Major Pa. tomato producer quits, blames Congress

[Chris_]

Major Pa. tomato producer quits, blames Congress

CLARKS SUMMIT, Pa. - Keith Eckel, the largest producer of fresh market tomatoes in Pennsylvania, is getting out of the business.
Fearing that the labor needed to harvest his tomatoes won't be there when he needs it, Eckel announced yesterday that after decades of growing tomatoes, he was calling it quits.

He placed the blame squarely at the feet of Congress and its failure to enact what he called a meaningful immigration reform measure.

"The system is broken," Eckel said before a crowd of neighbors, employees and news media gathered in the packing house at his farm near Scranton.

"It's a sad day," he said. "We're closing a part of our business that we really love."

Eckel's problems are echoed coast to coast by farmers who are reliant on foreign farm workers allowed into the country each year to plant, pick and package crops.

*snip*

"No one will harvest tomatoes in 90 degree weather except immigrant labor," he said. And a number of people who worked in his packing house were retired workers picking up a few extra dollars, he said.

I suspect labor would be plentiful if the government didn't pay so many people to sit around on their a$$es all day.

*snip*

Although his workers have documents proving that they are legal, Eckel said some estimates show that between 60 percent and 70 percent of the documents are fraudulent.

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[Chris_]

Boo freaking hoo.

Asking me to personally subsidize his illegal activities and then stomping off in a tantrum doesn't do much for me.

The market will eventually correct for this.