SCRANTON (Pennsylvania) TIMES-TRIBUNE (Pennsylvania)

March 20, 2008

Top tomato farm ends production

BY JEREMY G. BURTON
STAFF WRITER

One of Pennsylvania’s top vegetable farmers is halting production of his chief crop, a decision he said is forced by a lack of field workers and floundering immigration reform.

Keith Eckel, whose farm in Newton Township annually grows 2,500 tons of tomatoes, said he will pull out of the market he reigns, cutting his revenues by as much as 70 percent.

Mr. Eckel, the state’s No. 1 producer of fresh-market tomatoes and one of the largest in the Northeast, said if he can’t hire enough workers, he won’t risk letting his crops rot on the vine.

Who will fill the gap of all those tomatoes? Good question, said Mark O’Neill, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

Mr. Eckel’s decision will reverberate with suppliers and wholesalers, small produce stands and bigger supermarkets that buy his goods, Mr. O’Neill said.

On Monday, Mr. Eckel will host a press conference to discuss federal legislators’ failure to reform immigration law.

Abandoning tomatoes, pumpkins and sweet corn is an economic reality, not a protest, Mr. Eckel said, but he hopes to leverage the situation to raise awareness.

In 2005 and 2006, Congress passed separate bills on border protection and immigration reform. Both dealt with the issue of a guest worker program, but the House and Senate couldn’t bridge differences, and the law died in committee.

In Mr. Eckel’s eyes, national security is food security.

“If we in fact lost the ability to produce fresh fruits and vegetables in this country because of our inability to deal with the immigration issue,” he said, “we are going to become dependent on foreign countries and governments for our food and fiber. And we only have to look at what’s happened with energy to realize how at risk we are.”

Local farms are pivotal, Mr. Eckel said, if Americans want to keep food prices down. Other industrial nations spend 20 percent of disposable income on food, he said, while the U.S. spends half that.

Last year, Mr. Eckel’s farm saw its fewest number of seasonal workers in two decades. No crops were left unpicked, but he is not willing to risk that. Mr. Eckel’s father started the family’s farm in 1949, packing tomatoes since the ’70s. Now Mr. Eckel, 61, will replace 1,200 acres with corn.

Though demand for corn is high, the crop will bring in a third of what his usual vegetables would, Mr. Eckel said.

“There is no way we can replace the revenue or the jobs that will be lost,” Mr. Eckel said.

The decision, he said, was beyond his control.

“When I’m living in a climate where they are saying we need to have stronger employer sanctions on the issue of immigration, and they want to make me be the person who is supposed to enforce the law rather than the government, that’s not self-inflicted,” he said.

For years, the farm bureau has lobbied for a guest worker program that is legal, effective and viable, Mr. O’Neill said.

An informal statewide poll in 2007 revealed a dwindling supply of field workers to be the No. 1 concern of fruit and vegetable farmers, Mr. O’Neill said, and he hopes Mr. Eckel’s story is an example to voters, lawmakers and anyone who shops the produce aisle.

Mr. Eckel, a self-described active Republican, said the issue is not a partisan one. The logjam in Washington, D.C., needs to end, he said, but such solutions unfortunately do not sprout up so quickly