🚀 go-pugleaf

When I was in college in FL in the 1970s, the citrus and strawberry 
growers used to hire college kids by the day .....

Jim Flores wrote:
>  The Associated Press
> 
> 
> Expect to pay more for orange juice at the store! 
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 08:01:48 -0500, Robert Kolker
> <nowhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>arminius wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>I keep thinking how America managed to harvest the crops in WW2 with 2
>>>million men in uniform and not available.
>>
>>Most of those two million were not farmers or growers. About one percent 
>>our our population feeds the other ninetynine.
>>
>>Bob Kolker
> 
>