VINELAND (New Jersey) DAILY JOURNAL

February 16, 2006

Farmers: Migrant shortage would be disaster
By MILES JACKSON
Staff Writer

VINELAND -- Rural Opportunities brought together some of the region's farmers and state Agriculture Secretary Charles Kuperus on Wednesday to discuss what can be done to help expand housing opportunities for the farm workers who come to New Jersey every year to pick crops.

Farmers said the thousands of migrant farm workers, who come from Mexico and parts of Central America to pick the crops that add billions of dollars to New Jersey's economy, are one of the most important parts -- if not the most crucial aspect -- of the annual effort to put tomatoes, apples, lettuce and other fresh produce on the nation's tables.

Not only are those workers an important part, the farmers said, they're also a threatened part of the state's agricultural economy.

New laws under consideration by Congress or already adopted by the federal government are making the farm workers needed to pick local crops a rare commodity, farmers said.

Any threat to farmers endangers the 17 percent of New Jersey's landmass protected as farmland by the agricultural community that Kuperus called the stewards of the state's open spaces.

"We have farmland preservation programs that do a great job keeping that land as open space," he said. "But also high on the list is the viability of the agricultural economy in New Jersey."

Through the state Department of Agriculture and nonprofit corporations such as Rural Opportunities, Kuperus said, farmers are able to get grants, loans and other services that help keep the local agricultural economy among the most efficient and high-tech in the nation.

But without the farm workers who come to the state each spring and summer, the farmers at Wednesday's meeting said, the future looks dim.

Although Woodie Pagan, a Rural Opportunities housing project director, said he was trying to provide homes for farm workers, Cedarville farmer David Sheppard said government regulations were making it difficult for farmers to tell who was in the country legally and who was not.

And the state's blueberry growers, who depend on a large work force to harvest the delicate crop, face certain trouble if the shortage of farm workers is as bad during the coming growing season as it was last year.

"Since 9/11, everybody's suspicious about people from other countries," said Hammonton farmer David Rizzotte. "But these are good people who are doing work that people here don't want to do."

Rizzotte added: "And they pay Social Security that they'll never collect, yet people are still complaining about them working here. If it weren't for them paying into the system, it would go broke."

Paul Galletta, an owner of Atlantic Blueberries in Hammonton, said 2005 saw major labor shortages in the industry.

"If we hit the same problem in 2006, we're going to have problems," Galletta said.

The farmers said members of Congress and the Bush administration give lip service to the issue but offer no real solutions to the problem.

"The Mexicans that come here to work are the best people in the world," Galletta said. 'They have nothing to do with terrorism. I heard President Bush say that the other night."

Yet the nation's backlash against immigration is hurting the state's farmers, and Kuperus offered little in the way of relief.

"New Jersey's farmers are probably the most efficient farmers in the nation," he said. "They have to be efficient to compete in the national economy."

Kuperus said he would support the state's farmers in their battles with federal officials over migrant labor, but the farmers said the state wasn't the problem."

"We have to get the ears of the congressmen," Sheppard said. "Without the federal government on board, we're going to go nowhere."