MILFORD (Massachusetts) DAILY NEWSJune 4, 2006
Life on the farm an international job
Until about eight years ago, Jonathan Dowse had migrant help working in his Sherborn orchards and living in his brother’s house.
His workers hailed from Jamaica, and were up in the Connecticut River Valley working on the summer tobacco harvest. They would come help him pick his apples, then head south to Florida for the sugar cane season.
"Some of these guys would tell me they would be up here for nine months and they’d send most of the money home on a weekly basis," Dowse said.
The workers came to Sherborn through the federal H-2A program, allowing temporary, non-immigrant workers to perform seasonal trades.
Under the rules, Dowse was required to give the workers a federally set wage and adequate housing that met local and state fire, safety and health standards.
For a while, with his brother living out of state, the housing was not a problem. But when Dowse’s brother moved back to Sherborn, there was no more place for the workers to stay.
Now he taps into the local Brazilian immigrant population, careful that each worker is legal, to help him through the six- to eight-week apple harvest each fall.
Still, it is difficult to find people willing to work just six to eight weeks a year. At least with the migrant farm workers, he could rely on them to return to work each year as they moved from job to job.
At Sunshine Farm in Framingham, third-generation owner Jim Geoghegan uses two Jamaican workers hired through H-2A to help him with flowers in the spring and fruits and vegetables in the summer and fall.
Fall is the busiest season at Sunshine Farm, said Geoghegan, with pumpkins and squash taking center stage. With a 3-year-old farm stand, Geoghegan said he could no longer rely on high school and college students to help him.
"We needed a bulletproof labor plan and these guys are it," he said of the Jamaican duo who work up to seven days and 70 hours a week.
"We’ve tried everything," said Geoghegan. "College students are good, but they have to leave in mid-August, just when things are getting their busiest. High school kids in general just don’t go the distance.
"Kids will do it for fun for a short time, but when it gets really hot out, they won’t show up," he said.
Phyllis Tougas, owner of Tougas Family Farm in Northborough, agreed, saying her two Jamaican workers through H-2A are available whenever they’re needed, which is typically mid-spring through the apple harvest in mid-November.
"It’s real hard to find people to suit our season," she said. "Adults need to work all year, and when you’re talking about kids, you’re sort of trapped by their schedules."
The farm also grows strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, pumpkins, peaches, cherries and blackberries. Students are hired to work in the kitchen and for sales in the pick-your-own areas on the farm, said Tougas.
"Most of the kids who live around here aren’t accustomed to living the agricultural lifestyle," said Tougas. "It’s really a culture shock for some of them."
Dick Kelly’s Farm in Upton grows 14 types of vegetables, not to mention strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and peaches. Everything is picked by hand, but none of the nine farmhands in Kelly’s fields is a migrant worker.
"We just have a few local people, family members," he said.
Laura Tangerini, owner of Tangerini Farm in Millis, said she considered hiring migrant farm workers. But because she lacks a place for them to sleep, and many migrants do not speak English, she decided against it.
While migrants may work well on large farms and in orchards, where they are removed from the customers, Tangerini said her business desperately needs people to feel welcome when they visit.
"In our case, they need to be able to communicate with the customers, and it becomes very difficult for the customers when they’re trying to learn how to plant a garden (and can’t communicate with the farm workers)," Tangerini said.
Instead, the farm is staffed in the spring and fall by young moms with kids in school, and in the summer, teenagers work out in her fields. "We believe in buying local, so we believe in hiring local," she said. "We believe in giving kids their first opportunity for a job, and after this, everything is easy."
Dowse said he remains a fan of the H-2A program, but said housing will always be his biggest obstacle.
"If I could have the housing, I’d have them back in a heartbeat," he said.
Housing complicates things, not just because of the expense, but because it is regulated by five independent agencies each year, on everything from chipped plates to clean cutting boards, said Richard Bonanno, vice president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation.
Bonanno said he once participated in the H-2A program, hiring Jamaicans to work on his Maynard farm, but stopped several years ago.
"It’s still fairly common, I believe," he said. "(But) the numbers are a little down in the last 10 years."
Another shortcoming is the cost. On top of housing, each worker in the program must make at least $9.60 per hour, plus get free transportation.
That is why only about 30,000 of the 1 million farm workers in the United States are enrolled in the H-2A program, Bonanno said. Another 750,000 are working in the United States illegally, he estimates.
"Illegals are cheap and there’s no paperwork," Bonanno said.
Joe Young of the New England Apple Council said he helps 90 farms and orchards in Massachusetts find legal, documented migrant workers. The majority of those are found in the western half of the state.
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