Rural Laws: October, 2002 - Number #10

Florida orange harvesting may be mechanized. Hand harvesters pick an average 10 90-pound field boxes or 900 pounds of oranges an hour, at a cost of $0.70 to $1 a box, while mechanical harvesting costs about $0.40 a box in newer groves that are planted and pruned properly-in order to harvest oranges mechanically, branches must be removed to three feet above the ground. (www.fdocitrus.com/harvesting01.htm)

There are two major shake and catch harvesting methods: one works by shaking each tree and catching the fruit (a $300,000 machine) while the other is continuous, shaking only the canopy where the oranges are- canopies must have a radius of less than eight feet, and trees must be less than 16 feet tall. The Barron Collier Company, which operates Silver Strand Farms (5,000 acres of tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and sod) and Silver Strand Groves (15,000 acres and five million boxes of oranges) estimates that mechanical harvesting will save it $2 million a year in harvesting costs.

The Everglades Labor Camp near Naranja, Florida was established in 1972, when the US Department of Labor provided 400 mobile homes. Hurricane Andrew destroyed the migrant camp in 1992, and the Everglades Community Association spent $40-million in local, state and federal grants and loans to build 448 permanent houses, creating a community called Everglades Villages. Many of the residents are no longer employed in agriculture.

West Coast Tomato Company, owned by Dan McClure, was fined in September 2002 for operating a camp for migrants without a permit. The camp was closed in June 2002 after deputies responded to a domestic violence call, and state health department officials said the camp was uninhabitable. In Manatee county, where the camp was found, the Michigan "Pickle King," John Falkner, has bought 20,000 acres of land for $26 million to grow pickles and to develop houses. Falkner was also a major seller of pickles to Vlasic Foods, which went bankrupt in 2001.

On June 27, 2002, brothers Juan and Ramiro Ramos, along with their cousin, Jose Ramos, were convicted in US District Court in Fort Pierce Florida on federal charges of conspiring to hold as many as 700 migrant laborers as slaves, threatening them with violence and holding them as hostages over alleged debts of $1,000. Michael Allen Lee of Fort Pierce was sentenced to four years in prison in 2001 for recruiting homeless black men off the streets of Central Florida, and keeping them in debt peonage.

Tobacco. North Carolina's tobacco production has been cut in half since 1998, when the major tobacco companies agreed to pay 46 states $246 billion over 25 years to prevent suits over the health-care costs for smoking-related disease. Manufacturers added 45 cents to a pack of cigarettes to cover the costs of the settlement, and tobacco production quotas were reduced. Most states spent only a small fraction of the funds they received on health-related activities; many are using their tobacco funds to cover budget deficits.

A typical tobacco plant generates about 0.5 pounds of dried tobacco leaf, worth about $1.80 a pound. North Carolina produces about 500 million pounds of dried tobacco leaf a year, much of it harvested by H-2A workers from Mexico.

North Carolina-based Sexton's Christmas Tree Farms was sued by 11 of its 74 H-2A workers who allege that they were not paid overtime wages. The workers were paid $6.98 per hour in 2000 and $7.06 in 2001, but not 1.5 times their base wage for overtime.

The Bale Farm in Monroe, Kentucky built a bunkhouse for 32 H-2A tobacco harvesters at a cost of $100,000; the workers are guaranteed $7.07 an hour in 2002. The Bales were widely praised: Jody Hughes, who oversees the H-2A program in the Kentucky Workforce Development Cabinet, said: "They didn't have to do this to be in compliance. They could have gotten along for a lot less money."

Virginia. Virginia has an estimated 675 camps for 10,500 migrants, including 76 camps with permits from the state Department of Health. In summer 2002, pickers earned 45 cents for every 33-pound bucket of tomatoes picked. Jay Taylor, president of Taylor & Fulton Inc., which grows tomatoes on Virginia's Eastern Shore and in Florida and Georgia, wants another legalization program for unauthorized farm workers.

Virginia growers hired 3,900 H-2A foreign workers in 2002 to work in tobacco and apples. The South Boston-based Virginia Agricultural Growers Association arranges for the entry of the H-2As.