Posted on 07/10/2006 11:11:56 AM PDT by Jean S
LAKELAND -- As many as 6 million boxes of oranges may go unharvested in Florida this year because of a shortage of fruit pickers made worse by fears about what changes may come in immigration law.
The citrus season usually ends in late June, but will extend to at least late July this year with juice processors hoping to get as many oranges as possible off trees.
"There's very little doubt we'll leave a significant amount of fruit on the tree," said Mike Carlton, the director of production and labor affairs at Florida Citrus Mutual. "Whether that's 3 million boxes or 6 million boxes, nobody can say."
There were about 9 million boxes of Valencia oranges still on trees this week, The Ledger reported Sunday.
Orange production in the state could become the lowest since 1992 if the worst projections come true. That year, growers harvested 139.8 million boxes.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is scheduled to release its final citrus crop projection Wednesday. Its June 9 report forecast 153 million boxes of oranges.
Growers have reported difficulty finding enough workers. Industry officials say labor supply was tight from the beginning of the season in October, but grew worse by the middle of May when a large segment of the Hispanic labor force seemed to leave the state.
"The labor shortage is what held us up this year," said Dave Crumbly, the vice president of fruit control at Florida's Natural Growers in Lake Wales, the nation's third-largest citrus processor. "Because labor was marginal at best, it didn't take much to push it into a shortage."
Industry officials cited the talk of immigration crackdowns for their inability to find Hispanic workers, who make up much of Florida's farm work force.
Lake Wales citrus grower Marty McKenna, who manages about 4,000 grove acres, said word had spread through the Hispanic community to return home if they wanted U.S. jobs in the future.
The state's largest processor, Tropicana Products Inc. in Bradenton, plans to stay open through July 21, said Peter Brace, a spokesman for parent company PepsiCo Inc. in Chicago.
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Information from: The Ledger, http://www.theledger.com
I've hung sheetrock - I think I'd prefer picking oranges. :)
Well, at least the oranges you can eat!.........
They don't have to do jobs. Welfare is far more profitable.
Your correct to point out that legal as well illegal immigrants have hidden costs. But if there had been an adequate domestic birthrate such there had been no need to import labor(legal and illegal), the domestic born low wage earner would have the same hidden costs.
Let them go under, we don't need agriculture in this Country. Just turn them into high tech jobs like all the FReepers say.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Easy to see what happened, orange groves go away, neighborhoods come in. Workers learn new trade on same land.
West Texas peacan growers use a shaker to shake the pecans out of the trees. They sweep up the pecans with a tractor mounted sweeper and load them into a truck.
"If true, it would seem growing oranges is too expensive to do in the US!"
Yep. So it's OK to put hundreds of thousands of American manufacturing jobs in China because "labor is too expensive here" but it's not OK to do the same with oranges?
If the free traders want us to concentrate on what we do best here in the US, why do they care about oranges?
If they are cheaper from South America, why not let them grow them?
I haven't been down Highway 27 in years. The loss of the groves doesn't surprise me though. In the early to mid 80's all of those hard freezes in that area wiped out a lot of the smaller growers. It looked kind of weird for a while with some areas having a large mix of dead and living groves.
The freezes in the 80's and recent hurricanes have caused a lot of growers to shut down. They can get more money selling the groves to real estate developers nowadays. Another stake in the heart of old Florida.
I suppose the Walmart store brand OJ that I buy comes from Brazil.
Forgot about the 3 hurricanes that crossed that area back in 2004. I believe those were the first ones to hit central Florida since Claire, back in the 60's.
Yeah the Florida of my childhood is long gone and is something my children cannot even comprehend.
A-the Ledger is a liberal rag owned by the NYT with identical editorial policy.
B-the labor market will adjust if given a chance. I picked oranges in HS and it major league sucked for the money, BUT I have done worse jobs more willingly because the pay was better.
C-this whole line of "reasoning" about the necessity of illegal labor is bogus. These stories are all written from the same template.
D- it is a lot cheaper to pay $3.50 for a half gallon of OJ, or $3 a pound for tomatoes than it is to pay the cost of all these illegals.
And the week before, it was cherry-picking shortages. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the MSM template.
You are absolutely right. In a small northern California town where I lived briefly in the late 1960s, they closed the Jr and Sr high schools at harvest time and adjusted the school calendar accordingly. The kids got to learn the value of work and responsibility and earned some money that all their parents certainly appreciated. The work was open to all the kids in the area, not just those whose families were involved with the farms (mostly orchards). I remember this because I remember asking my sister (who I lived with) why the schools were closed and it was not summer, Christmas or Easter.
Our addiction to tax incentives throughout our farming industry has created an industry that (1)lives for the tax breaks or subsidies, (2)over produces, (3)drives prices so low that small operatons must sell the land to the larger ones, (4)destroys the family farm, (5)destroys small towns across rural America and thus (6)destroys the sources of the native labor in agriculture and (7)turns agriculture from a part of the nation's culture to (8)a mega-industry addicted to either tax breaks or subsidies or cheap imported labor.
There are farms near where I live where, you can go pick your own fruits and veggies at a per basket price. The rest is picked by kids with summer jobs. There's something very dirty in Denmark.
The farmers want their usual profit margin and they're not going to let some 'illegal immigration problem' get in their way!
Picker Pedro Picked a Peck of Pickled amnesty.
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