![]() ![]() Immigrant rights and agricultural worker advocates, such as the Farmworker Association of Florida, have publicly opposed SB1718. González said that some South Florida small-scale farmers, who were already reeling from COVID-19′s impact on agriculture, are not planning on producing the same amount of crops this year, because “they cannot risk their investment planting if there is not anyone to harvest it.” There are also workers who participate in other industries such as construction, said Claudia González, Homestead area coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida. Some live and work in Florida agriculture year round, while others are seasonal workers who follow crops to other states and come back for planting and harvesting. They made up 86.7% of the industry’s workforce, according to a 2021 report from the County’s Office of New Americans. In Miami-Dade, where over half the population is foreign-born, it’s immigrants who are working the fields, picking the crops, and tending to the nursery plants. But sales and shipping of indoor goods often takes place during the spring and are sent across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. ![]() Much of the nursery industry grows products all year long. “When millions and millions of fresh fruits and vegetables ripen, there is a very short window in which to pick, transport from field to packing shed, clean, refrigerate, sort for the best quality, package in boxes or bags or crates according to the needs of the buyer, and arrange trucking to get the freshest produce in the hands of the final consumer,” Morgan said. Kimberly Morgan, associate professor of food and resource economics at the University of Florida/IFAS Southwest Florida Research and Education Center. Blessed with warm winter weather, South Florida is one of the very few places in the United States where crops are planted, tended, harvested and packed for shipping nationwide,” said Dr. consumers are now accustomed to, and expect, a wide variety of freshly picked, beautiful produce available year-round in their grocery stores. But a lot of produce, such as yellow squash, zucchini, green beans and tomatoes grow from fall through spring, when temperatures are cooler in South Florida but still warmer than many other parts of the country. Meanwhile, the season for tropical fruits such as mangoes, longan and lychees is traditionally during the summer. Some crops, like boniato and guava, can grow year round. The top crops by number of acres were vegetables, followed by nursery stock crops, snap beans, avocados, and sweet corn. Nearly three-quarters of the county’s 2,752 farms are nine acres or smaller, while another 21% had less than 50 acres each. Businesses range from farms that grow tropical fruits and vegetables to horticultural nurseries that grow trees, plants, and shrubs, as well as a small-scale animal production. The last US Department of Agriculture census, conducted in Miami-Dade County in 2017, depicts an agricultural industry dominated by small, family-owned farms that rank number two in the state in terms of market value of agricultural crop products sold, with over $827 million in agricultural sales, and number 16 nationwide. But the visas are costly to sponsor, and advocates say the program is ripe for the exploitation and forced labor of the participating workers, who heavily depend on their U.S.-based employers. The program is designed to alleviate worker shortages faced by farms across the United States. Florida already had the highest concentration of certified H2-A positions at 14% last government fiscal year, according to the US Department of Agriculture. They told the Miami Herald the law could cause Florida agricultural businesses to bring more temporary foreign workers through a federal government program for agriculture called H-2A. ![]() The extent of the law’s impact will become clearer as agricultural businesses need more hands to harvest winter and spring produce and seasonal workers return to harvest the fruits and vegetables, say farmers, workers and advocates. The legislation cracks down on undocumented labor and enacts a series of other immigration-related restrictions. The new Florida law, known as SB1718, came into effect on July 1.
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