My name’s David Lane.  I’m with Lane Southern Orchards.  We’re a fifth generation family farm located in Peach County, Georgia which is in the heart of middle Georgia.  Our farm is about five minutes off of I-75.  

I guess some of the main issues when you think about the peach business is you think about labor.  Without labor we wouldn’t be in the peach business.  There’ll never be a machine that will pick or thin a peach.  It’s just too delicate a fruit.  So with that in mind we’ve gone to the H2A program for labor and all of the Mexican workers that come in to our farm, first of all they’re paid by us.  They don’t go through a crew leader.  They’re paid fairly and they’re paid a fair wage.  They’re housed on the property.  They live right there and they work right there.  The H2A program, I know a lot of people hear about illegal aliens and illegal Mexicans taking jobs but under the H2A program we have to offer the jobs to the local workers first and then whatever we can’t fill there, go to the H2A workers.  All H2A workers that come in to us are legal, documented workers.  And they come in, they work under contract for so long a period of time and then they go back.  Without the H2A program, you know, we wouldn’t be able to operate.