HIGHLANDS TODAY (Sebring, Florida)

January 19, 2010

RCMA calls for farmworker disaster help

Thousands of low-income farmworkers will lose wages in the wake of devastating freezes through Florida's vegetable belt, prompting calls Saturday for disaster aid.

Barbara Mainster, head of the state's largest non-profit child-care organization, asked George Sheldon, secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families, to seek an emergency issuance of food stamps.

"Most of these families live paycheck to paycheck," Mainster said. "They were depending on a busy winter harvest. Now crops are ruined, and so are their jobs."

Mainster is executive director of the Immokalee-based Redlands Christian Migrant Association, which operates 78 child-care centers and two charter schools serving Florida's rural poor. With funding from Head Start and other federal child care programs, RCMA provides nearly 8,000 children a year with quality preschool education and two hot meals daily.

RCMA operates nine child-care centers in Highlands County, serving more than 600 children. The organization has another five centers in Hardee and DeSoto counties, and they serve another 600 children.

Florida agriculture officials estimate that this month's relentless cold wiped out at least 30 percent of the state's fruit and vegetable crops.

Florida has nearly 9 million acres of produce, and the freeze affected all areas from Tampa Bay south, according to The Packer, a newspaper covering the nation's produce business. The damage appears to be most severe in a vegetable-growing region around Lake Okeechobee and southward, The Packer reported.

Mainster noted that Tom Vilsack, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, has broad authority to waive normal food-stamp eligibility rules in the wake of a disaster. But affected states, which implement the food-stamp program, must request such changes first.

"When harvesting stops, it threatens the ability of young farmworkers to meet the basic needs of their children," Mainster said. "Many may be jobless for up to two months. It's a disaster, exactly what government programs were designed to address."