By: Daniel Nardini
Chances are you will be paying more for strawberries this year. One of the things that Americans take for granted is the fresh fruits and vegetables we get on our dinner plate. As I have mentioned before, a lot of these foods are picked by undocumented labor. Because of tougher federal immigration procedures, we will be paying a lot more for the fruits and vegetables we eat. Since there is no real program to bring in workers from Mexico and Central America (where the majority of the professional fruit and vegetable pickers come from), the farmers all across this great country are having serious trouble finding people to pick their crops. One excellent example of this is strawberries. Farmers in Plant City, Florida, where the majority of strawberries in this country are grown, have actually had a bumper crop this year. As has been true in times past, the weather can make or break a harvest. This year the weather has been especially nice to the strawberry farmers. They have reported larger than average strawberries that are ready to pick.
But the chances are these strawberries will be left to rot. Despite their attempts at finding people to try and harvest the strawberries, most Americans do not want to work in the fields, nor do the back-breaking labor required to harvest the strawberries every day for however long it takes to harvest the best strawberries. Many farmers complain that because of the tough immigration laws and the immigration raids that have forced hundreds of thousands of undocumented underground, the farmers are lucky if they can find half or even one-third of the workforce they once had. And before one asks why the farmers did not put in requests to the federal government for visas for getting the necessary paperwork done to get the help they need, the farmers have done so. Normally the farmers put in such paperwork close to a year before the actual harvesting season. However, because the immigration paperwork is so slow, cumbersome and full of byzantine twists and turns, nine times out of ten the farmers do not get the legal workers they need in time for the season.
This is not some act of academic debate—the farmers need those workers who are skilled in picking strawberries and need them when the harvest is ready. And nature’s harvest waits for no man and no government bureaucracy. Those who have picked strawberries for a living know how tough the work, the weather, and the physical labor is in order to do this job. This is something most Americans cannot appreciate. Yet without the strawberry pickers—most of whom are undocumented—we just simply would not be eating strawberries. It would be a luxury like eating caviar. Worse, the strawberry farmers complain that the U.S. government may be doing everything in their power to put the farmers out of business. The farmers may be right. It seems that our government is so hamstrung with its own out-dated regulations, our paranoia about national security, and the federal government’s inability to meet changes and reforms that one by one the strawberry farmers will be forced out of business.
They may be far from being the only ones who will be forced out of business. We are seeing the same thing in regards to farmers who grow blueberries, tomatoes and squash in Alabama, farmers who grow blackberries, onions, squash, bell peppers, cucumbers and melons in Georgia, and farmers who grow dates, oranges, spinach, broccoli, almonds, and mushrooms in California. All of the farmers in these states complain about the same thing—America’s rigid and largely unworkable immigration laws have left them without the sufficient labor force to harvest our food and keep costs down. While many aspects of America’s agricultural sector is mechanized, some parts of the agricultural sector still need human hands to pick the bounty from the Earth. Only now we may have an obstacle far worse than nature to contend with—government inaction and indifference to supply this country with the labor force the farmers need to meet America’s demands for the foods we take for granted on our dinner table.
Strawberry Hell
By: Daniel Nardini
But the chances are these strawberries will be left to rot. Despite their attempts at finding people to try and harvest the strawberries, most Americans do not want to work in the fields, nor do the back-breaking labor required to harvest the strawberries every day for however long it takes to harvest the best strawberries. Many farmers complain that because of the tough immigration laws and the immigration raids that have forced hundreds of thousands of undocumented underground, the farmers are lucky if they can find half or even one-third of the workforce they once had. And before one asks why the farmers did not put in requests to the federal government for visas for getting the necessary paperwork done to get the help they need, the farmers have done so. Normally the farmers put in such paperwork close to a year before the actual harvesting season. However, because the immigration paperwork is so slow, cumbersome and full of byzantine twists and turns, nine times out of ten the farmers do not get the legal workers they need in time for the season.
This is not some act of academic debate—the farmers need those workers who are skilled in picking strawberries and need them when the harvest is ready. And nature’s harvest waits for no man and no government bureaucracy. Those who have picked strawberries for a living know how tough the work, the weather, and the physical labor is in order to do this job. This is something most Americans cannot appreciate. Yet without the strawberry pickers—most of whom are undocumented—we just simply would not be eating strawberries. It would be a luxury like eating caviar. Worse, the strawberry farmers complain that the U.S. government may be doing everything in their power to put the farmers out of business. The farmers may be right. It seems that our government is so hamstrung with its own out-dated regulations, our paranoia about national security, and the federal government’s inability to meet changes and reforms that one by one the strawberry farmers will be forced out of business.
They may be far from being the only ones who will be forced out of business. We are seeing the same thing in regards to farmers who grow blueberries, tomatoes and squash in Alabama, farmers who grow blackberries, onions, squash, bell peppers, cucumbers and melons in Georgia, and farmers who grow dates, oranges, spinach, broccoli, almonds, and mushrooms in California. All of the farmers in these states complain about the same thing—America’s rigid and largely unworkable immigration laws have left them without the sufficient labor force to harvest our food and keep costs down. While many aspects of America’s agricultural sector is mechanized, some parts of the agricultural sector still need human hands to pick the bounty from the Earth. Only now we may have an obstacle far worse than nature to contend with—government inaction and indifference to supply this country with the labor force the farmers need to meet America’s demands for the foods we take for granted on our dinner table.