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Sunday, July 9, 2006

Labor Exodus Puts Squeeze on Orange Crop
Flight of immigrants could leave as many as 6 million boxes unpicked in Florida.

By Kevin Bouffard
The Ledger


LAKELAND -- A shortage of harvesting labor aggravated by rumors about immigration reform may leave as many as 6 million boxes of oranges on trees by the end of the 2005-2006 citrus season.

"There's very little doubt we'll leave a significant amount of fruit on the tree. Whether that's 3 million boxes or 6 million boxes -- nobody can say," Mike Carlton, the director of production and labor affairs at Florida Citrus Mutual, said Friday.

The Florida citrus season, which normally ends around June 30, will extend at least to July 21 this year. Juice processing plants are remaining open to get as many Valencia oranges as possible from the estimated 9.3 million boxes of fruit still on trees.

If the worst-case scenario proves accurate, Florida orange production this season would become the lowest since the 1991-1992 season total of 139.8 million boxes. That happened as Florida citrus groves were still recovering from the state's worst citrus freeze in December 1989.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will release its final citrus crop projection Wednesday. Its June 9 report forecast 153 million boxes of oranges.

This is the second consecutive year the citrus season has gone into July. In both seasons, citrus harvesting companies could not find enough workers from their regular labor pool, which has a high percentage of Hispanic workers, many of them illegal immigrants.

The supply of harvesting workers was tight from the beginning of the season in October, citrus industry officials said Friday, but it grew much worse by the middle of May, when a large segment of the Hispanic labor force left the state.

"Really, the labor shortage is what held us up this year," said Dave Crumbly, the vice president of fruit control at Florida's Natural Growers in Lake Wales, the nation's third-largest citrus processor.

"Because labor was marginal at best, it didn't take much to push it into a shortage," Crumbly said.

Citrus officials who spoke to The Ledger on Friday agreed the controversy over competing immigration-reform bills in Congress led to the flight of Hispanic workers.

Crumbly and Marty McKenna, a Lake Wales citrus grower who manages about 4,000 grove acres, said word had spread through the Hispanic community to return home if they wanted U.S. jobs in the future.

The workers were told they could get deported if they remained in the U.S., Crumbly and McKenna said. But if they returned home, they would become eligible for a guest-worker program that is part of the immigration-reform bill passed in the U.S. Senate.

"In reality, the current guestworker program bars anybody who has been in this country illegally," Carlton said, but nothing has been decided yet about a future program.

The labor shortage left Florida groves with 9.3 million boxes of Valencia oranges as of Monday, according to the Lakeland-base Citrus Administrative Committee, a USDA agency that regulates the fresh citrus market.

That's one of the highest totals on record for this time of year, Carlton said.

In recent weeks, the remaining workers have been harvesting 1 million to 1.5 million boxes a week, he added. At that rate, it's unlikely all 9.3 million boxes will be picked.

"The best-case scenario is that we'll probably get another 3 million boxes," Carlton said. That's based on processing plants closing Friday.

Florida's Natural plans to stop accepting fruit Friday, Crumbly said.

Two other processors -Cutrale Citrus Juices USA Inc. in Auburndale and Citrosuco North America Inc. in Lake Wales -have already closed, Carlton said. Southern Gardens Citrus Processing Inc. in Clewiston has indicated it will stay open about another week.

But the state's largest processor, Tropicana Products Inc. in Bradenton, plans to stay open through July 21, said Peter Brace, a spokesman for parent company PepsiCo Inc. in Chicago.

Harvesting of Valencias, which yield the best juice orange, will continue as long as the processing plants remain open, the industry officials said. Once the last plant closes, there's no market for the fruit.

But even if the plants remain open much later, growers may decide not to pick the remaining fruit because of high harvesting costs, Carlton said. Already some harvesting companies are asking $1.75 to $2 a box to pick the remaining Valencias.

Above $2 a box, harvesting is not economical, he said.

Earlier in the season, harvesting costs ranged from 80 cents to $1 per box, said Jay Clark, a Wauchula grower and president of Citrus Mutual, the state's largest growers' representative.

Even with the spike in harvesting costs at the end of the season, growers are still doing better because the hurricane-damaged crop this season raised the prices processor are paying for Valencias, Clark said.

Prices are up 60 percent in the 2005-2006 season compared with the previous season.

"They (growers) are still looking at a lot better economic situation than last year," Clark said.

Some officials, including Crumbly and McKenna, said the amount of unpicked oranges may fall well short of 6 million boxes because the June USDA crop estimate of 153 million may be too high.

Crumbly said he would not be surprised if Wednesday's final USDA estimate cut that number by another 4 million to 5 million boxes.

Whatever happens this season, however, the citrus officials worried that the trends of higher harvesting costs and extending the season may continue in future years until Washington reforms national immigration policies.

"With the experience we had this year with immigration, there's concern about the labor supply in the future," said Bob Behr, a Florida's Natural vice president and member of the Florida Citrus Commission.

"It underscores the need for a guest-worker program," Crumbly said. "It doesn't look like they (Congress) are real close. They seem to be farther apart."