Florida farmer gives away mango harvest due to lack of workers in Florida

• Florida farmer Rocco Hernández had to give away his mango harvest.
• He couldn’t find anyone to work on his farm.
• The harsh new anti-immigrant law is already hurting his business.

The first consequences of Florida’s new anti-immigrant law, signed by Ron DeSantis, are beginning to hit home before it even goes into effect. Farmer Rocco Hernández, explains why he had to give away his mango harvest because of it.

His farm was left without workers overnight and he had to give away his mangoes because there was no one there to pick and harvest them. “Since there are no employees, if the public wants to come pick mangos, I have boxes up to 50 pounds or more. They are rotting here,” he tells MundoNow.

Florida farmer forced to give away mango harvest due to lack of workers

This is the only solution that this farmer has found, given what he says is the chaos caused by the anti-immigrant law going into force on July 1. “They can look from corner to corner, there are 10 acres behind us and there is no one there,” explains the farmer as he walks through his suffering mango crop.

«No one to work, no one to move plants, no one to plant plants… right here they left me halfway through… said Hernández.

Rocco Hernández is not the only farmer suffering the consequences of the anti-immigrant law

Rocco is not the only one suffering the consequences of the law signed on May 10, by Florida’s governor. He says this is happening throughout Homestead, a city located in Miami-Dade County. «For example, the land that is in front of us is a land that must have 50 to 60 employees and if there is one it is a lot,» laments the farmer.

Hispanic immigrant workers are the key workforce in the fields. In the Homestead area alone, about 40 percent of those who farm these lands are Hispanic, according to data from the Farmworker Association of Florida.

“He could come work with me one day”

“I can’t do anything without employees. Everything is going to go downhill for me, I’m going to have to get a job somewhere… even at McDonald’s,” the farmer repeats as he challenges DeSantis to take off his suit, leave his desk and do what the undocumented do these farms.

“He could come to work with me one day, to fill the mango boxes to see, for example, what it is like to work one day in this field. To see if he would do it or let the other people come to work here, to fill boxes of mangoes,» said the farmer.

Rocco fears that not harvesting the crop will bring health problems

For Hernández, the worst would be yet to come for him. He fears that not harvesting the crop will bring health problems. “If they stay, they are going to rot, they are going to bring bacteria, they are going to bring flies… like the whitefly from before, a new fly, something worse.”

From his farm, Hernández invites Republicans to think things through more carefully, to reconsider their drastic decisions on laws that could harm immigrants. «Pass some law where you can have the workers here, someone doing something.»