The 22-mile march begins in downtown Tampa and ends Sunday in Lakeland at Publix headquarters. This isnt the first time the group has railed against Publix, one of the countrys largest regional supermarket chains. A protest in central Florida in December drew some 500 people. The group is also urging a boycott against Publix.

Publix said in a statement Thursday that “the CIWs complaints should be addressed with the employers of the workers, not with retailers and their customers.”

Publix spokeswoman Shannon Patten said the groups call to not buy Publix tomatoes could end up hurting Florida residents and farmworkers by lessening demand for an important product. Florida provides most of the nations domestic winter tomato crop.

Patten added that it wasnt the supermarket chains role to negotiate tomato prices.

“That price is set by the grower or packer,” Patten said in the statement. “We do not intervene in labor disputes between suppliers and their employees. Each store carries more than 35,000 different products and tomatoes are a small part of our product mix.”

Coalition spokesman Gerardo Reyes said the march isnt just about the price paid to workers for picking tomatoes. Its also about how the workers are treated in the fields and why corporations should care.

“Forced labor, poverty, and abuse are all too real for Florida farmworkers,” Reyes said.

The coalition wants Publix to stop buying produce from growers that dont meet certain standards for workers in the fields. The group claims it took Publix more than a year to stop buying from two Florida tomato farms where four people forced workers to pick crops and were convicted on slavery charges in 2008.

The coalition, which claims membership of about 4,000 mostly migrant workers, gained national attention in recent years when it reached deals with fast-food chains, including McDonalds and Burger King. Its most recent deal came with food service giant Aramark, which agreed on April 1 to provide 1.5 cents more per pound of tomatoes and to abide by a supplier code of conduct.

According to Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California-Davis, gaining a penny more per pound will have a significant impact on farmworkers.

“It should increase their earnings a lot,” he said, estimating workers could see a 40 percent to 70 percent increase in earnings.

“The farm price has very little to do with the retail price, and thats true of all fruits and vegetables,” he said. “On average, farmers get 20 to 25 cents of each dollar. A fraction of that goes to farmworker. For instance, the labor cost in a dollar head of lettuce usually is less than 10 cents.”

Tomato pickers in Florida earn about 47 cents per 32-pound bucket. That can mean an average of about $12 an hour during the picking season for the hardest workers, usually immigrants who receive no health insurance or overtime. If all Florida tomatoes purchasers joined the penny deal, the coalition estimated farmworkers could nearly double their earnings.

Coalition spokeswoman Julia Perkins said with a penny more per pound, pickers would receive between 2.2 cents and 2.4 cents per pound of tomatoes. Still, she said its hard to specify how much pickers paychecks would increased because some growers might not pass along the increase.

“The idea is to get all of the buyers to do this,” she said.

In addition, this years tomato crop is not a good representative of a normal year, she said, due to cold winter weather in Florida that severely damaged the crop.

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At issue is how much power farmers have as they produce cattle, hogs and chickens for large companies such as JBS SA, Smithfield Farms and Tyson Foods. The new rules will govern how meatpackers buy their cattle on an open market and what demands poultry companies can make on the independent contractors who raise their chickens.

“We have high hopes for them,” said Mike Weaver, a West Virginia poultry farmer who raises chickens under contract for Pilgrims Pride. “Weve been promised that there will be sweeping changes in these new rules, but nobodys seen them.”

The 2008 Farm Bill required updated rules but left the specifics to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farm state lawmakers such as Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, had long been concerned a lack of competition among meat companies was driving down prices farmers were paid for their cattle and poultry.

Just four companies buy and slaughter 80 percent of all U.S. beef, limiting competition in the meat industry. Meanwhile, big poultry companies dictate chicken prices and can demand farmers take on debt to upgrade their chicken houses for the companies benefit.

Farmers such as Weaver, who has met with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, think the new leaders in the USDAs antitrust division will push for tougher and more far-reaching regulations than previous administrations. Some believe the new rules could be the strongest antitrust protections imposed since the Great Depression.

Theres also a risk they will drive up the cost of meat, eating into meatpackers profits or pushing up prices at grocery stores if companies pass on the expense.

The USDA wouldnt say when its proposed rules will be released, but the Farm Bill requires new regulations be in place by this summer. The bill lays out a broad outline of what the rules must address, but the all-important details wont be known until a proposal becomes public.

The regulations come at a time when the Obama administration has begun a series of meetings across the country to examine competition in agriculture. Officials with the Agriculture and Justice Departments, who are conducting the hearings, have said they dont know what kind of action could result, but its clear the meat industry is under more scrutiny than it has been for years.

Among issues expected to be addressed in the new rules is when its illegal for companies to choose one producers cattle or hogs over anothers.

Ranchers have complained that meatpackers make their choices with an aim toward keeping prices low. For example, meatpackers might pass by independent ranchers to buy cattle raised under contracts that guarantee processors a lower price.

Iowa hog farmer Chuck Wirtz is torn about the rules. He sells most of his hogs on the open market and feels squeezed by big meatpackers. At the same time, he wouldnt want the rules to restrict the market too much.

Wirtz is worried the new rule could say such a deal is illegal if another farmer is passed over.

Such details have been worked over for months within the obscure USDA agency that regulates competition in the meat industry, called the Packers and Stockyards Administration. The PSA was formed in 1921 to limit the power of big meatpackers that dominated the industry.

Ranchers have long criticized the agency as toothless. A 2006 government report said the agency was slow to bring cases and understaffed. But some hope it will be tougher under the direction of its new administrator, Dudley Butler, a lawyer who specialized in suing poultry companies.

Butler declined to comment on the rules.

The new rules also would determine when poultry companies could require farmers to take out additional loans and improve chicken houses by adding new equipment. Farmers resist the investments because although they might earn more money after the upgrades, the extra income doesnt offset the extra debt and cost of operating the houses.

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Mike Meissen, vice president for value added agriculture for the Iowa Area Development Group, estimated each dairy cow has an economic impact of $15,000 a year.

“So if a thousand cows go into a county, thats $15 million,” said Meissen, whose group is made up of rural electric cooperatives that work to bring new business to Iowa.

While officials in other states offer California farmers a number of reasons to consider moving, one of the biggest incentives seems to be the promise of fewer regulations.

Its a message that Michael Marsh, chief executive of the Modesto, Calif.-based Western Union Dairymen, said resonates in a state he calls a “regulatory nightmare for farmers.” From air and water quality rules to reporting odometer readings on farm vehicles, regulations make it difficult for farmers to do business in California, he said.

“There are regulations you have here that you dont have in any other state or around the world,” said Marsh, whose organization represents 60 percent of Californias dairy producers.

Darin Dykstra left California in 2002 to start a dairy in northwest Iowa. Several factors drew him and his wife to Iowa, he said, including ties to Dordt College, the Sioux Center school they graduated from, and Wells Dairy, which buys milk from the Dykstras 3,000 cows and is known for its Blue Bunny ice cream.

Dykstra also likes the slower pace, access to Christian schools for his children and distance from urban sprawl.

“Living in Southern California, there used to be grape vineyards next to our dairy. Now there are houses there,” he said. “Its not ideal to have your farm in the middle of all that and slowly we were getting pushed out - all the dairies were getting pushed out - so you have to move to the Central Valley or move out of state, and I chose to move out of state.”

Because land is cheaper in Iowa, he also could afford to grow feed corn on about 1,750 acres, rather than buying it as he did in California.

Dykstra still owns part of his familys farm in California. But he said he was glad to be away from the states regulations, such the required installation of expensive methane digesters over manure lagoons accompanied by a ban on emissions from the engines the digesters power.

“Dairymen are trying to do the right thing, but the state is putting up road blocks,” he said.

“Other states come to farm shows and say Come to our state where this is little regulation, low taxes, jobs, state grants. So for a lot of farmers, they look at that and the grass may be greener,” Marsh said.

Iowa, which is known mostly for hogs and corn, has been able to attract enough dairies from California and elsewhere to become the nations 12th largest dairy producer.

Texas also has lured dairies with what it claims are less onerous regulations, an attractive climate and large feed supplies. Its dairy cow population has grown from about 17,000 in 2000 to more than 200,000 this year, said Ellen Jordan, a dairy specialist with the Texas A&M extension. Overall, Texas ranks No. 8 among dairy states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Producers who come here know what the regulations are,” she said. “They can get a permit to operate and they know the area they are choosing is very ag friendly.”

Meanwhile, the number of California dairies dropped from more than 2,200 dairies in 1999 to 1,700 in 2009.

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Grahm, who owns Bonny Doon winery on the Northern California coast, is one of a growing number of farmers in the United States employing a holistic farming philosophy sometimes called “organic-plus.” Biodynamic farming views land as a self-contained living organism, encouraging respect for the soils integrity and eschewing not just chemicals but anything that comes from outside the farm.

It developed in Austria in the 1920s in reaction to the growing use of synthetic fertilizers. Fertility in Grahms vineyard comes from cover crops that return nutrients to the soil and manure from goats roaming the landscape.

But biodynamic farming also includes elements that might make even die-hard organic devotees recoil - consulting a calendar on the phases of the moon and the alignment of planets, and using soil preparations made with manure thats been stored in cow horns, buried for a season, then mixed with water and sprayed on the land.

Grahm, 57, is used to the eye-rolling that happens right around the mention of “cow horns.” But he says people who care about the quality of their food and what goes into it should be interested in biodynamic agriculture.

“Its not just that it doesnt have toxins and it wont kill you,” he said. “Its actually better for you. It lasts longer on the shelf; it tastes better.”

Demeter, the organization that certifies growers as biodynamic, has 150 members in the United States who have completed or are working on the three-year transition from conventional agriculture.

Although the number is small, the membership has grown by 20 percent a year for the past four years. Biodynamic farmers often seek organic certification as well.

Grahm began following biodynamic principles about nine years ago after working with farmers in France. His vineyard was certified in 2007.

Winemakers are on the forefront of the movement in the U.S., Grahm said, in part because biodynamic farming fosters the expression of terroir - the “sense of place” a particular geography bestows on a certain grape.

“You dont deform the character of the environment,” Grahm said. “You respect it. And you can taste that difference. I dont know why it works, but it works.”

Other biodynamic winemakers in California include Grgich Hills Estate, Benziger Family Winery and Fetzer Vineyards.

Steiners answer became the checklist Demeter uses in its evaluations.

“People use words like voodoo and witchcraft. … The truth is, its your great grandfathers farming. Its preindustrial,” said Elizabeth Candelario, Demeters marketing director. “Steiners answer to them was we have to go back to the time before farms started to be viewed as factories.”

Gena Nonini, 46, a third-generation San Joaquin Valley farmer who grows citrus, vegetables and grapes, is comfortable talking about some of the elements considered most esoteric by conventional farmers.

The moon, planets and sun all exert an influence on the earth, some of it in ways that can be measured, such as gravity and the ebb and flow of tides, she said. Why shouldnt they also affect the sprouting of a seed or the ripening of fruit?

“I see the farm as a symphony, and the farmer as a conductor,” Nonini said. “The universe writes the music.”

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At Publix supermarkets on Floridas Gulf Coast, shoppers can buy a pound of locally grown strawberries for $1.25. Prices elsewhere were a bit higher: Sams Club in Fort Worth, Texas, had a pound for $1.49, while Meijer in Ann Arbor, Mich., offered a pound for $1.66.

Shoppers can thank the freezing weather and rain at the beginning of the year.

Florida is the nations biggest strawberry producer in January and February, while California is the largest in the spring. This year, Floridas coldest temperatures in recent memory damaged strawberry fields and delayed harvests.

At nearly the same time, heavy rains swept across Southern Californias berry growing regions, raising fears their crops also could be damaged.

Prices paid to U.S. strawberry growers reached record highs, averaging $2.18 per pound in January and $1.55 per pound in February compared with 2009s averages of $1.16 and $1.28 in those two months. But then Floridas harvest got going in earnest.

Ted Campbell, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, explained that farmers plant different varieties of berries in hopes of harvesting on a staggered schedule.

This year, the varieties matured late and mostly all at once, and by the beginning of March, “every plant was bursting loose” with berries, he said. Farmers harvested as much as they could, Campbell said, but “you couldnt have put enough labor in the field to pick it all.”

California, meanwhile, began to see fruit on plants that had gone dormant during the rains and is now producing many more berries than usual for this time of year, Chillon said.

Instead of letting the fruit die in the fields, Gary Wishnatzki, 54, opened his fields in Plant City for folks to pick their own berries - for free.

“It really hurts a grower to have to lose your crop,” said Wishnatzki, Floridas largest strawberry shipper and grower. “Its like your baby.”

Other Florida farmers ended up plowing over their strawberry plants at the end of March because they needed to make room for spring melons and other produce, Campbell said.

He objected to news reports portraying farmers as “greedy” for not picking their fruit after prices dropped as “unfair and untrue.”

Farmers have to pay for labor, packaging, trucking and cooling the fruit, he said. This spring, strawberry prices didnt always cover those costs, he said.

“It was like a perfect storm that developed this year,” Wishnatzki said. “The events of this season were totally unprecedented.”

He said he was fortunate because he was able to freeze many of his berries and sell them to others, who are turning the fruit into juice.

Other farmers have been helped by grocery store chains that have agreed to buy berries in bulk.

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Two days later, she had a miscarriage.

Miranda, now 38 and still working the fields, said the doctor at the hospital told her the pesticides were not to blame for her miscarriage because she didnt ingest any chemicals. But she believes otherwise. Other farmworkers from the same field also fell ill, she said, but they were too afraid to report their symptoms or seek medical attention.

Miranda and the rest of Californias 700,000 farmworkers may soon receive greater protection under a proposed expansion of the states nationally renowned pesticide safety program.

A bill moving through the state Assembly would require laboratories that test for pesticide poisoning to report their data to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Currently, labs only report test results to patients physicians, not to any state agency.

The bill would allow health officials in the nations largest agricultural state to more accurately track pesticide exposure and implement safety precautions, said Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, who wrote the bill.

“California would be the first state to collect this data on such a large scale, coordinating multiple labs,” said Margaret Reeves, senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network North America, which is a sponsor of Navas bill. “California should be a model in setting the path for national monitoring of pesticide illness.”

California generates more than 11 percent of U.S. agricultural sales. In 2008, its farmworkers handled about 5 million pounds of pesticides containing organophosphates and carbamates - chemicals that can cause infertility, nerve damage and other serious health effects, according to the Department of Pesticide Regulation.

Pesticides used for agricultural purposes accounted for 22 percent of the nearly 1,500 cases of suspected pesticide exposure in California in 2007, the most recent year the department has analyzed. The largest share of reported cases - 45 percent - occurred in non-agricultural circumstances, such as home gardening and the shipment or manufacturing of pesticides.

Under a state law in place since the early 1970s, employers must track the number of hours workers spend handling organophosphate or carbamate pesticides. Workers who do so regularly must undergo periodic blood tests to check for possible pesticide poisoning.

Nine labs throughout the state have approval to perform this test, which checks for a decrease in cholinesterase, or ChE, an enzyme essential to nervous system function. Pesticide exposure can lead to a drop in ChE, as can chronic malnutrition, liver damage and various other conditions.

Employers and physicians must report abnormal test results or suspected pesticide illnesses to their countys health department within 24 hours. The department then alerts the county agricultural commissioner and sends a pesticide illness report to the Department of Pesticide Regulation.

Nava said his bill would help bridge the gap by requiring labs to report to the state and combining individual lab results in a statewide electronic database. Patterns would be easier to detect, he said, and officials could intervene quickly at sites with particularly high levels of pesticide exposure.

“The way things are structured now, the full information is not available to public agencies that have a specific responsibility to follow up on farmworker health,” Nava said. “This makes no sense from a public safety standpoint.”

Nava modeled his proposal, in part, on the pesticide safety program in Washington state, which has been compiling ChE test results for several years.

The Department of Pesticide Regulation has not taken an official position on the legislation, which is awaiting a hearing in the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee.

Department spokeswoman Lea Brooks said the bills reporting requirements would be difficult to implement because labs are not told whether a ChE test is linked to potential pesticide exposure or some other health concern. However, she said she wasnt aware of a reason why doctors couldnt provide that information in the future.

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“Theyre barking up the right tree,” said Brad Barnes, associate dean of culinary education at The Culinary Institute of America.

Growing interest in Indian and other international cuisines, along with greater awareness of intolerance to gluten, a protein found in many grains, have fostered an interest in lentils and legumes, Barnes and others said. A general push toward eating healthier also has made high-fiber, high-protein, low-fat legumes more appealing, said Tina Ujlaki, executive food editor at Food and Wine magazine.

“I think a lot of people are trying to move meat to the side of the plate rather than the center of the plate,” Ujlaki said. “More people are trying legumes, vegetables. Also, people are trying to cut costs, and these ingredients are not that expensive.

“Theres big bank for your buck moneywise and healthwise.”

The interest comes at a good time for farmers, who have seen production of lentils and dry peas rebound after drought ravaged the crop in 2008 in the top two producing states of North Dakota and Montana. The U.S. had record crops last year, producing 1.7 billion pounds of dry peas and 590 million pounds of lentils, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Right now, most of the market for the two crops is overseas, with two-thirds or more of U.S.-grown peas and lentils being exported, said Eric Bartsch, general manager of Bismarck-based United Pulse Trading Inc. Much of the demand has been in drought-ridden areas of India and other parts of South Asia as well as Turkey.

“Demand in the U.S. is still not huge, but it is growing,” he said. “We see it as definitely becoming a major part of our markets in the future.”

Domestic demand has increased with the growth of ethnic minorities, but Barnes said more people of all races have become interested in Indian and other foreign foods. The Internet has made it easier to research international foods and find ingredients.

“With the information pipeline out there, its certainly easier for someone interested in food to discover Morocco,” he offered as an example.

“Global flavors and perspective in food and the culinary arts are growing every day,” he added.

Farmers hoping to capitalize on this interest have formed the American Pulse Association, a joint venture of the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council and the US Dry Bean Council. Chief executive Tim McGreevy said he expects new research and other efforts “will have a huge impact on domestic consumption here in the next five years.”

“Were heavily weighted toward traditional uses of these products, which is soups and stews,” McGreevy said. “There hasnt been extensive research done on how these pulse flours can be worked into breads, tortillas … muffins, cookies.”

Industry leaders are holding a planning session this week, in Beltsville, Md., with about 50 science and industry experts. After they come up with specific plans on how to proceed they will seek funding from agencies such as the Agriculture Department and the National Institutes of Health, McGreevy said.

Ujlaki and Barnes said products made with legume flour would probably be attractive to people who are allergic to gluten or have celiac disease, a digestive disorder triggered by proteins found in wheat, barley and rye.

“If you go to a health food store, youll see half the cookie aisle is gluten-free, half the crackers are gluten-free,” Ujlaki said.

The final part of the American Pulse Associations plan is to promote legumes environmental benefits. Unlike corn and other crops that require a lot of expensive fertilizer, legumes put nitrogen back into the soil.

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Still, lifting of the ban is good news for U.S. pork farmers, who were hit with a triple whammy of high feed costs, a drop in demand at home with the recession and import bans by more than two dozen countries worried about transmission of swine flu, also known as H1N1.

“Our producers have been losing money since 2007 … and the fact that China is open is very important,” said Nick Giordano, vice president and counsel for international affairs for the Washington D.C.-based National Pork Producers Council.

China agreed to lift the ban last week during a visit by U.S. trade representatives, Giordano said. Some minor details were being worked out this week, and Giordano said he expected pork shipments to China to resume within two weeks.

Russia, another major market for U.S. pork, lifted its ban tied to swine flu last fall but continued to refuse U.S. pork because of unrelated - and farmers believe unmerited - concerns about food safety, Giordano said. Russias concerns are being met with a special testing program and shipments could resume soon, he said.

Pork to be sent to Russia is tested at processing plants for the antibiotic tetracycline and pathogens.

Before the bans, about 20 percent of U.S. pork was exported, and China and Russia were among the biggest buyers. In 2008, China bought nearly $700 million in U.S. pork, ranking third behind Japan and Mexico. Russia was fifth with $476 million.

Still, Iowa State University livestock economist Shane Ellis said resuming exports to those countries would probably boost sales only a bit. Exports to China were already beginning to drop off in late 2008, well before the swine flu controversy, Ellis said.

“In 2008, they were reaching out because pork was cheap, they were having earthquakes and diseases that were affecting their hogs and they had the Olympics and they wanted to have quality meat products for the extra crowds,” he said. “They got in big and as we hit August and after the Olympics, it flat-lined and they just werent buying.”

China, the worlds largest producer and consumer of pork, doesnt like to depend on imports, Ellis said.

“They have policies to shore up their own pork production and to say they are all of a sudden going to quit producing pork, its not going to happen,” he said.

Of course, any additional exports will help U.S. producers, Ellis said. He estimated total exports will rebound this year to about the level in 2008, when China accounted for about 6 percent of U.S. pork exports.

“Its not a negative thing,” Wirtz said. “I just dont see it impacting things like some people do.”

Iowa is by far the nations biggest hog producer, raising almost twice as many as second-ranked North Carolina.

The reopening of foreign markets comes as the market for pork is rebounding. The U.S. economy is sputtering back to life, and Americans are less concerned about catching swine flu from pork, a fear health officials have said was groundless because the nations hogs were not to blame for the epidemic.

After losses of $20 or more per head in 2009, Ellis said farmers could see profits of at least $10 a head this spring.

Consumer prices arent likely to increase, however, he said. The price meat processors pay farmers is only a small fraction of the cost of producing pork.

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Japan consumes about 80 percent of the worlds Atlantic bluefin tuna, and the possibility of a ban had consumers and fish wholesalers worried that prices for the pink and red meat of the fish - called “hon-maguro” here - would soar or that it might even vanish from some menus.

Stocks of the fish have fallen by 60 percent from 1997 to 2007, and environmentalists argue that a trading ban imposed by the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, would protect the fish.

But the Japanese government and fishing industry say an outright trading ban is too drastic a step, and that catch quotas set by another body, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, should be more strictly enforced to protect the species from overfishing. In November, ICCAT cut the annual global quota by 40 percent to 13,500 tons.

“Rather than ban exports, we should make sure to limit the number caught,” said Kazuhiro Takayama, a fish wholesaler at Tokyos sprawling Tsukiji fish market. “A lot of people depend on this fish for their livelihoods.”

Economic concerns appeared to trump environmental ones, as fishing nations from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean complained that any ban would damage their fishing communities and that fears of the stocks collapse were overstated.

The proposed trading ban garnered little support at the CITES meeting, with 68 countries voting against it, 20 for and 30 abstentions. The European Union asked that implementation be delayed until May 2011 to give authorities time to respond to concerns about overfishing, but that proposal also fell flat. The measure needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

After the vote, Masanori Miyahara, chief counselor of Japans Fisheries Agency, said pressure would be on his country and others that depend on the Atlantic bluefin to abide by ICCAT quotas.

But environmentalists say ICCAT has repeatedly failed to enforce catch limits - and that the quotas themselves are insufficient.

“ICCAT is not able to manage sustainable fishing,” said Wakao Hanaoka, ocean campaigner with Greenpeace in Tokyo.

“For Japanese consumers, this is the wrong direction,” he added. “Consumers here love to eat sushi and want to pass this along to the next generation, but what the Japanese government is doing is totally opposite to this.”

Junichi Hakuta, a 52-year-old fish wholesaler at Tsukiji market who relies on tuna for half his business, acknowledged that he was worried about declining bluefin stocks, but said the media attention to the issue would contribute to conservation efforts.

Coming amid criticism of Japans whaling program - as well as an Oscar award for the film “The Cove,” which depicts the dolphin-hunting village of Taiji in southwestern Japan - the tuna issue has caused some fishermen to feel that aspects of their culture are being attacked.

“Its wrong - people telling us what we can and cant eat,” said Yukio Unagizawa, a wholesaler at Tsukiji market. “Foreigners eat cows. … Catching dolphins is part of that villages tradition.”

The tuna vote was a hot topic in hundreds of fishing villages that dot Japans coasts. While fisherman that ply local waters generally opposed the ban, some said they could benefit from it because of a likely spike in prices of domestically caught tuna.

But Ichiro Murayama, an official in the fishing cooperative in the small town of Katsuura, near Taiji, said that was a short-term view. A move to prohibit trade in certain areas could make it easier to ban others, he said.

“This wave of putting restrictions on the fishing industry is getting stronger,” Murayama said. “This is a trend that could lead to banning tuna fishing even in coastal waters.”

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The crackdown has shaken up dairy farmers, some of whom struggle to fill milking jobs and often rely on foreign farmworkers, who may have entered the country illegally. Many farmers are reluctant to talk about the issue publicly for fear of bringing trouble on themselves, and their workers are even more hesitant.

Gervais agreed to speak to The Associated Press after his case was closed, saying he hoped to help other dairy farmers and push for them to be allowed to hire workers under a temporary worker visa program.

Gervais Family Farms was inspected as part of a national effort the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced in November to check the records of 1,000 employers around the country who were suspected of having hired illegal immigrants. Businesses that knowingly hired or continue to hire unauthorized workers could face fines or criminal charges.

ICE will likely release an update on these cases in coming months, spokeswoman Gillian Brigham said. In a similar audit announced in July, ICE reviewed more than 85,000 worker documents from more than 650 businesses, determined at least 14,000 were questionable and issued at least $2.3 million in fines, she said.

Gervais, 36, who owns the farm about 20 miles from the Canadian border with his three brothers and parents, said he wasnt fined or charged. He handed over employees I-9 forms, which verify they can legally work in the U.S, and a copy of the payroll.

“We were prepared in the sense that we had I-9s on everybody,” he said, adding that his wife, who does the bookkeeping, had taken several classes the state offered on documenting workers.

“The problem is the documentation they (workers) give you, you take it that its truthful and accurate,” he said. “You look at it, and unless you can see something thats obviously fraudulent about it, youve got to take it for what it is, which is what we did.”

But after the visit by the inspector, three Hispanic workers left the farm. Seven, who are permanent residents, remain.

ICE inspects farms and businesses when it receives tips about illegal workers or when they are near or connected to important infrastructure and resources, such as food supplies, nuclear reactors, water treatment systems and transportation hubs, Brigham said. Gervais said he was told the selection was random and doesnt know why his farm was targeted.

Gervais urged other dairy farmers to follow the law and keep documentation to avoid fines or criminal charges.

“All businesses should be doing their I-9s,” he said. “If theyre not, theyre foolish.”

With 950 cows that need to be milked three times a day, Gervais said hes struggled to find reliable workers. Many apply only when they cant find work elsewhere. They often have drug or alcohol problems or troubles at home, he said. He pays his staff $10 to $12 an hour, but said milking can be monotonous and not everyone enjoys it or is good working with animals.

“Theres not enough people that want to do it. Thats the real, true issue,” Gervais said. “I mean theres good Americans that can milk, but theres not enough of them that can and want to.”

He was irked that dairy farms - having endured a year of the lowest milk prices in memory - were targeted by investigators.

“With the situation the dairy industry is in, we really dont need this right now,” he said. “Were got plenty going on just making a living.”

But it could have been worse, he said.

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