Georgia's Rotting Crops : "You can make more money than you would at McDonald's. But McDonald's is air conditioned, and you can get a cool drink when you want one" "We don't have a workforce. Where are we supposed to get it?" said Bryan Tolar, the president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council.

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The Georgia Agribusiness Council, a group that represents about 700 farmers and agricultural businesses in that state. "Where are we supposed to get the farm workers ??"


Palm Beach Post
Cerabino: Crops rot as Georgia feels effects of immigration law
By Frank Cerabino, Staff Writer
July 13, 2011


Cerabino: Crops rot as Georgia feels effects of immigration law


Some excerpts :

In Georgia, crops are rotting in the fields because migrant workers aren't there to pick them.

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Wait a second. Isn't unemployment in Georgia as high as 14 percent in some farming communities?

"I think there are people here who can do it," Tolar said. "But we can't find people who will do it."

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Lucky for us, it was all just useful nonsense. Gov. Rick Scott, who campaigned on a pledge to bring a let's-see-yer-papers-amigo law to Florida, didn't push very hard for it once he got across the finish line. And elements of the tea-addled Florida Legislature ran into the state's agriculture lobby, which put an end to this political puffery with some last-minute adult supervision.

Migrant labor migrated

The Florida Senate's Budget Committee Chairman, J.D. Alexander, a term-limited Republican citrus farmer, was an important roadblock to Florida getting into the immigration enforcement business. Alexander told his colleagues that he resented being asked to "choose between hard-working people and somebody's uninformed knowledge."

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"They started seeing a lot more roadblocks with police doing license checks on country roads," Tolar said. "It didn't used to be that way."

Jobs are posted, but no one's applying

So now, as Georgia's onions, cucumbers, squash, blackberries, blueberries and watermelons need to be picked, the migrant workers are gone, working in Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere.

"About 75 percent of our farms either don't have enough workers now, or anticipate not having enough workers when their crops are ready," Tolar said.

There are about 11,000 unfilled fieldworker jobs, Tolar said, and despite posting the job openings at the state's labor offices, they remain unfilled. The pay range is about $8 to $12 an hour.

"You can make more money than you would at McDonald's," Tolar said. "But McDonald's is air conditioned, and you can get a cool drink when you want one."

And you don't have to pick crops for 12 to 14 hours a day in the summer heat.

"Watermelons are real work," said the 42-year-old Tolar. "I tried picking blackberries for a day. I couldn't keep up. The farmer told me it'd be good if I tried another farm down the road."

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