Thread: With Migrant Workers in Short Supply, a Farmer Looks to Mach

With Migrant Workers in Short Supply, a Farmer Looks to Machines
By JOSHUA BRUSTEIN

Correction Appended

APPLETON, N.Y. — Scores of Jim Bittner’s cherry trees are now just heaps of roots and sticks, piled in his fields here along Route 18. Some of the branches lying on the ground are dotted with small blossoms, the season’s earliest evidence that sweet cherries were on their way. But for Mr. Bittner, having sweet cherries would have meant hiring someone to prune the trees and harvest the fruit, and he was not sure that he could do it this year. So he cut his trees down.

“We always assumed we could find the labor we would need,â€

The shift toward Hispanic immigrants has been gradual and tacitly accepted, Mr. Hemminger said, adding that it was frustrating to watch those workers, who have become mainstays for his industry, being pulled away.

They were being pulled away by higher paying construction and landscaping jobs. Even the IAs don't want to work in the fields. Machines are the only answer. Another option is to have "pick-your-own" farms, which were once so popular, then they disappeared.

miguelina is totally right . course he can alway buy a cherry picker also with taxpayer ag loans . If real indeft questions where asked in this article, There would be no telling the truth that may come out !
This is a Wa Wa article

We have thousands of people locked up in prison. Maybe it’s time to put some of them to work.

There is a cabbage pickin' machine:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RTR9vXCyBh0&feature=related

Never, ever give up!