Bye bye tomatoes

[lonestarnot]

Major grower ends crop, lacking workers

Major Northeast Tomato Grower Ends Crop for Lack of Migrant Workers

MICHAEL RUBINKAM
AP News

Mar 24, 2008 16:32 EST

Saying the nation's immigration system is broken, Pennsylvania's largest grower of fresh-to-market tomatoes announced Monday he will no longer produce the crop because he can't find enough workers to harvest it.

Keith Eckel, 61, a fourth-generation farmer and the owner of Fred W. Eckel Sons Farms Inc., said he saw a dramatic decline last summer in the number of migrant workers who showed up to pick tomatoes at his 2,000-acre farm in northeastern Pennsylvania.

He said Congress' failure
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Major_grower_ends_crop_lacking_work_03242008.html

[DS1]

1. He can't find enough workers at his price, more accurately

[stillcool]

9. At a price he can survive..

I've read about many farmers being priced out of their livelihood. I can't believe how much of the produce at the Grocery store is imported. Eventually we may all have to move to Mexico, India, and China in order to work.

[Lasher]

18. Hey, I've got an idea!

We could levy some type of tax on tomatoes. That would raise prices of imported tomatoes and protect domestic farmers from foreign competitors who use slave labor. I think it's a great idea. I wonder why nobody ever thought of this before?

[sybylla]

34. The problem is selling food as a commodity

DS1 is right - it's about finding enough workers who are cheap because a farmer can't count on selling his crop for what it's worth - only what the commodity market will bear.

We're running farmers out of this country because we refuse to insure that they recover their costs in producing food.

[Mojambo]

2. How much does it pay? I'll do it. n/t

[stillcool]

6. the name is right there..

I don't think it would be too hard to call information and get his number.

[RB TexLa]

3. But . . . but . . . I thought without immigrants,Americans would harvest them at $17 an hour, health

insurance and 401(k) with a company match??????????

[Sal Minella]

22. Yes, isn't that why we're building the TexMex wall???

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

4. How much is he paying? Where do they stay?

[tridim]

5. I know this doesn't address your post, but in the mean time just grow your own.

It's pretty simple. Fresh tomatoes have been grossly overpriced for years.

[lonestarnot]

10. AZ heat and bugs don't favor them. I tried last year.

[tridim]

15. I'd probably have a greenhouse if I were in AZ.

Actually I'd have one here if I had a bigger yard. I'm in a desert climate too.

[wildbilln864]

14. Exactly! nt

[Lasher]

16. I grow lots of tomatoes and put them up in mason jars.

Some as juice, some peeled and quartered. I'm a real popular guy around here in the summer, starting right about the time they start to ripen. But not before that when I'm plowing and weeding.

[knitter4democracy]

24. Hubby and I loved putting up tomatoes last year.

We ended up doing more than I thought we'd need. And yet, I'm planting more this year. :blush:

[Lasher]

28. That's OK, they'll keep at least 2 years.

And no matter how much I put up I end up using it all and giving it away. I think I could make a dump truck full of 14 day sweet pickles and they would all be gone in a year. My mother likes them and she gets all she wants.

http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1936,154180-239203,00.html

[knitter4democracy]

29. Mmmm. Sweet pickles. *drool*

I love bread and butter pickles, too. How hard are those to put up?

[Lasher]

32. Lots of work.

Like it says in the recipe I linked, the first 7 days is pretty much just letting the cukes soak in brine. The 2nd week you have to do something every day, pouring out the mixture and heating it up and adding more sugar or whatever the recipe says to do on that day.

When they're all pickled on the last day you pack them into jars. I use pints because I just don't normally use a lot of them at once. That way you don't have a quart jar sitting in the refrigerator for 100 years. I normally pickle spears, not slices. So I cut them all the right size to fit in the jars. Shorter pieces are stuffed in wherever they will go.

Then I boil the pickled liquid and pour hot into the packed jars, then screw the lid on. When they sit awhile most of them will seal. But last year I experimented by putting cold liquid into the jars and I processed in a hot water bath for whatever the minimum recommended amount in my canning book says. It worked out pretty good that way but you don't want to boil them too long.

Brine pickles are a lot easier. You just pack the cukes in the jars and pour the hot brine in. They seal up and pickle in the jars, ready to eat in about 2 weeks.

[hifalutin]

17. I just bought a pound

of tomatoes today $4.99 and I live in So. California where we can grow them pretty much year round.

[msongs]

7. we are still using frozen puree from last year's crop and new ones are blossoming now nt

[Gormy Cuss]

8. I wonder why he's really stopping it.

"Eckel does not participate in the federal government's H-2A guest worker program, which allows farmers to bring in foreigners if they can prove that workers can't be found locally. Like many farmers, Eckel believes the program is too cumbersome. He said he wouldn't qualify for it anyway because his growing season is too short."

In other words, he's lazy.

[Sanctified]

11. I am sure some cotton growers went out of business when slavery ended.

Just because this guy can't run a business paying employees a living wage does not mean every tomato farmer is going to close shop. I am hardly going to shed a tear when some guy abused a system to make himself wealthy and then decides to exit the business over paying reasonable wages.

[varelse]

12. "Though Eckel's tomato pickers made an average of $16.59 per hour last year,

he said the relatively high wage is not enough to attract local labor to work the fields.

"A lot of people think with immigration that we're talking about immigrants taking jobs from others. Let me tell you, there is no local labor that is going to go out and harvest those tomatoes in 90-degree temperatures except our immigrant labor," Eckel said. "They come here to do a job that no one else will do in this country."

Average wage of 16+ dollars per hour? 15 years ago, I'd have been happy to work for this guy for that kind of money. Now, it's not an option. Getting old(er) sucks :'(

[Sanctified]

13. $16.59 is not a lot for a seasonal job with no benefits.

I could get a temporary contracting job with Intel tomorrow for way more than that but it would not have any benefits and I would have no job security and the contract would be for just 1 year. When you consider all of that it's better to stay at a lower paying job with benefits and job security than take a limited time high payout.

[dysfunctional press]

26. i would think that there are plenty of people with NO job who would jump at it.

:shrug:

maybe not.

[varelse]

33. when I was younger

I preferred manual labor to "office work" (well, ok, I vowed never to be caught dead in an office HAHAHAH) and also I was fluent in Spanish, and eager to practice it. Now, I'm no longer capable of doing this kind of work. Not that this pay scale would ever have applied to that type of job here in California. Tomatoes will continue to be grown in my state, and harvested at slave wages and under appalling conditions, of that I have no doubt.

[kath]

30. 90-degree weather in NORTHEASTERN PA?? How the hell often does *that* happen??

If he really pays that much, he oughta be able to find high school and college kids to do it...
sure beats $6 per hour at MickeyD's

[avenger64]

19. Grow your own ...

... we could all do it. I know I do.

[Ikonoklast]

20. Here's the REAL reason

"The acreage he previously devoted to tomatoes and pumpkins will be converted to field corn that is harvested by machines."

Cheaper input costs, cheaper to harvest, high corn prices, more profit as a percentage of overall return relative to investment.

2000 acres of corn X 125 bushels per acre (average for PA acreage) X 5.26 (CBOT Corn 09 SEP close)=

$1,315,000 gross.

You got to figure in the price of seed corn, fertilizer, diesel, , equipment costs, and take that right off the top....figure $400 an acre, $800,000 for input costs.

That is a very conservative figure, as are figures for the 125 bushel per acre yield, and if this guy was smart, he already locked in corn at closer to $6 a bushel at harvest.

He'll still pocket $600,000 profit, easy. He'll need five guys to help, tops.

[madrchsod]

21. this is nothing new

it`s been going on for years...where i live there used to be acres of asparagus it`s cheaper to import it from south america...the stuff grows wild here and we have to import cans from south america....

[knitter4democracy]

23. That's okay, I'm growing my own this year.

:)

[kevinbgoode]

25. So...we can send the conservatives over there to work

It's about time they learned how to do some kind of actual labor.

[fed-up]

27. I haven't eaten store bought tomatoes in about 10 years-when they came out w/GMO-flavor-savor

then I learned they were picked green and gassed and that really disgusted me

I dehydrated cherry tomatoes and have them year round


my BF harvests tomatoes in 110 degree weather


too bad the guy won't just split up his farm and let two hundred small farmers work about 10 acres each with an employee or two or three

that would give about 500 people jobs and if they planted more than one crop it would provide year round work and be better for the soil, especially if crops were rotated

heck, my bf makes a living off of 5 acres-growing 32 different crops

[cherokeeprogressive]

31. I've been growing my own tomatoes for years. Buh Bye! N/T