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Keeping crews through the quiet months
Seasonal hiring is cheaper on paper. It is more expensive once you count the fruit that gets damaged by hands that have never done it before.
Written by Packhouse Manager
The standard model in harvest farming is to hire a crowd for the picking window and let everyone go the week it closes. It looks efficient right up until you look at the fruit.
Untrained hands cost you at the packhouse
Citrus bruises. A picker who has done three seasons handles fruit differently from one on their second day, and the difference shows up as out-grades on the line weeks later.
- Permanent contracts for grove and packhouse crews
- Quiet-month work on pruning, nursery and maintenance
- Paid training in grafting, pruning and grade standards
“We pay through the quiet months. We get it back at the grading line.”
It is not charity and we would not defend it as charity. It is the cheapest way we have found to protect the crop.
