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“You’ve got to provide migrant workers with a house near as good as your own,” he said, relating the story of a Linden orchardist who had $60,000 in damages assessed because he put migrant workers in housing normally reserved for his tenant farmers.
And there’s pre- and post-harvest labor expenses as well for pruning, fertilizing, cleaning out the orchards, fighting the never-ending battle against deer, mitigating damage from those destructive ruminants, and spraying to keep fruit on the trees and insects off. This last presents a growing challenge as gypsy moths expand their range and numbers.
But while production costs are going up, the price the farmer gets for his product stays the same, the veteran orchardist pointed out. In 1988 for example, the cannery that takes the biggest bite out of Rappahannock’s apple harvest offered $9 per 100 pounds (the equivalent of about 2V4 bushels). It looked at first like a good price, but it applied only to apples that measured 2-3/4 inches and larger, Mr. Foster noted. “We’d had a drought. We had hardly any apples that big.” And for smaller fniit of 2>/2 to 2-3/4 inches, the big cannery was paying just $7 per 100 pounds, “the same as two years ago,” he added.
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