Howard R. Rosenberg

APMP online    Print publications    AgHelpWanted.org    Battling heat stress    UC Cooperative Extension    The big picture

Cooperative Extension Specialist Agricultural Labor Management & Policy Dept. of Agricultural and Res. Economics 320 Giannini Hall University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-3310 howardr@are.berkeley.edu office:  510.642.7103 mobile: 510.717.4599

Howard Rosenberg is Cooperative Extension Specialist in Agricultural Labor Management, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley.  In this role since 1981 he has researched, spoken, and written on many human resource management topics and policy issues in agriculture.  From 1988 to 1998 he also served as Director of the U.C. Agricultural Personnel Management Program.   

Howard's work focuses on farm personnel management in relation to federal and state laws, production technology, and labor market conditions.  In collaboration with extension farm management faculty in several western states, he wrote Ag Help Wanted: Guidelines for Managing Agricultural Labor, an award-winning book for current and prospective managers of human resources in farm and ranch businesses.  Howard is also lead author of two editions of Labor Management Laws in California Agriculture, and of survey studies about seasonal agricultural workers, farm labor contractors, and employment practices on California farms.  His written and video explanations of the 1986 immigration reform and control act were used by farm employers, workers, and extension educators throughout the nation. 

While keeping an eye on the ever-changing regulatory environment, including various immigration and visa program proposals that deal with most field workers' current ineligibility for employment in the U.S., Howard began a line of study on heat stress in farm jobs.  His recent work has helped managers and workers apply principles from exercise physiology research to reduce threats of excess body heat to comfort, safety, health, and performance, and he has closely followed the development and implementation of California's new heat illness prevention standard. He is involved in related projects of the UC Agricultural Ergonomics Research Center.  

Howard turned cyberpunk in 1994 with his creation of the WPS-Forum, an Internet discussion network and reference archive on the federal Worker Protection Standard for Agricultural Pesticides.  He founded the APMP website in 1996,  completed a major overhaul of it in 2005, and keeps it under continuous development.  The site provides an extensive array of practical tools and research resources on agricultural labor management.   

Before joining UC Cooperative Extension, Dr. Rosenberg taught in the management and human resources fields at the UC Haas School of Business, California State University, and Golden Gate University.  He previously worked in banking, insurance, medical research, and public housing, has consulted to private firms and government agencies, and has served as an expert witness in litigation proceedings. 

Howard earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, and both his B.S. and M.S. in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.  He is a member of the Academy of Management, American Agricultural Economics Association, California Association of Farm Advisors and Specialists, Labor and Employment Relations Association, and Western Agricultural Economics Association.

Having grown up in the garden state of New Jersey before moving west and getting acquainted with real agriculture, Howard now resides in Berkeley with his wife, two dogs, and stuff left by two adult daughters.  He splits lanes in city traffic on a 1999 Honda Nighthawk (CB750). With the decline of his skills as an occasional third baseman, he moved to the pitcher's mound for annual contests against Camp Gold and turned to middle-age missions of building fluency in Spanish and piano.  Despite his family's pleas to turn the job over to someone who will kill the plants more slowly, he cultivates, prunes and/or harvests three plum trees, one apple tree, a dwarf lemon, several  ornamentals and random bushes, a fence full of ivy, and one-thousand square feet of crabgrass. 

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