Grower Eyes Sunnier Business in Mexico
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Mexico’s fertile earth now provides a warm home for the oblong Romas and bite-sized grapes of Manatee’s Pacific Tomato, but on a grander scale it offers something more valuable these days—economic stability.
The 80-year-old company sees a promising future in the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa, where it has moved a slice of its tomato production. There is not only land, water and seed—but labor.
{snip}
While Pacific will continue growing tomatoes in its fields in Manatee County, Georgia, Virginia and California, its decision to cross the border is rooted in problems farmers in Florida and nationwide face in an increasingly volatile business.
{snip}
Agriculture’s dependence on immigrant workers has been threatened as the politics of immigration have taken a seat at the forefront of public discourse.
“A stable workforce is critically important,” Heller said [Billy Heller, Pacific’s chief operations officer]. “That’s something that all of us are nervous about. We don’t know what the government at their whim is going to decide.”
{snip}
As that and other reform measures failed last year in Congress, immigration officials turned their enforcement spotlight on employers to weed out workers in the country illegally.
With the noose tightening, growers say their need for legal workers is reaching a tipping point, when a labor shortage will give way to produce price hikes.
{snip}
Factor in labor supply, costs, the North American Free Trade Agreement and oil prices, among others, and growers are finding moving abroad, specifically to Mexico, may ensure their company’s future.
DiMare Farms considered farming in lands surrounding the western coastal city of Guaymas, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, but in the end stuck by its U.S. operations.
“We’re fighting a battle here, and we’re hoping that we can stick with it,” DiMare said.
Other growers are finding different roads. Last year, the brothers behind Taylor & Fulton Farms announced they were bowing out of the tomato business.
With farmers heading south, competition with Mexico increases, begging the question: Will these American growers return?
{snip}
(Posted on February 6, 2008)
Comments
GOOD RIDDANCE!! Any American company that employees illegals, feel free to move to Mexico. What could possibly be the loss to this country? We subsidize their cheap labor with welfare, at the tax payers expense.
Posted by Kellie at 5:38 PM on February 6
[“A stable workforce is critically important,” Heller said. “That’s something that all of us are nervous about. We don’t know what the government at their whim is going to decide.”]
A stable workforce for this century is an impossibility in the agricultural area in this country where the work is tortuous and back-breaking, paying starvation wages. There’s a limit to the number of illiterate, uneducated peons who are willing to do agricultural work, even though right now it seems the unending supply from south of the border will always keep coming.
What these growers need to do is become mechanized at least in part in order to drastically reduce their reliance on cheap slave labor.
Also, more of them should move to Mexico. There are vast vacant areas there fertile enough to grow almost anything. If whites had emigrated to Mexico in huge numbers 50 years ago, that country, right now, would be the gem of latin America, and there would be no need for their peons to sneak into this country looking for work.
The Mexicans are just not competent enough to advance their country to the level of prosperity that is potentially there. It has vast fertile lands and numerous resources.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 7:17 PM on February 6
One can only hope for an incident of major civil disorder and destruction to originate at, and spread outwards from, a Burger King location near you as a result of “just in time supply chain” failure (for whatever underlying reason—revolution in Sinaloa, or Paco’s bald tired reefer broke down on I-40 and his cargo rotted) that causes a temporary unavailability of two cent Mexican tomato slices for the Whopper.
Posted by at 8:17 PM on February 6
Fine. Let them go to mexico. I’d rather that then have the mexicans here. When the growers go to mexico they can higher retired Whites, if they find all the mexican labor is overseas.
The USA also may want to try ending welfare, and the phony drug war. If some blacks and lower class Whites want to get high after they do an honest days work picking vegetables, who cares? Put the ex drug warriors on the damn border. Prohibition is nothing more than a price support program for gangsters and an employment program for cops.
Posted by Flamethrower at 9:07 PM on February 6
“Agriculture’s dependence on immigrant workers has been threatened as the politics of immigration have taken a seat at the forefront of public discourse.”
Haven’t I read something like this before? Isn’t it in our history books somewhere? I think a few of the words were changed and it went something like this:
The South’s dependence on slaves has been threatened as the politics of slavery have taken a seat at the forefront of public discourse.
The Southerners opined in the 1850’s that it would be impossible to grow the cotton without slave labor.
So they came up with something better than slavery.
You see with slavery, the owners had to care for the slaves when they were very young, very old and when they were very sick. During these times they fed them, clothed them, sheltered them, provided medicine for them and got no labor in return.
On the other hand, with illegal immigrants, they only pay a pittance for wages and let the good old American taxpayer pick up the tab on the hospitals, schools, jails and handouts while they collect farm subsidies from Uncle Sam.
That’s why I would rather grow my own tomatoes.
Posted by Lucas M at 9:54 PM on February 6
“With farmers heading south, competition with Mexico increases, begging the question: Will these American growers return?”
And if they don’t, someone will step up and take their place.
Posted by idareya at 10:58 PM on February 6
Laber is cheap in Mexico. The highest tax rate is only 9 percent. But the corruption and extortion taxes that must be distributed to local police and officials is very high.
Enjoy. Also factor in the fact that you will have to build your own road to the nearest seaport or railroad to ship your tomatoes. If you ship by sea, you might have to build your own wharf, complete with a trustworthy electrical and water supply.
I thing this is the tomato company the liberals are always boycoting fast food places about.
Posted by at 2:15 PM on February 7
Agribiz routinely uses insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizer on their crops. These chemicals mix with rain or irrigation water, leech into the soil and are sucked into the plants by their roots. The FDA ostensibly sets limits and tests agricultural products for these chemicals that gown in this country for market.
Foodstuffs grown in third-world countries and imported are not checked and the carcinogenic levels of these products are off the scale. Eat imported food at your own risk, because Washington isn’t the least bit concerned about your health…
Posted by at 2:44 PM on February 7
In this day and age, there is no reason why we don’t have robots harvesting produce.
Posted by Gary at 6:21 PM on February 7
“Laber is cheap in Mexico. The highest tax rate is only 9 percent. But the corruption and extortion taxes that must be distributed to local police and officials is very high.”
…………………………………..
Absolutely. That has to be factored in. I had a friend who managed a well-known luxury resort in Puerto Rico. He said the bribes and payoffs there were incredible. But they were ubiquitous, and were expected and necessary in order to get anything done. And this is in US territory!
Just imagine what it is in Mexico, where they are under no such moral restraints or fussy laws that inhibit Americans.
Posted by ghw at 7:27 PM on February 7
Lucas M has a point, and it also goes with the philosophy and logic of self-sustenance
Although I have done it for years, one way of fighting back, space provided, is to have a small vegetable garden in your yard.
Considering the instances of contaminated spinach, onions, etc. in recent years, it is an easy and convenient way to supply your own vegetables without contracting e-coli, cholera or TB from mexican-fertilized stock. Most tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, beans, strawberries and many others can be very successfully grown in pots with organic fertilizer and mulch, if room is scarce.
I also will not knowingly buy any produce imported from mexico or other 3rd world countries.
Posted by Superman at 1:27 PM on February 9
“Most tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, beans, strawberries and many others can be very successfully grown in pots with organic fertilizer and mulch, if room is scarce.”
For a time, I grew tomatoes and peppers on pots on my city balcony. However, it’s a lot of work. At the height of summer’s heat, they had to be watered several times a day. You couldn’t leave them for even a day. They were insatiable. Between labor and soil and fertilizer and pots, it wasn’t worth it, economically. Money-wise, it was much cheaper to just buy them at the store.
But there’s no satisfaction like eating a freshly-picked tomato or pepper, ripened to perfection, that you’ve grown yourself right outside your window.
Posted by browser at 9:55 PM on February 10