Alabama immigration law: Farmers get new help for harvest (with slideshow) (B'ham News)

By Hannah Wolfson -- The Birmingham News

Published: Friday, October 07, 2011, 5:30 AM

Ellen Jenkins had 50 acres of produce and no one to pick it, after Alabama's tough new immigration law sent her field hands packing.

But on Thursday, about 20 workers, mostly inexperienced, arrived at her Chandler Mountain farm to help, by midafternoon picking 125 cartons of tomatoes just in time to keep the harvest from being a total loss.

"Me and my kids were going to just pick what we could and I didn't even think we were going to get any help," Jenkins said.

The fill-in workers were brought to the farm near Steele by Grow Alabama, a Birmingham-based network that works with farmers from around the state to market locally-grown produce. Just a few days after launching the temporary assistance program, it's been overwhelmed, Grow Alabama head Jerry Spencer said Thursday.

Spencer is talking with the state agriculture department about finding funding for transportation. And Agriculture Commissioner John McMillan said Thursday that he's trying to make arrangements to use people from the Department of Corrections' work-release program{i.e. prisoners} as field hands, and to pull unemployed workers off the state rolls, as well. McMillan said the details weren't finalized, but there could be something up and running next week.
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more: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/10/alabama_immigration_law_farmer.html




Prison labor -- our first solution to everything.

(Be warned, some of the responses from locals are pretty toxic.)

George Santayana (roughly)

If I was hiring, I would be freaking impressed to see farm labor on someones resume. That is a person who will work hard and has a good ethic.

slide show

for backbreaking work in the hot hot sun.