In recent years, those lamenting the economy have sung a similar tune: No jobs.
However, since Ted Campbell took the helm as president of the Florida Strawberry Grower’s Association four years ago, he’s experienced the opposite problem: A labor shortage has left unpicked fruit to spoil in the sun.
And this year is no exception.
“What you see is a constraint of labor supply at the border, public settlements with workers, a lot of them undocumented, and local domestic workers not willing to do the job,” Campbell said.
Campbell said these factors create a labor shortage. Moreover, the price of strawberries falls around this time of the year, partly because other crops, including blueberries, are beginning to come in season. This leaves strawberry farmers with an surplus of the fruit. This year and last year’s prices “have been the worst ever,” Campbell said.
But one factor that doesn’t seem to cause this labor shortage is the pay. He estimates pickers can make $11 to $15 per hour.
Jeremy Burris, vice president of sales and sourcing for Colorful Harvest, agrees. His pickers can pick about 100 flats a day. At $2 per flat, pickers can potentially make $30,000 to $40,000 during the five-month season.
Like Campbell, Burris attributes the labor shortage to the same factors, including a tightening of the borders.
He also adds the migrant population is aging, because there are more options for children who are born in the U.S. to migrant parents.
Stateside, Colorful Harvest has farms in Florida and California. But it also runs an operation in Mexico, because there is labor readily available.
“There’s a sad thing about it, but we have to go down there,” Burris said. “We’re not looking for illegal workers. But what we want is a solution.”
That solution could be in the form of H2A, a temporary agricultural program that allows employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring non-immigrant foreign workers to the country to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature. Employers must provide free housing to all workers who are not local and any transportation to and from the farm site. Employers also have must workers’ compensation insurance for all workers and pay the higher of either the adverse effect wage rate or the state prevailing wage rate.
The application packet includes a list of forms and notification 60 to 75 days before the date of need for workers.
Burris likes the idea of a program such as the H2A but said it is time-consuming and has many regulations.
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.