Rick Lagaah estimates he lost half of his crop because he couldn’t find enough pickers to harvest his 100 acres of apples. “I only found seven pickers,” said the 27-year-old orchardist in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, who says he has never experienced such a severe shortage of workers during his seven years of farming. He normally has no trouble finding pickers through the agricultural employment office at the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Centre or the nearby drop-in center. Lagaah said this year he was compelled to scour downtown parks, talking to transients and homeless people in search of workers. However, even raising […]