Bishop hears Suffolk farmers' concerns

Farming is big business in Suffolk County, ranking with tourism and high-tech businesses as a major part of the economy and boasting some 650 farms that produce $270 million a year in gross income.

Mindful of that fact, U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop came to Calverton Saturday to hear what farmers had on their minds.

He got an earful from the Long Island Farm Bureau -- about everything from immigration to environmental protection to the federal deficit to a lesson about the Oglala Lakota tribal leader Crazy Horse. .

Bishop (D-Southampton) told the group of 25 people, including some local officials, that failure to implement immigration reform has been one of the biggest shortcomings of the federal government for years -- on both sides of the aisle -- and that it had a direct impact on agriculture.

Farmers often rely on immigrant laborers to work the fields because most native-born Americans don't want the backbreaking jobs, bureau officials said. But without a guest worker program or some other vehicle, it's increasingly difficult to obtain the foreign workers -- many of them Latin American immigrants -- legally.

"Unfortunately, we have allowed demagoguery and anger and emotion to rule the debate" over immigration reform, Bishop said.

Still, with the current focus in Washington on the federal budget and deficit, uprisings in the Middle East, and other issues, "In my opinion, there is no chance of immigration reform legislation" coming this year. "I would love to be wrong."

Some of the farmers also questioned Bishop about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which they said had become overzealous, creating a maze of new regulations.

Joseph M. Gergela III, executive director of the farm bureau, told Bishop that "nobody cares more about the land and the water than farmers do," since they and their families and workers are the ones most directly exposed to pesticides and other potential hazards.

But Gergela said farmers have little choice but to use pesticides in order to protect hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of investments in their fields in the form of planted crops. "We cannot farm without protecting our investment," he said.

While farmers support environmental protection, "there comes a point it has to be balanced," Gergela said.

Bishop agreed, saying, "The key to any environmental regulation is balance."

He noted that farming in Suffolk -- a tradition reaching back centuries and boasting generations of people keeping the family businesses alive -- is under threat because of farmland vanishing to make way for housing.

"I think our area is diminished if farming is diminished," he said.

Frank Beyrodt, 43, of Baiting Hollow, a third-generation sod farmer and president of the farm bureau, said he hopes Bishop will do everything he can to keep farming in Suffolk alive.

"There's a tradition there. There's a heritage there," Beyrodt said. But it's becoming "a dwindling way of life."