By Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Under the guidance of Maryann Stein, owner of Brooksville Ridge Blueberries, Dan DeWitt looks for appropriate limbs to trim from blueberry bushes.
With my stiff back, I had to sit, not stoop, even though the ground between the rows of blueberries was still wet from Thursday morning's storm. I quickly ran into a problem I never have in the office: sweat pouring into my eyes. Plus, I had only a vague idea what I was doing. It is probably no surprise then that I pruned away a couple of straight, green shoots — just the kind farmer Maryann Stein had told me would be loaded with berries in the spring.
"I think I might have left those," she said diplomatically.
So, this is what I learned from my brief stint on a pruning crew at Brooksville Ridge Blueberries, Stein's 60-acre farm in Spring Lake: Agricultural labor is difficult, uncomfortable and, as will be clear later, dangerous.
But most of us already know that, which is why we long ago left this work to immigrants. My real purpose here was to take up a challenge issued by the United Farm Workers.
In response to the anti-immigrant zeal that inspired the mean-spirited law in Arizona and, if gubernatorial candidate and Attorney General Bill McCollum has his way, an even meaner one in Florida, the union launched a campaign in June called Take Our Jobs.
At least when it comes to farm labor, the union says, immigrants aren't filling the jobs of native-born Americans; they're doing work that we either can't or don't want to do.
They're calling us soft, in other words, and Stein agreed.
Teenagers she's hired haven't stuck with it. Adults find it easier to tap into unemployment insurance and other entitlement programs.
"Nobody wants to do field work," she said. "They just want to ride around on a tractor all day."
Farmers have been saying this for years, so there must be some truth to it.
But during the housing boom, lots of Americans were willing to lug bundles of shingles all day. By last count, more than 14 percent of Hernando residents were unemployed. I bet some of them would be willing to do farm work.
Maybe so, Stein said, but they need skill, too. And it's been so long since native-born Americans did this work, most of us don't know how.
Her berries came in late this year, long after most migrant laborers had moved north to harvest other crops. She couldn't advertise these jobs to the general public because untrained pickers would be too slow, couldn't tell which berries were ripe, might even damage her bushes.
"I can only think it would have been a disaster," she said.
On Thursday morning, her crew of Mexican immigrants cut quickly and decisively, their shears sounding like barber's scissors. I had to ponder over every cut. The immigrants bent easily at the waist while I lunged awkwardly. They were on their feet; I was on my backside.
Even if I'd wanted the job, there's no way I'd be worth the wages Stein pays, at least to these core workers who stick with her year-round: $10 per hour.
Not bad, you may think — all cash, every penny of it clear.
Wrong, said Stein.
She requires them to show guest worker visas and Social Security cards, though, as is standard in the industry, she doesn't make much of an effort to find out if these documents are real. (Most probably aren't; about 85 percent of farmworkers nationwide are undocumented, according to the United Farm Workers website.)
The payroll company Stein hires deducts income tax and contributions to Social Security, though undocumented workers can never collect benefits.
So, I learned this from my time in the field: the current system is messy and unfair on a lot of fronts; something probably needs to be done to straighten it out.
But nothing I saw convinced me that I should be frightened of immigrants or that they deserve to be pulled off the streets and thrown in jail. I didn't see any evidence of a horde of illegal aliens gaming the system.
"Most (immigrants) just want to come here to work," Stein said.
That's mainly what my experience on Thursday showed me. And that it's work I don't want to do.
Because of the rain, I showed up later in the morning than the rest of the crew — close to 9 rather than 7. But I hoped to stay as long as they did, until 3 p.m.
Once Stein was done coaching me, though, and left me alone in the field, I realized how much my back would ache by that time, and that the tedium would be even more painful.
So when I brushed my hand against the just-sharpened shears and cut myself, I felt a little like a soldier getting a flesh wound early in a battle.
There was lots of blood but no real damage. After just 40 minutes on the job, I was grateful to have an excuse to quit.