Artificially adding a penny a pound to whatever goes into a salad and a sandwich is good for corporate relations. But all it takes is for a larger buyer to say this program is costing us too much money and we can buy from somewhere else. |
As the supermarkets come to expect those tomatoes and don't get them those prices are going to rise. |
Everyone's watching the agreement Yum has with the coalition, and it seems to be working well. But the concern is that down the road, if there are additional wages that will end up making Florida farms the higher-cost alternative, and they'll be undercut by other states or Mexico, since most farms don't have these agreements. |
Growers dealt with it and worked around it. You just ran a slow day. |
Growers may face having to make their jobs more attractive by offering higher wage rates. |
I think consumers should see good bargains on a lot of stuff. The next few weeks we are really going to see the harvest pick up from all the growers who replanted after Hurricane Wilma. |
I think the Everglades Agriculture Area is going to be the epicenter for this freeze event. The things they've got growing down there now are the most susceptible [to freeze damage]. One grower I talked to felt he lost thousands of acres of beans. The corn is probably going to show a lot of damage, too. |
If someone said 'corporate social responsibility' five years ago, no one would have known what it meant. Today it is a top priority for a large corporation that has a reputation to watch over. But we can't go out and achieve everything that everyone wants on the first day. |
Prices go up quickly but drop slowly. |
The biggest hit was right there in the Glades. Western Palm Beach County had more planted and had the crops that were most vulnerable. |
These guys need a break so they can get a good crop out. |
This is not a deep, hard freeze yet, but that may change. |
We have thousands of acres of crop loss. This is a freeze that left its mark. |
We're hopeful this turns into something that becomes a standard for performance in terms of how you treat your workers and train them. For businesses making decisions, we don't want Florida farms left out because of labor practices. |