Florida strawberry growers are still reeling from last month's freeze. Since the Jan. 3 freeze, strawberry production has dropped more than 30 percent compared with last year, costing growers and farmworkers more than $15 million, the Florida Strawberry Growers Association said Friday. Initially, industry officials projected a 10 percent to 15 percent loss. ...more

February 2, 2008

Margarita Romo hasn't given up on her dream of making Tommytown's Lock Street live up to its other name: Calle de Milagros, or Miracle Street. ...more

January 12, 2008

SEBRING — The steady 2 percent student enrollment growth in Highlands County during the past six years has come to a screeching halt. ...more

January 2, 2008

Authorities say they have busted up a ring of south and east Hillsborough County businesses that preyed on illegal immigrants seeking help with vehicle purchases. ...more

December 20, 2007

Protesting farmworkers picketed Burger King headquarters in Miami last week, trying to shame the fast-food giant into joining two competitors that have agreed to pay field hands an extra penny per pound for the tomatoes the companies buy to garnish their food. ...more

December 8, 2007

AVON PARK — A hired consultant has called the soccer field near Memorial Field a "liability" to the city and recomended it should be overhalued. The city council, meanwhile, was reluctant to close it and instead ordered City Manager C.B. Shirey to "evaluate" the field by Wednesday. Dan Morgan, an agronomist from Lithia who was hired by the city to examine all of its parks, said it was overused, while its current condition creates a safety hazard. The park system in general also had problems. "The potential for injury is good," Morgan said. Though he said he wasn't exactly suggesting it should be shut down entirely, he said, "they need to shut it down and rennovate it." ...more

November 29, 2007

AVON PARK — City Manager C.B. Shirey isn't giving up. He still wants the state legislature to forbid the Highlands County Health Department to issue migrant labor camp permits that violate municipal zoning ordinances. ...more

November 25, 2007

A string of armed robberies targeting migrant workers led to a car chase Tuesday that ended with the arrests of five suspects. ...more

November 7, 2007

PLANT CITY - A string of armed robberies, including the shooting of a migrant worker, led to a car chase that ended today with the arrests of five suspects. Two victims were struck in the head with a gun and one was shot in the thigh during an assault spree against more than six migrant workers, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said. Two of the suspects were injured, including one who suffered a broken leg when officers crashed into the suspects' Jeep Grand Cherokee near 1316 Alsobrook St. ...more

November 6, 2007

SEBRING –– Santos Guadalupe De La Rosa likes to say that farm work is his college education. If that's so, then his education started when he was 7 years old and continues until today as a farm worker specialist for the Florida Non-Profit Housing in Sebring. De La Rosa's family members were all migrant workers. His parents, aunts, grandfather –– the whole clan –– traveled together like gypsies to wherever there was something ready to pick. At age 5, De La Rosa was babysat by his 9 - and 11-year-old sisters. By the time he was 7, he was working alongside his family in the field and traveling the crop circuit. The family was based in the Texas border town of Mercedes, in the Rio Grande Valley. ...more

October 1, 2007