Florida: Frost-Kissed Oranges

The rare snows have melted, and the record chill has receded in Florida. But the truck gardens in the far south of the state lay devastated, their tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers wiped out by the cold. Some migrant workers are heading northward, searching for new crops to pick. There is work in the citrus groves of central Florida--hard, chilly work--as growers race to salvage what they can of an orange crop that was 30% to 40% destroyed by the Big Freeze. You can see the damage from the air--the telltale brownish gray of damaged trees edges out the green in the undulating groves near Orlando.

If the frost-kissed oranges, which turn dry and mealy, can be picked fast enough, they can still be used for concentrated orange juice. But the branches are brittle, the pickers' fingers are numb, and an orange that falls may well be too damaged to ship as fresh fruit.

When the worst of the cold struck, some 40 migrant workers were taken from their flimsy camp shacks near Winter Garden by county officials and housed and fed at public expense for six days in a Ramada Inn. In the area as a whole, however, the crisis has heightened rather than eased the traditional tensions between growers and workers. Florida Governor Reubin Askew's success in getting Carter to declare the region a disaster area is resented by the owners in conservative Lake and Orange counties--both of which voted for Gerald Ford in November. They are afraid that the federal funds will go mostly to pickers in the form of unemployment compensation, claiming that many workers will stop picking once the pay is available. "With your citrus worker, you put a check in his pocket and he'll come right down off the ladder to spend it," claims Owner George Karst.

Sudden Warmth. Thomas Credle, coordinator for the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, disagrees. Said he: "There is no clear evidence that workers do seek federal funds instead of working." Some $12.8 million has been allotted to Florida for special unemployment payments, but workers who refuse available jobs are ineligible to receive them.

On the job, the workers get between 35-c- and 55-c- for each 90-lb. box of oranges, and it takes a man, wife and couple of children a full week of hard work to make $125. The migrant families average only between $2,000 and $7,000 a year. To qualify for regular unemployment compensation, the migrants must be employed for 20 weeks a year. "Trouble with this short season is there's no way you can get your weeks in," complains Willie McCree, 26, who is now making only about $80 a week.

The full damage to the orange crop will not be known for several weeks. Unlike much of the frigid U.S., Florida's crop growers would actually like the chilly weather to continue. A sudden flood of warm sunshine would accelerate the rotting of damaged fruit and increase the loss far beyond the $125 million already estimated. "All we need is a few days in the 80s," says Grower Karst, "and then you'll see a real disaster."

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