ZANESVILLE (Ohio) TIMES-RECORDER

August 30, 2010

Tradition keeps migrant workers coming back to Ohio

BY KATHIE DICKERSON and RUSS ZIMMER

NEWCOMERSTOWN -- Two things keep the Juarez family coming back to Darr Farms each year -- custom and necessity.

"We've done it all our lives; it's more or less tradition," said Richard Juarez, a Texas native who now lives in Newcomerstown.

His brother, David Juarez, was born in Florida, where he still spends his winters. David acts as crew leader for about a dozen migrant workers at Darr Farms, while Richard is a liaison, or helps with job placement at Darr Farms and other agricultural related businesses around the state.

"We're not trying to contribute to the local unemployment rate," said George Darr. "We've just not been able to find good, dependable employees who will show up regularly."

Each year, about 14,000 to 16,000 migrant workers and their families have come north to Ohio -- not just necessarily from Mexico, but southern U.S. states as well -- to fill the demand for farm labor during the picking season, according to migrant censuses provided by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Although the migrant presence in Ohio was down in 2009, historical data suggests the 10.2 percent unemployment rate last year had little to do with it.

The last time annual unemployment rates averaged in the double-digits was the early 1980s. State migrant worker estimates typically were higher during the worst unemployment years than later in that decade when the job market rebounded, according to historical censuses and labor estimates.

Ohio farms rely heavily on migrant labor and guest workers because, as farm hands, they famously are willing and high-caliber employees, Ohio Farm Bureau spokesman Joe Cornely said.

"What I hear from farmers regularly is that a lot of these farm chores are hard, back-breaking labor that in many cases the local residents have no interest in doing," Cornely said.

HARD WORK

By their nature, these harvesting jobs are temporary work. Baldemar Velasquez, founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Toledo, said locals shy away from these jobs, regardless of how unhealthy the job market is, for something permanent.

"Local people aren't interested in these jobs. ... Farmers will use anyone that is efficient and will bring the harvest in," he said. "I'm sure they'd hire anyone who could do it and would do it."

Federal law requires anyone attempting to hire a non-U.S. citizen has to first post that job so Americans can get first crack at the position, according to Ohio Department of Job and Family Services spokesman Ben Johnson. Employers who receive applications from Americans must give them preference over their non-citizen competitors, he added.

Harvesting time typically is done during the hot time of the year, and the workers usually get out in the fields early while the dew is still on the grounds, so it's often wet, too.

Darr said if he's promised an area supermarket a certain amount of sweet corn that day, he has to rely on employees to show up and pick it.

"The Hispanics provide us with a consistent nucleus of workers that come and pick sweet corn at 6 a.m. seven days a week," Darr said.

About 40 people work at Darr Farms during the spring and summer months -- 12 of them migrant workers and 10 employed year-round.

Darr said at one time he used 100 percent local labor, but about a dozen years ago, he made crop changes, switching from lots of vegetables such as green beans, tomatoes, broccoli and sweet corn to sweet corn, pumpkins and corn for grain as well as wheat. Darr Farms cover 1,600 acres in Coshocton, Guernsey and Tuscarawas counties.

High school and college students were a good source of employees during the summer when the vegetables were ripening, but the crop switch made Darr look for a reliable source after school started. He needed someone picking pumpkins all day long.

"Our products are seasonal, and the day after Halloween pumpkins are as valuable as a Christmas tree on the 26th of December," Darr said.

The migrant workers are out in the field from sunup to after dark picking pumpkins when the season arrives and sometimes packing them for shipment at 2 a.m.

Darr hopes for a bumper crop similar to that of 2009, when the 150-acre yield was just shy of 5 million pounds.

The Juarez family came to the Newcomerstown area years ago, when their father, Sebastian Juarez, picked peaches at Hackenbracht Orchard. John Hackenbracht was a partner in Tastee Apple Co. of Newcomerstown and manager of the Fruit Growers Association from 1958 to 1983, and owned and operated the former Hackenbracht Orchard.

The Juarez family connected with Darr Farms about a dozen years ago, and it's become a year-round relationship.

"Bev and I think of them as our extended family," Darr said.

When the Darrs are in Florida they visit David, his wife, Suzanna, and their four children. Richard and his wife, Dawn, settled in Ohio and run several businesses in the Dover and New Philadelphia area.

Bev Darr, who's a kindergarten teacher in the Newcomerstown Village Exempted School District, also teaches English to Hispanics in the summer months through an Ohio Department of Education program, Darr said.

David said she makes it very comfortable for children and adults alike, coming to their homes, hosting classes at her house or meeting with them at the library.

Coshocton County is about as far north as David and Richard go, but they have cousins and uncles who travel to orchards in Knox County. Other migrant workers who start from Florida in the spring, stop in Georgia, the Carolinas, Ohio and end up in Michigan by the end of harvest season, Richard said.

David and his crew have two primary employers for the year. From November until June they work at a citrus farm in Dundee, Fla., picking oranges and grapefruit.

Once that's finished, there's nothing else to do, no other work available, David said.

"The guys like coming back here," David said "They know they're going to be treated well by the farm manager and the warehouse manager. They'll have a nice place to stay and earn a fair wage."

Darr said he owns a couple of residences, one in town and one in the country, that he makes available to the migrant workers, plus he lines up rentals for them.

"It's plain, long hard work, but they like coming here because they can make good money and I provide a place for them to live, too," Darr said. "They'll come back if you treat them right and have plenty of work."

Some of the work performed is paid by piecework, too, an incentive to pick more bags of sweet corn or more pounds of pumpkins.

In the slower times they're also out weeding the pumpkin fields.

"It's not just a matter of pride for me to have the weeds gone, but it makes it much easier for the pickers if they can get in there when they're aren't so many weeds," Darr said.

They also run equipment like tractors and forklifts and make short-distance deliveries.

"The guys like it because there's always something different to do," David said.

DISCRIMINATION ISSUES

Migrant workers often get incorrectly tangled into the illegal-immigration debate.

The discourse has become so contentious some people who employ migrant workers avoid discussing it.

Numerous attempts to interview migrant workers and camp owners about the issue and their experiences in Sandusky and Ottawa counties -- two of the most heavily migrant populated counties in the state -- were unsuccessful.

For their part, the Mexican-Americans said they sympathized with most of the undocumented population, while conceding that some of the criminal element from their home country has taken the same highways here their family has.