Reporter’s Notebook From Florida: Farmers Suffer as News Cycle Turns
*By J.D. Durkin*
When I arrived in southern Florida two weeks ago to cover several days of campaign trail events, I had no way of guessing that a separate national storyline — about packages, postal codes, and pipe bombs — would unfold with the same aggressive timeline just miles away.
As news was breaking across the country about a flurry of pipe bombs directed at high-profile, Democratic targets, my colleague Sam Tadelman and I were meeting with specialty crop growers, off the grid on the edge of the Everglades. News of the suspicious packages felt a world away as I talked to farmers who had suffered under NAFTA because they couldn’t compete with Mexico. Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Curbelo, both local Republicans, were in attendance at a roundtable at S&L Beans, a three-generation farm in the town of Homestead. At its peak, the farm spanned 7,000 acres. Today, it’s only 2,000 acres.
The day of our visit was 85 degrees and sunny — sunburn territory for me. The story of the farmers in this community is an agonizing one; several who had inherited the farms from their fathers and grandfathers told me that they each encouraged their own sons to find other work. Sal Finocchiaro explained the heart-wrenching dilemma like this: “I told my son to go to college and get a different job. I love him, I want him here, but my advice was not to come here because there is no future ... We're gonna try as hard as possible to make it work, though.”
That son, Salvatore Finocchiaro, is currently working on the farm to continue the family legacy, against his father’s wishes.
This is a community in tremendous economic pain: The open markets and opportunities afforded to Mexico in the NAFTA era steadily put farmers like Sal Finocchiaro out of business in this region of pristine farmland between Miami and the Florida Keys. The Trump Administration, at least so far, has not helped matters much here either; the recently-negotiated NAFTA replacement, known as USMCA, did not include provisions for these farmers.
Kern Carpenter, a tomato farmer in Homestead, put it in bleak terms: “We got left out of the NAFTA renegotiation ... they totally left southern Florida out. Fruits and vegetable growers were ignored, thrown under the bus.”
In my remaining days in Florida, I remembered those conversations even as the quieter voices of Florida’s farmers were drowned out by news of a frantic search for a would-be pipe bomber with vendettas against prominent Democratic leaders and Trump critics.
As fate would have it, the coming day and a half would render South Florida of all places as ground zero for the investigation and the pipe bomb story dominated our time on the ground. By Friday afternoon, Sam and I found ourselves — somehow, impossibly — standing in the very AutoZone parking lot in the sleepy community of Plantation, Fla. where suspect Cesar Sayoc has been arrested just hours before, [interviewing the sole eyewitness to the dramatic takedown](https://cheddar.com/videos/bombing-suspect-charged-but-national-nerves-remain-frayed).
Stories like the would-be pipe bomber dominate the national psyche so intensely at such a moment in time that all other narratives just seem to blur. With the news cycle turning at such a frantic pace, I thought: What chance does the story of the farmers in Homestead have of breaking through? Meeting Sal Finocchiaro and his boy reminded me that their struggle also needs attention if we are going to help them and the next generation of Florida’s farmers to survive.
Concerns over inflation have become one of the biggest worries for executives. A survey from The Conference Board shows that more than 900 CEOs consider inflation a top tier concern, a major shift from last year's survey that had it as a low-level concern. Rebecca Ray, Executive Vice President, Human Capital, The Conference Board joined Cheddar's Opening Bell for more.
Jordan Zakarin, Media Producer at A More Perfect Union, joined Cheddar News to break down the latest from Colorado, where at least 8,700 Kroger employees walked off the job in demand of increased benefits and wages.
With the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing rapidly approaching, clouds of controversy continue to swirl around China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority population, its surveillance state, and security for visiting athletes. Phelim Kine, China correspondent for Politico, joined Cheddar to break down the big storylines surrounding the Beijing Games and highlight what he saw as the complete disregard by top corporate sponsors like P&G, Airbnb, Intel, Visa, and Coca-Cola, for the controversies. "They spend $100 million for every Olympics that they sponsor, and they have frankly shown absolute willful indifference to any type of entreaty to essentially be more vocal about their concerns about human rights in China," he said. Kine also touched on the data privacy fears for athletes as visiting contingents are being told to carry burner phones to avoid security risks.
Texas's six-week abortion ban remains in effect after a federal appeals court ruling on Monday. The U.S. court of appeals for the fifth circuit temporarily transferred the case to the Texas Supreme Court, which is expected to leave the dispute in limbo for months to come. Katie Barlow, attorney and media editor of SCOTUSblog, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Hugh Odom, founder and president of Vertical Consultants, shared his expertise on telecommunications with Cheddar on the safety issue raised about 5G deployment by airlines. The installation was partially delayed again on Tuesday as the airlines warned of potentially catastrophic delays in a letter to the Biden administration. Later, both Verizon and AT&T relented and put a pause on some of the implementations. "The first thing the Biden administration needs to do is get everybody in the room and say, look, aviation industry, identify the problem — wireless industry, come up with a solution," said Odom.
Dave Levinthal, deputy Washington Bureau chief at Insider, joins Cheddar News to discuss Gallup's new survey that reveals more Americans leaned Republican by the end of 2021.
Women's March ATX rally, Saturday, Oct., 2, 2021, at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas. An expected decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming year to severely restrict abortion rights or overturn Roe v. Wade entirely is setting off a renewed round of abortion battles in state legislatures. (AP Photo/Stephen Spillman, File)
Inflation in the U.S. is only getting hotter. The 12-month inflation rate for December 2021 was the highest in nearly 40 years - continuing the trend seen at the close of 2021.
The Consumer Price Index increased 7% in the 12-month period ending in December, marking the fastest increase since 1982. Scott Wren, Senior Global Market Strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, joined Cheddar's Movers for more.
If President Biden runs for re-election in 2024, he may not have anyone to debate. The Republican National Committee sent a letter to the commission on presidential debates, saying the RNC will require candidates to pledge not to participate in those general election debates. Paris Dennard, RNC national spokesperson, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
