BONITA DAILY NEWS January 3, 2006 Ag industry feeling impact of sluggish growthAt this time of year, local growers normally find it hard to stop. And there’s usually plenty of harvesting work to go around for thousands of migrant workers. But this year is different. Growers are still fighting to recover from Hurricane Wilma. The Category 3 storm, which struck Oct. 24, was the first to directly hit Collier County in 45 years. Statewide, the hurricane caused more than $2 billion damage to the agriculture industry. Locally, growers were hit hard. The storm flooded vegetable fields, blew over citrus trees and knocked fruit to the ground. It destroyed packing houses and ripped apart greenhouses. Corn, beans and squash are starting to come back. But it will be a month or more before the tomato business returns to normal in the Southwest Florida. “Things are very slow,” said Tim Nance, director of operations in the eastern United States for Gargiulo, one of the largest tomato growers in Collier County. “I’m expecting somewhere between 25 to 50 percent of a crop on the plants that survived well, which is only a portion of the crop to begin with.” Around the region, other growers are having the same experience with tomatoes and green peppers. The plants that survived Wilma haven’t come back the way they expected and they’re still waiting for the plants that went in the ground after the storm to mature. That has many migrants scrambling for work. Gargiulo is employing about half the people it normally does this time of year. Workers who would have been harvesting are putting tomato plants in the ground for the spring, and pruning and tying them to stakes. “There is some fruit color out there, but very, very little,” Nance said. “I would expect we would have more by mid-January.” He doesn’t expect normal harvesting to resume until the second or third week of February. “Our packing house for round tomatoes has yet to run this year,” Nance said. “We should have cranked up the first of November. It’s real difficult to do much when you just don’t have the fruit.” This season, shipments of Florida round tomatoes are down more than 20 percent from last year — and last year volumes were less than usual because of a rash of hurricanes that hit Florida. Shipments are off more than 40 percent this year when compared to a normal year. “Normally in the fall we are shipping between 15 and 17 million boxes from early October through Christmas,” said Reggie Brown, manager of the Florida Tomato Committee, which markets the state’s round tomatoes. “We shipped something over 9 million boxes.” He said growers could still have a good year if the spring crop is good and the demand for tomatoes remains strong. “It’s never over until it’s over,” he said. “Last year we thought would have been a miserable year. But it turned out to be a decent year.” A 25-pound box of round tomatoes has been hovering in the $30 range. That’s two to three times the normal price for this time of year. “Unfortunately when you see these large prices many growers won’t have much product to participate in that price,” Brown said. “So while it sounds grand, in reality it’s not nearly what it’s cracked up to be.” In the next few weeks tomatoes are probably going to be as scarce as they are going to be this season, Brown said. “Every day we are closer to being normal,” he said.
Finding work Picking has barely gotten under way in Immokalee, where agriculture is the heart and soul of the economy. So there are many farmworkers struggling to find enough work, said Barbara Mainster, executive director of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA), which provides education and other services to migrant families in Immokalee and throughout Florida. “It’s crunch time,” she said. “We have families in Immokalee that literally drive to Palmetto every day because that is where the work is.” Some growers are transporting local workers to the Palmetto/Ruskin area near Tampa, where tomato plants weren’t hit by Wilma. But harvesting there is winding down. At Horizon Village, a 192-bed dormitory for single farmworkers in Immokalee, residents seem to be finding enough work, said Essie Serrata, executive director of the Collier County Housing Authority, which owns and manages the dormitory and other farmworker housing in Immokalee. If they weren’t, they’d be moving on. The dormitory has about 160 residents — more than it had at this time last year. At Farmworker Village, home to farmworker families who live there year-round, more residents fell behind on rent in the first few weeks after the hurricane. Late notices for rent tripled for November, but most residents seem to be getting back on their feet, probably because so much help has been offered by social service agencies in Immokalee, she said. RCMA and others have stepped in to help migrants who aren’t finding enough work. RCMA also has been feeding hundreds of farmworker families every week since Thanksgiving, targeting those who have lost work because of Hurricane Wilma. Families are receiving a box full of groceries every week and $50 for rental assistance. The box of groceries includes staples such as rice, beans and oil. “We are signed up with the Harry Chapin Food Bank, which is where we are getting most of the food,” Mainster said. More than $105,000 has been donated to the assistance program — SOS Project Immokalee Migrant Farmworkers. Mainster hopes more money will come in to keep the program going through February, when harvesting is expected to pick up for the spring vegetable crop. Jay Taylor, president of Taylor & Fulton Inc. in Palmetto, which has tomato acreage in northern, central and southern Florida, including Collier County, said his company is just finishing up its harvest in the Palmetto/Ruskin area. He said by Jan. 10, harvesting should kick into high gear at company farms in Southwest Florida. The grower has its own greenhouses in Manatee, where seedlings are grown, and the greenhouses weren’t damaged by the hurricane. So new plants were available right away to put into the ground after Wilma, Taylor said. “We may very well be one of the few that are in the situation to have a more normal opportunity close at hand,” he said. He said for now there’s not enough work to go around, so many migrants have moved on to other industries, such as ornamental horticulture, roofing and construction. “There’s a lot of cleanup from Wilma and right now that is a good thing,” Taylor said. For the first time, the Guadalupe Center of Immokalee has launched a job placement program for hurricane victims. The program began in November and hundreds of farmworkers have applied for help. More than two dozen workers have found jobs through the program. Many are getting placed in construction, said Alicia Lindo, the center’s development associate. “We are seeing a lot of families still displaced,” Lindo said. There are nearly 40 people living at the Immokalee Friendship House, a homeless shelter. But it’s no fuller because of the hurricanes, executive director Monica Fish said. Most of the shelter’s residents are working, she said. Some are doing farmwork; others construction jobs, road work or landscaping. “We’ve got versatile people,” Fish said.
Uncertain future With so many farmworkers going into other jobs, local growers worry that when they need more people later in the season, there won’t be enough. Brown with the Florida Tomato Committee said the industry is doing everything it can to keep the work force stable. “The work force is a critically important part of this crop, just like the weather and everything else that goes into it,” he said. “Without that work force, the crop doesn’t have a lot of value to us.” Mongi Zekri, a multi-county citrus agent for the University of Florida’s Extension Service in Southwest Florida, said finding enough workers is a concern for the region’s citrus growers. Florida Department of Agriculture estimates show that Wilma will result in a 13 percent loss of the state’s orange crop and a 47 percent loss of the grapefruit crop. Though shipments are down in Southwest Florida, there’s still a lot of fruit to be picked in the region, Zekri said. “I’ve been hearing there is a shortage in harvesting crews,” he said. He said growers are talking more about citrus greening and canker than about Wilma. Growers fear Wilma might have spread canker all over the region and that they could lose hundreds of thousands of additional trees to the disease. Although it’s not harmful to humans, canker causes ugly lesions on leaves, stems and fruit. It also can make fruit drop off trees prematurely. After the hurricanes of 2004, more than 82,000 acres of commercial trees were marked for destruction with the spread of canker. With the past year’s storms, the state’s growers could lose nearly a third of the acreage left. Local growers are also contending with citrus greening, a fatal disease that some have called worse than canker. It was first discovered in Florida in August. Since then, it has been found at groves in Collier and Hendry counties. Growers also are worried about the possibility of a freeze this season that could destroy their late-season Valencia crop and the new year’s crop. Weather forecasters have predicted a greater possibility of a freeze this winter. Local citrus growers are glad to hear federal money is on the way to help them recover from Wilma. On Dec. 28, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will provide at least $200 million to Florida growers and farmers suffering losses from the 2005 hurricanes. And for the first time nursery growers are eligible to receive the money. “That is welcome news from Washington,” said Ben Bolusky, executive vice president of the Florida Nursery Growers & Landscape Association. The state’s nursery business suffered an estimated $454 million in crop losses and at least $100 million in structural damage from Wilma alone. Total losses in the nursery and foliage industry from the 2005 hurricanes are pegged at $1.1 billion. “Some are being forced out of business,” he said. “Some are surrounded by development and land values are higher and there are only so many hits by Mother Nature that some folks can shoulder. So we are seeing some changes.” But most nurseries are rebuilding and rebounding, he said. Gene McAvoy, a multi-county vegetable agent based at the Hendry County Extension office in LaBelle, said he just hopes federal aid comes soon. He said many vegetable growers have gone into debt to replant and rebuild. “I haven’t heard of anyone going out of business yet,” he said. “But some of the smaller growers could be teetering on the brink.”
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