Labor Shortages in the Florida Strawberry Industry
side image of gopher tortoise opening its mouth. Figure 4 from  Wildlife of Florida Factsheet: Gopher Tortoise: WEC396/UW441, 8/2018
view on edis
PDF-2018

Keywords

Labor shortages
Strawberry Industry
Florida

How to Cite

Guan, Zhengfei. 2018. “Labor Shortages in the Florida Strawberry Industry: FE1041 FE1041, 7 2018”. EDIS 2018 (5). Gainesville, FL. https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-fe1041-2018.

Abstract

The Florida strawberry industry has been plagued by severe labor shortages. This paper investigates growers’ labor demand and labor shortages based on a survey conducted in 2016. We found that labor shortages increase over the season, ranging from a shortage of 14 workers per 100 acres in September to 35 workers per 100 acres in March, the peak harvesting season.  

https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-fe1041-2018
view on edis
PDF-2018

References

Charles, D. 2016. "For pickers, blueberries mean easier labor but more upheaval." NPR. Accessed on June 6, 2018. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/13/484015376/for-pickers-blueberries-mean-easier-labor-but-more-upheaval

Guan, Z., F. Wu, F. Roka, and A. Whidden. 2015. "Agricultural labor and immigration reform." Choices 30(4): 1-9.

Guan, Z., B. Quishim, and F. Wu. 2018. The Migration Pattern of Florida Seasonal Farmworkers. Gainesville: University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. In press. https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-fe1040-2018

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS). 2017. "Farm labor." Accessed on June 20, 2018. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/

U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS). 2017. "Quick stats." Accessed on June 20, 2018. https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/

U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau (USDC-USCB). 2016. "USA Trade Online." Accessed on June 20, 2018. https://usatrade.census.gov/

U.S. Department of Labor (USDL), Employment and Training Administration. 2016. "Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) 2013-2014." Accessed on June 20, 2018. https://www.doleta.gov/agworker/pdf/NAWS_Research_Report_12_Final_508_Compliant.pdf

Wu, F., Z. Guan, and M. Garcia-Nazariega. 2017. Comparison of Labor Costs Between Floridian and Mexican Strawberry Industries. FE1023. Gainesville: University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe1023 https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-fe1023-2017

Unless otherwise specified, articles published in the EDIS journal after January 1, 2024 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.