American Farmers Plowing Tomatoes Under Due to Losses From Mexican Competition

by Janet Crain
Did you know that after oranges, tomatoes are Florida's second largest crop? It's really a shame these Florida growers couldn't hold on a little longer. Consumers may soon refuse to buy tomatoes grown in Mexico.


South Dade tomato farmers find their livelihood threatened by plunging prices, demand

With sales down and prices plunging, it has been a brutal season for tomato growers in the Homestead area.


BY ELAINE WALKER

ewalker@MiamiHerald.com

Freddy Strano spent much of last week mowing down 100 acres of perfectly good tomatoes.

The Homestead grower was trying to cut his losses and bring to a close what has been an awful season. Strano estimates he has lost $500,000 or more this winter. The problem: He couldn't sell his tomatoes for anywhere close to what it cost to grow and harvest them.

''They were beautiful tomatoes, some of the better ones we've had in years,'' said Strano, whose family has been in the tomato business since 1939. ``The prices were just horrible. It's demoralizing. It's going to cripple everybody.''

Homestead tomato growers faced a double whammy as consumers cut back purchases amid an oversupply. The combination sent prices plummeting to the lowest levels in years. A 25-pound box of tomatoes sold for much of the winter at $4-$6. The cost to grow and harvest that box is as high as $10.

While the problems have been affecting tomato growers across the state, the pain has been more acute in South Miami-Dade, where the 12-week growing season came just as prices dropped in January.

Tomato prices only started to pick up early this month, as the season wound down.

When the losses are tallied, many fear that some smaller tomato growers could be forced out of business. It's an ongoing trend as skyrocketing growing costs, immigration reform and increased competition from Mexico have already forced major consolidation in recent years among the growers of Florida's biggest vegetable crop.

''A loser like this gets your attention really quickly,'' said Kern Carpenter, a South Miami-Dade grower who has been in the business for more than 25 years and whose family's tomato history dates back six-plus decades. ``You start to wonder, do you need to be looking to do something else?''

This year Florida tomato growers estimate consumer demand has been off 15 percent. The recession has forced consumers to cut expenses, and while tomatoes are a staple grocery item, for many people they're not a necessity. Add to that a decline in consumer confidence from the lingering effects of last year's salmonella scare, which incorrectly implicated tomatoes.

The reduced demand comes during a year when weather and soil conditions were so favorable that most growers produced more bountiful crops.

The situation got even worse when an influx of Mexican tomatoes flooded the market at low prices, raising allegations of potential trade violations.

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1021071.html



© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Drug Cartels Recruiting American Teens for Killers

LAREDO, Texas (CNN) -- Rosalio Reta sits at a table inside a Laredo Police Department interrogation room. A detective, sitting across the table, asks him how it all started.

Gabriel Cardona, who shows his tattooed eyelids, worked as a hit man for a Mexican cartel.

Reta, in Spanish street slang, describes his initiation as an assassin, at the age of 13, for the Mexican Gulf Cartel, one of the country's two major drug gangs.

"I thought I was Superman. I loved doing it, killing that first person," Reta says on the videotape obtained by CNN. "They tried to take the gun away, but it was like taking candy from kid."

Rosalio Reta and his friend, Gabriel Cardona, were members of a three-person cell of American teenagers working as cartel hit men in the United States, according to prosecutors. The third was arrested by Mexican authorities and stabbed to death in prison there three days later.

In interviews with CNN, Laredo police detectives and prosecutors told how Cardona and Reta were recruited by the cartel to be assassins after they began hitting the cantinas and clubs just across the border.

CNN has also obtained detailed court records as well as several hours of police interrogation videos. The detective sitting across the table from Reta and Cardona in those sessions is Robert Garcia. He's a veteran of the Laredo Police Department and one of the few officers who has questioned the young men.

"One thing you wonder all the time: What made them this way?" Garcia told CNN. "They were just kids themselves, waiting around playing PlayStation or Xbox, waiting around for the order to be given."

Over a nearly one-year period starting in June 2005, the border town of Laredo, Texas, saw a string of seven murders. At first glance, the violence looked like isolated, gangland-style killings. But investigators started suspecting something more sinister.

Then Noe Flores was gunned down in a clear case of mistaken identity. Investigators found a fingerprint on a cigarette box inside the suspected shooter's get-away car. That clue unraveled the chilling reality and led police to arrest Gabriel Cardona and Rosalio Reta.

Prosecutors say they quickly discovered these two teenagers were homegrown assassins, hired to carry out the dirty work of the notorious Gulf Cartel.

"There are sleeper cells in the U.S.," said Detective Garcia. "They're here, they're here in the United States."

The cases against Cardona and Reta -- both are in prison serving long prison sentences for murder -- shed new light into the workings of the drug cartels.

Prosecutor and investigators say Reta and Cardona were recruited into a group called "Los Zetas," a group made up of former members of the Mexican special military forces. They're considered ruthless in how they carry out attacks. "Los Zetas" liked what they saw in Cardona and Reta.

Both teenagers received six-month military-style training on a Mexican ranch. Investigators say Cardona and Reta were paid $500 a week each as a retainer, to sit and wait for the call to kill. Then they were paid up to $50,000 and 2 kilos of cocaine for carrying out a hit.

The teenagers lived in several safe houses around Laredo and drove around town in a $70,000 Mercedes-Benz.

Cont.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/12/cartel.teens/index.html?eref=rss_topstories#

Related:
http://sarah-palin-2012.blogspot.com/search?q=mexico+drugs


© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Removing the “Painted Mask.”: Mexican Truth. Mexican Corruption.

Hat Tip: Alamo City Pundit

Wilder continues to delight and enthrall with each re-reading of “Painted Mask.” The Table of Contents reads like a list of topics guaranteed to arouse the ire of the La Raza crowd. Mexican Truth. Mexican Corruption. Why Mexicans Do Not Assimilate. Why Mexicans Come North. Mother of Mexicans. Culture in a Curse. Yet there’s no animus here; Wilder takes his lifetime of growing up in South Texas, his command of the language, and his extensive travels in Mexico herself and brings the truth as he sees it, while showing us collectively the things he’s learned in the process.

http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/mexico-painted-mask-book-review/



See related:
http://sarah-palin-2012.blogspot.com/search?q=mexico+drugs

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts