SEVERE SEASON A BIG LOSS FOR SOUTH DADE FARMERS Nearly $260 million in crops destroyed BY CARA BUCKLEY cbuckley@herald.com

Over the past three months, South Miami-Dade County has suffered its worst agricultural losses since Hurricane Andrew, with two floods and a freeze destroying nearly $260 million of crops -- and driving up produce prices at the supermarket.

October's no-name storm drowned $219 million worth of produce, hitting malanga, sweet potatoes and ornamental plants the hardest. December's flooding did in 2,200 acres of potatoes and 1,000 of sweet corn, together worth $13 million. January's freeze walloped beans, sweet potatoes and squash, totaling $25 million.

All vegetables are still available at local markets, but pinched supplies mean higher prices. Green beans fetched 99 cents a pound at Publix in late December, rising to $1.19 two weeks ago and then $1.99 on Wednesday. Yellow squash prices also rose, from 89 cents a pound in December to $1.39 a few weeks later and $1.99 on Wednesday.

Farmers are trying to salvage all they can. ``We took a beating,'' said Joe DeSousa, who estimates 40 percent of his 450 acres of malanga and sweet potatoes were destroyed by the New Year's frosts.

Bearing the brunt of this damage are migrant workers, who will likely be denied a month's work because of row crop devastation.

``We've had a series of losses -- Irene, citrus canker, and now this freeze,'' said Steve Kirk, head of the Everglades Community Associations' migrant services council. ``With any of these problems, a family can survive and hope. Now we're in a situation where underemployment has become really chronic for two years.''

Insured farmers can usually recoup losses, and those hit by October's floods are entitled to emergency federal loans that carry a 3.75 percent interest rate to see them through until Congress loosens the disaster relief purse strings.

On Tuesday, the Florida Department of Agriculture requested federal disaster dollars for December's flood and January's freeze.

Disaster relief to Miami-Dade farmers is on an upswing. After peaking at $358 million in 1992, the year of Andrew, relief dollars hovered near $2 million during the mid-to-late '90s, jumping to $8 million in 1999 and $6.5 million in 2000.

These dollars move slowly. Federal money for Hurricane Irene, which struck Oct. 15, 1999, is expected to reach the state's agriculture department by February or March.

For farmers whose crops survived, the money is good. This week, green beans were fetching $34 a bushel, compared to the usual $13. And Dade tomato farmers stand to gain because their crops survived the disasters, unlike Immokalee, where tomatoes suffered a $16 million loss.

But lost crops mean less work in packing houses and fields, draining employment opportunities for seasonal and migrant workers.

``Their hours are cut in half,'' said Sam Accursio, who employs 275 people to harvest and package crops from his 2,200 acres of squash, beans, pickles and peppers.

Homestead's year-round workers are mostly Haitian-Americans who have immigration papers and are entitled to unemployment assistance.

South Dade also is a magnet for migrant work. Each year an estimated 10,000 people from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador pick tomatoes, potatoes, okra, squash, peppers and cucumbers.

Workers rotate farms as needed, patching together enough money from tomato and squash fields to pay the rent, propped up by government subsidies to average $270 per tenant. Their average income is $13,800, Kirk said.

Homestead's Migrant Service Providers' council, made up of church relief groups and local farmers' cooperatives, met Wednesday to assess the impact of this year's string of disasters on farm workers.

Potato farmers wiped out by December's floods had found alternative employment for most of their 70-odd workers, the council found, and pickers threatened by the New Year's freeze were busy harvesting crops that could be salvaged.

Farmers said it was too early to say whether crops `burned to the ground' by frost would be replanted.

Meanwhile, underemployment looms.

``There is very, very little work,'' said Antonio Gonzalez, 31, a migrant worker from Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

Gonzalez was one of 500 workers who descended on farmer Mike Causley's bean fields on Wednesday.

Causley is not allowed to hire more than 200 pickers at a time, but crew captains heavily padded their teams, trying to shoehorn as many workers as possible onto the bean fields.

An anonymous call to the Department of Labor on Wednesday shut picking down early.

``They're all looking for work,'' said Causley. ``Trying to keep busy.''

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 11, 2001