Puerto Rico Agriculture Department Secretary Irving Rodríguez acknowledged that the island needs to add 2,000 people to the labor force that picks coffee, a workforce made up mostly of migrants. Rodríguez said the department is pleased with the industry’s progress and its potential to sustain high production, but harvesting the fruit remains a challenge. "If we bring two thousand migrants, we are going to double production. Those are the numbers given by the university on how much a cuerda (a land measure of about 0.97 acre) produces and how much a person can pick," he said on the program Pega’os en la Mañana.
Production is currently around 33,000 quintales, the latest data available. More than 600 migrants now work in this part of the economy. Rodríguez said U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policy does not affect these workers the same way it affects the rest of the migrant population, because their entry and exit is handled through a special visa.
With $80,000, the department outfitted a property in the Castañer area so that, through an agreement, the Puerto Rico Coffee Growers Association can process visas and bring migrants to work the land. Rodríguez said the goal is a replicable model, to be assessed over the coming harvests, that he could present to a mayor or another association that groups farmers and wants to begin bringing in migrant workers.