Keith Eckel, whose family farm was Pennsylvania's leading producer of fresh market tomatoes, will not grow any this year.

He paid field hands about $11 an hour to harvest his crop last summer, but not a single U.S. citizen filled any of those 100 jobs. They did not want them. Mr. Eckel's work force was made up of eager newcomers from Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Now, he said, snarls in the federal guest worker program make it impossible for him to hire the immigrants he needs. So instead of gambling $1.5 million to plant and nurture a tomato crop that may never be harvested, he will not bother with it.

He said his decision saddened him. His family has grown tomatoes since 1949 and made a good living at it. Today, though, the risk outweighs the rewards, all because of government bureaucracy, he said.

"This is totally an immigration issue," said Mr. Eckel, of Clarks Summit, Lackawanna County. "Labor is the key ingredient. Our tomatoes have to be handpicked, and we cannot get the workers."

To him, immigration is the most important issue of the presidential campaign. He is pessimistic about progress being made, even though the three major contenders for the White House -- Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton -- have staked out plans to help farmers such as Mr. Eckel.


"The problem is Congress. It has failed to deal with immigration reform," he said.

Mr. Eckel, 61, calls himself "an active Republican," but he knows he is at odds with a wing of his party over immigration.

The most conservative Republicans have been reluctant to embrace Mr. McCain, who comes from the border state of Arizona. These critics say he has been soft on immigration issues, even teaming with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., on a reform bill.

Their plan would have allowed employers to hire foreigners on temporary visas, provided they could not find American workers to do the same jobs.

But if a segment of the Republican Party is uncomfortable with Mr. McCain, farmers see him as a voice of reason on the emotional issue of immigration.

Joe Fecondo, whose family runs a mushroom farm in the midst of a wealthy neighborhood in Bethel, Delaware County, is one of them.

He says he pays $14 an hour and employs 88 people, almost all of them from Mexico.

"We can't find Caucasians to do the work," Mr. Fecondo said.

Mushrooms, grown indoors, have no offseason. Mr. Fecondo, 46, says he must have reliable workers to do the dirty, demanding jobs on his farm. Immigrants, hungry for American paychecks, are the only ones who will, he said.

Their work enables his farm to produce 7 million pounds of white mushrooms a year. Overall, he says, mushrooms are a $400 million industry for Pennsylvania, top among the states.

Bipartisanship is Mr. Fecondo's top priority this election year. Squabbling and gridlock are common in Washington, D.C., he said. He wants to see cooperation, respect and commitment to resolve hot-button issues such as immigration reform.

"That's why I like Sen. McCain," said Mr. Fecondo, a Republican. "I see him as a liberal conservative, even though I know that sounds like an oxymoron."

While conservative talk-show hosts criticize Mr. McCain for being too friendly with Democrats, Mr. Fecondo finds his willingness to work with the other side to be a plus. Mr. Fecondo said he had turned against Republicans who took unbending stands on complex issues.

He refused to support former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in his re-election campaign two years ago. He said Mr. Santorum became so rigid in his conservative agenda that he ignored the difficulties farmers have had in hiring immigrant laborers since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
War's first for one family

Howard and Janet Robinson, who raise cows in a picturesque section of Chester County, do all the work themselves, even though they are in their 60s. But they are sympathetic with fellow farmers, such as Mr. Fecondo, who need immigrant laborers to make their living.

"In agriculture, we need immigrants to survive. It is that simple," said Howard Robinson, 67.

The Robinsons, though, have little else in common with fellow farmers. They are staunch Democrats in an industry filled with Republicans.

Moreover, the biggest issue for them centers on what is happening abroad, not on U.S. soil. Both say ending the war in Iraq trumps all else.

Howard Robinson says the war's toll -- in taking human lives and consuming billions of taxpayer dollars -- makes it impossible for him to even consider voting Republican.

"We see Sen. McCain as an extension of Bush," he said. "We've had eight years that haven't been good for our country."

He is still debating whether to support Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Robinson said he likes them both, but the charisma and powerful oratory of Mr. Obama remind him of President John F. Kennedy, the first politician who inspired him.

Janet Robinson, 66, said she is inclined to vote for Mrs. Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary election next month.

"I like what the Clintons did for us before. We were pretty successful when Bill was in office. I'm probably going with Hillary."

Both of the Robinsons have worked two jobs for most of their lives while raising five children, all of whom graduated from college.

They ran a dairy farm from 1967 until 2005. After morning milking, Howard Robinson hurried to his second job, teaching English to seventh- and eighth-graders in the Oxford School District. Janet Robinson went from the farm to two different jobs, first working on the support staff of nearby Lincoln University, then at a museum.

During all those years, they say, Democrats seemed more attuned with the daily problems and challenges faced by hard-working people.

"Whether it was grant programs for people to go to college or farm issues, the Democrats seemed more interested in the little guy," Mr. Robinson said.

His political leanings also may have been shaped by going to college with thousands of people who tasted discrimination every day of their lives.

Mr. Robinson, who is white, completed his college degree at Lincoln, the nation's oldest historically black university. About 20 percent of Lincoln's students at the time were white. Lincoln was the undergraduate school of Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer who helped integrate America's public schools and later became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Lincoln campus is four miles from the Robinsons' 250-year-old farmhouse. All the other farmers on their road are Amish, many recent arrivals from neighboring Lancaster County.

Condominiums and shopping center developments are exploding nearby, eating up farmland. Chester County's population has grown by more than 100,000 people, to nearly half a million, since 1990.

Most people the Robinsons age are retiring, but they say they will hang onto their farm, home to 35 cows and 19 calves.

"It's too small to make a living from, but too big to let grow up in weeds," Mr. Robinson said.
Local labor pool dried up

Some 160 miles north of them, in Lackawanna County, Keith Eckel says immigration problems are forcing him to cut back on more than his famous tomato crop.

Because he cannot hire a harvesting crew of immigrant Latinos, he decided not to plant pumpkins this year. He will cut his sweet corn crop in half. The lack of immigrant help will also eliminate hometown jobs, he said.

Because there will be no tomatoes this year, there is no need for him to hire some 60 American workers to package them. They prepared 125 trailer truck loads of tomatoes for distribution last year, the most in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Eckel said U.S. citizens want nothing to do with the backbreaking job of picking vegetables on 90-degree days. But 20 years ago, he could hire American students for some of the less demanding jobs in cultivating and weeding. Even that labor pool has dried up.

"Last year not even one high school student applied for a job with me," he said.

Americans, more pampered and less willing to do the hardest jobs, must embrace a workable immigration strategy if the U.S. economy is to flourish, Mr. Eckel said.

He is comfortable with the ideas Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton have for allowing in immigrants without compromising border security. He said he had not thoroughly studied Mr. Obama's approach.

Whoever wins in November, Mr. Eckel said, will have to be a peacemaker with Congress on immigration reform. Otherwise, he said, family farms like the one he loves will fade away.

Milan Simonich can be reached at msimonich@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1956.
First published on March 23, 2008 at 12:00 am


http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08083/867409-85.stm

Terra, dear? No comment?

I have a lot of them. I was specifically looking for the huge story on this in AZ and I can't find it yet ...

The Salinas Valley literally has tons of our produce falling rotten to the ground. So, be ready for some astronomical veggie prices.

Farmers Crossing The Border - To Mexico
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico, April 9, 2008(CBS) The Mexican state of Guanajuato has fertile land and a mild climate. For years, however, poverty there has led many north to find work on farms in the United States.

But now there is movement across the border the other way, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone. Steve Scaroni is an American farmer who has moved to Mexico.

"It's a very sad situation that, you know, at 50 years old, I've had to come down here in a sense, start over, to be able to complete my American dream," Scaroni said.

Scaroni now divides his time between Mexico and big farms he still runs in United States. He says he was forced to start moving to Mexico because an immigration crackdown made it increasingly difficult to get workers in Arizona and California.

"We just can't get enough labor, every day, on a consistent basis to meet our production demands," he said.

The Western Growers Association says farmers in Arizona and California often need up to 30 percent more workers than they are able to hire.

So two years ago Scaroni started moving his farms to where the workers are. He now has 2,000 acres in Mexico with 500 employees.

He even runs his own packing plant handling more than two million pounds of lettuce a week for shipment to major food processors in the United States.

The lettuce processed and packed today will be across the U.S. border by tomorrow morning. With the food crossing the border, the workers don't have to - as American companies provide jobs in Mexico.

Scaroni got a big welcome from the state's secretary of agriculture, who says providing opportunity here means people won't die trying to cross the border.

Immigration reform that would have made it easier for farmworkers to enter the United States failed in Congress last year. One of its sponsors, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says worker shortages are threatening American agriculture.

Feinstein said: "Farmers will soon decide they'd rather do it in Mexico."

Already American farmers have moved more than 46,000 acres of production to Mexico.

While that's not much compared to 27 million acres cultivated in California alone, farmers who make the move believe they're at the leading edge of agriculture's future.

"I just kinda wanna get a feel for how far off harvest this is," Scaroni said.

Scaroni says unless the law soon makes it much easier to get farm workers across the border, his land of opportunity is Mexico.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/09/...in4004958.shtml

Man! I can't wait to hear your comments - but I have to go to bed!

Okay, I know a few people here are from PA.

$14 an hour for picking mushrooms and $11 an hour for picking tomatoes. Plus they get a per "crate" fee. No one in PA needs a job?

Apparently no one in AZ needs a job either.

Or in the lush produce valley of Calif.


Pretty darn amazing, I think. These posts are just the tip of the iceberg. So when your dinner salad jumps to $10 - if you can find one with tomatoes - you'll know why.

That's great

Reminds me of the abortion issue

Make RU486 over the counter, and planB and "we don't need no stinkin' abortions" anymore, it can be done w/o going to a doctor

Move the plants to them, voila, no illegal aliens

Then maybe lazy Americans will go across the border illegally to get a job

Ironic, ain't it?

I would give that boss a medal for ingenuity. Instead of whining, he has done something good for mankind.

How did the astronauts say it
It's one small step...one giant step for mankind

We are one world, one God, we care about everyone. That is the best of the USA
And anyone, soon there will be no division, it will be one large country

What is the borders now but an arbitrary thing the White Settlers stole from others back in the days of making the country.
Just think, a drink or two and the borders might have been 500 miles south or something like that when they divied up the lines.

Tear down fences, build bridges. We are one.(except that Bush is building bridges to keep us in, not keep others out. We are not needed in their world at all.)

If you read the article-USAians don't want these jobs because fat USAmerica thinks they are entitled. Kids want to be CEO not get their hands dirty. And their parents would rather whine about the non-white skin people taking their job then telling their fat kids to get away from the WII's and get a job.

this is not about immigration at all. It is called free enterprise. Capitalism. Which is how our country is run(and run into the ground) By Bushies all over.

You don't think Chelsea Clinton ever got down on her hands and knees picking fruit do you?
Her parents pays people to do that.

It's like in NYC
During a workday, go out and observe
See who is wheeling around the babies in baby carriages. One would think there is 100% mixed marriage in NYC as the babies are white but the person wheeling is not.
Til you realize the people wheeling the babies around are nanny's hired to watch the Princes and Princess while their mama is out with their high paying job (if you can afford a nanny and living in Manhattan, you are making a good money)

It's like nature. Each creature has a function, because another creature either won't or can't do the function of the other one. Without one, there is no other. We would all be extinct.

I bet the farms in Mexico have drinkable water too. Unlike the slavelords in USA who allow the workers who make the money for the richLords to drink poisoned water because they are too cheap to provide clean safe water.

It was on local news, they're even looking at changing the new law. In a sense I hope they take a while to straighten it out, quick fixes tend to favor the crazies on one side or the other. We need a sane solution where we control our borders but let a lot more people in and don't make them go back to file for status change.

This statement is absolutely false. Don't forget Mexico is the last stop for the water that runs entirely through the USA. The water that crosses our border to Mexico is some of the worst water you've ever seen, totally polluted and unfit to drink. A huge issue between the two countries for years.

Depends on your definition of awhile. There does need to be a sane solution, I agree. That solution isn't the Dobbs solution or the Tancredo solution, nor is it like the solution Reagan used.

The crazies will be the ones going shopping and paying insane prices if they can find the items to buy.

My definition of a while is however long it takes for a rational and humane system to be the focus of discussion instead of sticking with the exploitive see saw radicals on both sides keep us on. I know my position isn't popular but maybe the public has to experience some pain from it before they give up on emotionally driven "solutions".

I believe that securing our domestic food supply is one of the most significant problems
facing the country and yes it is very much tied into the, "Immigration Problem."

Cities and Towns could hire coordinators to assist low income persons develope food producing
Horticulture projects on government property and on property that is lent to the Municipality by
generous individuals who didn't need it for a period of time. Community development campaigns
to encourage home gardening could be stepped up significantly.