From the Philadelphia Inquirer: Tomato producer quits, blames Congress.

“No one will harvest tomatoes in 90 degree weather except immigrant labor,” says Keith Eckel, the largest producer of Pennsylvania’s fresh-market tomatoes.

Reminds me of hearing Sen. Feinstein last month talk about her experience with the issue in my home state of California. Years ago, her office contacted every single welfare office in the state to try and increase the number of U.S. citizens working in agriculture. None of the offices, she recalls, were able to recruit even one worker to head out to the fields.

Not that, as conservative canard would have it, the average U.S. worker–or, as the implication goes, the average black worker–is lazy. Agricultural work is seasonal and temporary, not to mention generally removed from urban centers where jobs with low barriers to entry are urgently needed in the first place. And nationally, the scope of the problem might be reduced if compensation was higher than, say, the average $13,000 that farm workers in a state like Florida can expect to make annually.