New York farmers say Governor Paterson’s crackdown on foreign farm workers and promotion of domestic labor is backfiring, leaving them with a shortage of hands in the fields that they say will lead to crop losses this harvest season.

Farmers, who have for years relied on seasonal labor mostly from Jamaica and Mexico obtained through federal guest-worker contracts, say the governor’s Department of Labor has disrupted their supply chain in an effort to force them to hire less experienced domestic workers from Puerto Rico and other areas.

The farmers, predominantly apple growers, say they fear the labor department won’t be able to replace the H-2A foreign workers with enough people who have the skills and who are willing to harvest the fruit all season long. They are predicting that their fruit will rot on the trees this fall.

Representatives of the farmers say they will press their concerns at a town hall meeting with Mr. Paterson and Senator Schumer scheduled for tomorrow in Batavia.

“No one is saying that the labor department’s initiative to source these jobs domestically is not well-intentioned,” a spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau, Peter Gregg, said. “However, the problem is that it is just not practical. We can’t have a group of workers on our farms who don’t know what they’re doing. It would be dangerous and also result in major crop losses for our farmers.”

After Mr. Paterson took office in March, the labor department recommended that the federal government reject seven H-2A applications for foreign workers submitted by vegetable and fruit farms in Western New York.

While the H-2A submissions that were rejected represent 5% of the total number of applications, the Farm Bureau says they are concerned that denials will increase next year.

State labor officials say they blocked the visa applications because the farmers requested laborers with more work experience than had been specified in previous years.

Instead of asking for a farm worker with one month of experience, apple farmers ordered “orchard specialists” with at least six months of farm work.

Farmers are required by law to give first preference to qualified domestic workers. They say they prefer, however, to hire foreign workers who are under contract, have harvested crops before, and come with other skills besides picking fruit, such as being able to drive a tractor.

By raising the qualification bar in their applications, the farmers acknowledge they are trying to maximize the number of foreign hires. Their effort is running counter to the goal of labor department, which seeks to place as many domestic workers as possible.

“What we really want are the people who have been working for us in the past,” Scott Vandewalle, who owns a 400-acre apple farm in Alton near Lake Ontario, said. “We need to know that we have a secure workforce.”

“It’s kind of a coincidence that it just started happening within a week” of when Mr. Paterson took office, Mr. Vandewalle said. “There’s probably some political motivation somewhere in the whole thing.”

Mr. Vandewalle, who submitted an application for 19 workers for the harvesting season in September and October, said he wanted people who could pick apples but also drive a tractor, operate a forklift, and be responsible for quality control.

After he appealed the denial, a labor judge asked the federal government to reconsider his paperwork. On Friday, the U.S. labor department reversed its decision against the recommendation of state labor officials.

As they go up against the Paterson administration, the New York farmers are also seeking help from upstate lawmakers, who are urging the governor to loosen the labor department’s demands.

“The farmers cornered me and said this is going to be a catastrophe,” a Republican senator, George Maziarz, said. “I commend the Department of Labor for trying to expand the workforce, but they can’t do this all at once. They are making it a thousand times worse. They want to go to the Puerto Rican labor force and exclude the Mexicans and Jamaicans,” he said.

Underlying the clash between the farmers and the Paterson administration is an increasing shortage of agricultural labor — partly caused by the shrinking number of available illegal aliens to work the fields.

State and federal crackdowns on illegal immigration and growing competition from the construction sector have led farmers such as Mr. Vandewalle to rely on guest-worker visas.

At the same time, the state labor department under Commissioner Patricia Smith has been working more closely with the Puerto Rican government to get first crack at available agricultural workers from the commonwealth.

“The farmers are desperate. The pool of workers is shrinking, and we have to find new ways to increase that pool,” Ms. Smith, who was appointed by Governor Spitzer last year, said in an interview.

The farmers whose applications were denied were “limiting” the labor pool, she said. “I didn’t see the justification in doing so.”

Pro-immigration advocates question whether Albany should be dictating the labor needs of New York farmers.

“If it’s a question of the government telling the employer what’s good enough for the workforce, that’s a recipe for disaster,” the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, Tamar Jacoby, said.