized she wanted something different for herself, too.

GONZALEZ: I'm tired of the cycle. I want to break it.

HSU: And at the age of 40, Scott, Delores applied to college. And now she and all three of her kids work in education.

DETROW: I really like Delores.

HSU: Yeah. She's quite a woman.

DETROW: You mentioned that she works for the school district. Tell me about the students that she works with. What are they doing? Are they working in the fields right now?

HSU: Well, some of them do. As Delores pointed out to us, some of these families only have one car, so - and there's no public transportation. So if you're a teenager and you want to work, you have no choice but to go with your parents or your aunt and uncle to the fields. And, of course, for anyone who's undocumented, it's harder to get jobs elsewhere. But many of the young people we met were born in the U.S., and many of them are finding other opportunities. We met one of Delores' former students, Jazmin Corona. She used to go out with her dad to Montana every summer to pick cherries, but he always made sure she didn't miss school. And in the end, he gave her this choice.

JAZMIN CORONA: I remember he told me one day, I already taught you how to work in the fields outside, under the sun. Now it's your time. You got to decide if you want to continue here.

HSU: And, Scott, it really wasn't a very hard decision for Jazmin in the end.

CORONA: I've seen my dad all his life working in the fields, and I've seen him really tired. So I want to try something new.

HSU: And Jazmin is now in college. She wants to become a teacher and actually work at her old high school.

DETROW: So a lot of these stories make a lot of sense on the individual level, right? You can see why somebody is making that decision. You could see why a family would be really happy with that decision. But it leads to this broader problem of if these were the people doing a lot of the work, picking these fruits and vegetables that we all rely on and eat, who's going to be filling in that space? And Ximena, I'm assuming - I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm assuming that this is something that the government is thinking about and trying to set policy to fix?

BUSTILLO: It is definitely something the government is thinking about and has been for some time, which takes us back to that H-2A visa program.

DETROW: OK.

BUSTILLO: For decades, the federal government has given farms the option of bringing in these guest workers from other countries to do the picking. And that's because this program has a couple rules. So first, any employer has to prove that they couldn't hire someone currently living in the U.S. first before they ask for a visa and bring in someone else. There's also a special wage that has to be paid. And in Washington, that's almost $18 an hour. Employers must also provide housing and transportation and pay for all these things, which means farmers often complain about this cost and especially the rising cost of labor. They say that's one of the biggest contributors to high food prices right now. But while there's a really strong lobby for more visas and to make this more accessible and cheaper, labor groups are pumping the brakes on that.