On CNN there is a farmer in Northern California who can't find workers to pick his crops.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

On CNN there is a farmer in Northern California who can't find workers to pick his crops because of Trump immigration policies. There are able bodied unemployed Deplorables who whine about the paucity of jobs. Why don't they go and take those jobs? Do they think they are too good for them? Hmmm....

[demosincebirth]

1. I wonder who the farmer voted for?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. The farmer was a Mexican American who was born here. I think he voted for Clinton but I'm not sure.

I was more focused on the fact he can't get people to pick his crops.

[workinclasszero]

19. Another election surprise: Many Hispanics backed Trump

Another election surprise: Many Hispanics backed Trump
Alan Gomez , USA TODAY Published 2:57 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2016 |

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/11/09/hispanic-vote-election-2016-donald-trump-hillary-clinton/93540772/

[itcfish]

83. According to that

Chart, the majority of Hispanics voted for Hillary. The Cuban community never votes for a democrat. They still blame JFK for Castro.

[HAB911]

86. On top of that, the cuban community brought us

Rubio and Cruz

[workinclasszero]

17. Yeah

[nikibatts]

77. Send in the coal miners.

[workinclasszero]

78. MAGA baby!

[Warpy]

3. The jobs pay shit

and after they pay for the gas for the SUV to get there, they won't have enough left over for a case of beer.

So what's the point?

I've done enough picking at "u-pick-em" farms to know the work is hard on the back and knees, but that it's much nicer to be out in the sun and fresh air than it is to be cooped up in an office or on a factory floor. If growers weren't so damned cheap when it comes to paying their workers, they'd likely find help, especially weekend workers looking for extra cash.

However, until that dawns on them, I'm afraid that they'll take the brunt of Asshole's stupid policies. Then we will as produce becomes scarcer and more expensive.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. I doubt your nominal American can last one week in the field.

I watched a CNN special on picking with Morgan Spurlock who was in reasonably good shape. Beside being painfully inept and needing lots of help he could barely move at the end of the week.

[Warpy]

8. Any physical work does that

It takes a month or more for your body to adjust to doing it full time. Men who spend their lives in offices or studios and play squash on the weekend usually aren't in that kind of shape and will find that out very quickly when they dig ditches, mine coal, or work in a field.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. Norman Mailer figured out sixty years ago

Norman Mailer figured out sixty years ago that the advent of the modern office has erased any distinction when it comes to manual labor between the sexes.


Here's an interesting article. Farmers can't find native workers who last at $20.00 an hour:

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/

[machoneman]

49. You got it!

Having worked myself into shape in the 70's each summer working for a concrete construction firm to pay for college, I was never in better shape. Yet the work was grueling, hard and tough even on a young man. The pay was great for the era though.

Today, four decades later, I wonder if I could even do 2-3 days of that hard work even though I hit the gym all the time, work out at home and bike like a maniac. Farm work is like that too. I doubt that even a 35 year old could leave the office and do a day or two in the fields. My hats off to all who can do that hard work!

[HoneyBadger]

62. Try working at UPS during holidays

Did it when I was a kid. Putting packages onto 6 conveyor belts in a Lucy show candy episode sort of assembly line is something special. Like weightlifting for the entire shift. Yet they find people. Perhaps they pay better.

[demosincebirth]

79. UPS is union

[HoneyBadger]

80. Not for the first month

[demosincebirth]

99. Most unions work like that. The companies probationary period

[IndianaKev]

35. The farmer can't find workers to pick his crops...

for what he's willing to pay.

[Egnever]

55. Cute but

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/watch-our-hbo-episode-about-alabamas-harsh-anti-immigration-laws

[RedWedge]

4. Sounds like he's not paying enough.

Isn't that what the free market would do? Pay more to get a resource that's in demand?

[dumbcat]

6. That's exactly right

He is not offering enough (demand) to attract to attract the workers (supply.) He just wants to keep on getting cheap labor like he used to. Markets adapt.

[6000eliot]

21. You think he would just eat those costs?

You'd be paying ten dollars for a head of lettuce. That's how capitalism works.

[Doremus]

56. Company profits today are oftentimes exorbitant.

Not speaking directly of this farmer because I haven't read the article but there used to be a day when owners/management shared more of the profit pie with their labor force. Employees today are often expected to bear the brunt of cost cutting and consumers expected to cover any additional expenses.

It's beyond time that owners/shareholders/CEOs take a haircut with everybody else.

[Flaleftist]

98. I don't see prices going up that much.

What is a head of lettuce now? A dollar? I think one can pick more than a few heads of lettuce an hour.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

31. Markets also adapt by bankrupting small farmers who have to raise prices due to higher labor costs.

Because they have to charge higher prices they become less competitive against the MegaAgriCorporations that are more mechanized and, soon, more automated.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

32. Not as simple as you imply

See post 31 close by above.

[RedWedge]

33. Oh, perfectly simple! If his business can't compete, it shouldn't exist!

Thus speaks the market!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

37. Seems like you have switched to sarcasm after making a straight-up capitalist thesis in your post #4

[RedWedge]

42. Where's the lie, though.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

45. Please don't try to play both ends against the middle.

To create a metaphor, that's like trying to drive a red wedge into a blue party. I assume and hope that is NOT what you are doing, that you have good intentions. Please clarify your remarks to prove my hope correct. "Where's the lie" is cryptic and ineffective at the goal of clarification.

[RedWedge]

47. I think you're seeing things that aren't there, but I'm happy to hold forth.

If you can't get good employees, you pay more. If you can't pay more, you need to reassess your business model. If it's unsustainable because larger companies can scale better than you can, you find something else to compete on or go out of business. Businesses that rely on artificially cheap labor are living on borrowed time, and the time ran out before some of them expected, and I have no sympathy for them.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

53. What you say is narrowly true, including that you've no sympathy for businesses that can't compete.

Mega-corporations rely on artificially cheap labor. I don't know how you can neglect that obvious fact. It is a major driving force in the horrendous widening wealth & income gap and the stagnation of middle class aspirations. The wealth & income gap is a major force tearing this country apart and it will get worse before it gets better.

I'm not accusing you of being a hard-right capitalist libertarian, but what you stated is completely in accordance with a ruthless hard-right capitalist version of libertarianism.

Generally progressives, liberals, and union supporters take a more balanced view that holds that large corporations have advantages not available to sole proprietors and small businesses. Further, they hold that it is in society's best interests to encourage and support some (but not all) ways of helping them compete against the mega-corporations. Republicons are all about denying increases to minimum wage, strangling unions, reducing benefits, cutting education, and making it harder for workers to counteract the tremendous pressures big corporations impose on them.

Progressives, liberals, and union supporters are motivated by sympathy but in the final analysis they have compelling rational societal reasons to block such pure unadulterated robber-barron darwinistic capitalism.

There is more to a well-functioning prosperous harmonious society than bottom-lines and bean counting.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

68. The problem is they can't find American born pickers at $20.00 an hour.

I'm not a farmer but I would think a farmer would be hard pressed to build a business model that works paying pickers much more than that.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

69. Yes. . . . nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

81. The problem seems to be...

The problem seems to be attracting native workers because the work is extraordinarily demanding, not because the wages aren't competitive. The latter might have been the problem long ago but the evidence suggests it isn't any more.

You lost your interlocutor. You should have asked him or her if we should make being jobless so onerous that people take jobs they aren't remotely fit for .

It's the work, not the pay.

[PotatoChip]

92. They'd find them in N. Maine.

$20.00/hr is damn good money for Maine potato harvest pickers.

Only 18% are migrant workers. The rest are locals.

[haele]

95. Won't find them in California. Most native California kids are too soft.

Even the very same kids of ranchers and farmers, who spend most of their time in pick-up trucks driving around watching the workers, or those "hardy country kids" who live in logging communities in Northern California crying about family logging jobs going away.
As for the locals who grew up in the suburbs and cities - it would take them more than a season to get in enough shape to do that sort of work all the time.
Some of my growing up years were in central California during the mid 1960's; we lived in an area where the main economy was sugar beets, table grapes, lettuce and cabbage, broccoli/cauliflower, strawberries, and beef ranching; much of the family dinner plate came from the "you pick 'em" gleaning after the migrants had gone through and harvested most of the crops; it was f'in hard work. And frankly, very few of the locals actually worked on the farms even then. They depended on migrants; Blacks, Mexicans, and Japanese; Russians who had fled the Soviet state, the sinewy white children and grandchildren of Oakies who had never recovered from the Great Depression and were still wandering, living out of the family camper or station wagon looking for long-term work. These were people who lived job to job across the Western US, and half their paychecks typically ended up going to a "company store" in regions where the farmer or rancher had become part of a conglomerate that was cutting costs by "providing" cheap tar-paper and cardboard "housing" and second hand/remainder sundries to their workers as part of their "pay" over long planting or harvest seasons.
I remember why Cesar Chavez and the UFW struck.

Back in the 1960's and 70's, you couldn't get locals who were grooming their kids to go to college or benefit from modern society to work California produce fields for even three times the minimum wage at the time. "Farm Hand" was not a job consideration for most kids who were at least planning to have the option to be independent of the family business.

BTW, these very same kids would later complain about "Estate Taxes" making them sell the family farm, because frankly, the work was too hard for them to maintain by themselves if they weren't willing to work a deal with the migrants and the UFW for the necessary labor.
And if one of the heirs wanted to cash out their share instead of sticking with the farm, then the whole group of heirs would end up having to sell because of the capital gains tax, not the estate tax, because most times the only way to buy the heir out was to sell some of the land to a developer...which had quintupled (at least) in value since Grandpa bought the land back in the 1910's or 1920's...

Finally, you certainly could expect an uproar from the population in general if farmers and ranchers actually paid their workforce what hiring locals a local living wage plus health benefits would cost. Maybe in Maine, the set-up is Marxist and the locals (the workers) have a stake in the farm or harvest. But here in California, communities don't have stakes in the local farms or ranches. And corporate farms certainly won't give local communities a stake, either...

Haele

[RedWedge]

71. I'm curious why you're so interested in nailing me to the wall, or why it's hard for you to see

slogans of the peculiar brand of American capitalism that I parrot on a liberal message board for what they are -- as a cynical cheer against those who claim a truly free market can't support "artificial" prices set on labor through collective bargaining, or who claim that someone who isn't happy with their current compensation can always go find something else. "Republicons [sic] are all about denying increases to minimum wage, strangling unions, reducing benefits," etc., you say, am I'm guessing this poor berry farmer feels the same way about the employees on his farm, while at the same time voting for policies and politicians who will protect the mega-corporations he's trying to compete against. I could be wrong, though. That's important to remember.

OTOH, small businesses associations routinely oppose minimum wage hikes and organizing drives. They routinely say if employees can just sacrifice a little more, they'll get over the hump and things will be golden, just wait until the next quarter, or the next round of funding, or the next big contract. Absolutely, large companies put pressure on the market and smaller competitors. Small businesses put their own pressure on workers and competitors. Pretending that every effort is worthy and should be nurtured equally is not why this Democrat and union fighter is in the game.

[Nay]

88. I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that you are making

these posts as the "devil's advocate" -- you are showing the absolutely inane, insane results of crony capitalism through the application of capitalism's own philosophy to a specific situation. It's not that you are unsympathetic to this farmer's plight, it's that you see how he got into this trouble, and you are trying to point out why he's in a jam.

Am I right?

[tinrobot]

43. More likely that he loses business to a country with cheaper labor.

I suspect we'll see more Mexican lettuce sooner than we see higher wages for his farm workers.

[countryjake]

70. Farmworkers in my county begin at minimum wage, $11/hr

The rising, very real fear of ICE raids this season is the reason Washington farmers are having a very hard time finding anyone to work their fields.

[Amaryllis]

7. This says it all:

[TheBlackAdder]

20. Yep. Jack up the wages, benefits and working conditions and then price your product out of market.

.


Welcome to capitalism. You have a shitty job, you need to pay premium to get employees.

Now, your produce will be priced higher than competitors and then, instead of rotting on a vine, it will rot in bushels.


.

[lpbk2713]

9. OK. Let's hear it one more time ...

Let's hear the pissing and moaning about undoc workers taking jobs meant for real Amurkins.

[Freethinker65]

10. I bet Betsy DeVos has a solution

[Achilleaze]

12. This is going to become a familiar story

And all of America will eventually feel this republican-created-&-driven STING at the dinner table and in their food shopping bill.

Comrade Casino, the republican draft-dodger-in-chief, and his cabal of classless comrades, are totally screwing up the American food system.

Ptoooey!

[mcar]

13. A few years back

Alabama (or Arkansas) passed a very restrictive immigration bill. That year farmers had crops rotting in the field because they couldn't find workers.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. I linked an article.

Farmers can't find native pickers at $20.00 an hour:


http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/


If it becomes more expensive the farmers say they will mechanize.

[mcar]

15. Thanks!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. Picking has to be grueling work.

[SunSeeker]

26. It is. It really should be mechanized. nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

27. It is headed in that direction.

[yallerdawg]

41. You know where it's headed?

Mexico, Central America, South America.

My grocery stores carry fewer and fewer USA produce items.

[Egnever]

54. Here's a vice piece on what happened in Alabama when they tried an immigrant crackdown.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/watch-our-hbo-episode-about-alabamas-harsh-anti-immigration-laws

[DemocratSinceBirth]

59. Let me guess.

They couldn't find qualified natives to be pickers even when offering competitive wages.

[Egnever]

60. Yup

They even tried to bring in prisoners, they still couldn't get anyone to do it.

[workinclasszero]

16. I bet if he was paying 15 bucks an hour for 8 hours a day

with time and a half over 8 and paid vacation and healthcare.....

He would have so many workers, he wouldn't know what to do!

[Egnever]

61. You would be wrong

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/watch-our-hbo-episode-about-alabamas-harsh-anti-immigration-laws

Couldn't get anyone to do it for more than a couple of days at any price.

[workinclasszero]

72. No surprise, I get it

That's why the immigrants are here. Doing hard as hell, low paying jobs American's don't want. Offered by republican business owners.

Fuck them all, let their crops rot. Run off all the roofers, construction crews and landscapers. Go bankrupt you racist republican POS.

Still if they offered a decent wage they would get some help but fuck no they get slave labor instead...prisoners. I hate republicans.

[Egnever]

75. Now that I think you got perfect

it

[kerry-is-my-prez]

22. The average life expectancy of a farm worker is in their 40's. It's brutal work. Many rapes too.

Many times by the management/owners.

[Kablooie]

23. People who voted for Trump must be forced to take these jobs.

That's only fair.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

25. Unemployed people who voted for Trump must be forced to take these jobs.

[crazycatlady]

24. Maybe displaced coal miners should pick crops

[DemocratSinceBirth]

28. Well, they did reject Hillary's plan to train them to do something else as totally out of hand.

[IronLionZion]

29. Who are these people who think immigrants are stealing jobs from American citizens?

I'll believe it when I see Americans doing migrant farm work.

Trump's plan is to severely screw the bottom most levels of American society as badly as he can to lower wages and widen the wealth gap to make us more like a third world country. Watch them enact draconian cuts to services and benefits and tell impoverished Americans to go do migrant farm work.

A lot of educated liberals are going to get Trumped too as they brutally attack higher education, science, and other fields known for having lots of liberals. College professors are probably not prepared for the Trumping they are going to get.

We're all going to get Trumped eventually.

[HoneyBadger]

63. IT middle management?

[IronLionZion]

65. I'd love to see Americans live like H1B IT contractors

moving every few months, driving 4 hours a day, being separated from family for months at a time or be gone M-F and only fly home on weekends if you can afford it. Losing jobs without notice. Losing thousands of dollars in lease breakage and moving costs because it's not like you're going to sue the company if they don't reimburse you. And never participating in many American dream stuff like home ownership or job stability or growing roots in one city for more than a year, or having kids finish out their school year without disruption.

The company calls you this afternoon to tell you tomorrow you're going to work on the other side of America. Pack up and move!

It's almost as exciting as being called at 4:30 PM to be told tomorrow morning you better be on the other coast of the US, book an overnight flight, hotel room, car rental, and report to work at 8:00 AM sharp. Yeah, just hang on to your receipts and hope they might pay back some of that cost in 4-6 months.

Companies fire their IT employees and contract it out because it helps their bottom line. Contractors can be added or removed quickly. It's like temp agencies but international. I worked with people who had also been on contracts in South America, Europe, and East Asia. Contracting is stealing jobs from IT workers, and Americans don't like the contracting lifestyle. If you do, please apply for these jobs.

http://careers.wipro.com/
https://careers.tcs.com/careers/index.html#/careers/NA/US
https://careers.techmahindra.com/
https://www.infosys.com/careers/

Trump takes first step toward H-1B reform
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/18/technology/h1b-reform/

If you have some plan to make companies treat IT workers better, please share. The independent nature of the work discourages unionizing.

[PotatoChip]

93. 82% of Maine's potato harvest is done by local Mainers. (nt)

[IronLionZion]

96. By machine or by hand?

Most big corporate farms are heavily automated

[PotatoChip]

97. By hand mostly.

The median size of a Maine farm is only 67 acres, so we are talking about mostly family farms who hire small seasonal crews. Family members and 1 or 2 hired hands can usually handle all but harvest-time work.

[Tikki]

30. Deplorables could not just walk onto field, orchard or farm....

and do the work that would be efficient, safe or profitable for the crop.

They would have to LEARN the job. LEARNING...not their strong suit.


Tikki

[Blue Meany]

34. Um, it is always possible to find people to work if you pay enough. The

truth is that farmers want people who will work for low wages, as Mexicans traditionally have (and we want low prices for our food). That's why it is conservatives in the pasthave always tried to find ways to allow migrant workers in, if only for the season.

But this begs the larger question about why they cannot allow the free market in labor to work within the country. In principle, people who work in a community should be able to afford to live in them. If we have to bring in laborers who can afford this only because they are going back to live in place with a much lower cost of living, then something is wrong. Alot of this is the over-valued dollar, which makes all our labor uncompetitive in a global market. But part of it is just that employers as a group try to get by paying the lowest wages they can. Obviously, there would be no problem finding people to work on farms at $50 an hour. At $50 a day, on the other hand, it might be hard.

[Egnever]

64. I think you might be surprised.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/watch-our-hbo-episode-about-alabamas-harsh-anti-immigration-laws

Alabama lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 billion of their economy after passing harsh anti immigrant laws. They have been undoing those laws ever since.

When it comes to $50 an hour, if you pay that you price yourself out of the market. I have no problem with getting my produce from Mexico directly but pretending American farmers can compete with international wages is silly.

[DinahMoeHum]

36. "Should Americans pick crops? George says "No". . .

". . .cause no one but a Mexican would stoop so low,
And after all, even in Egypt, the Pharaohs. . .
Had to import. . .Hebrew braceros. . ."

[elmac]

38. Its happening all over the country

I think many of the farmers all over the country, many who voted the fascists in, will have their crops go to waste. I wonder if they will love their orange dictator then?

[Achilleaze]

57. + 1000

Republicans are pissing all over Americas farm and food system

[flags]

39. good luck

You don't think you are going to see any white boys lining up for those jobs do you?

[fun n serious]

52. Welcome to DU.

I was thinking the same thing. There is no way.. Most Americans would not do the work at all ever. What do they say? Fight for $15? Ha!!! There is no way in hello a white guy would pick apples, berries or cherries for $15/hr. NO way. I would love to see it

[Mr. Ected]

40. Every Trump policy is of the knee-jerk variety

There is no depth to any of his viewpoints. The same can be said of the people who voted for him.

They don't like brown people. Get rid of them, they say. Build a wall.

They don't like immigrants from exotic lands. Keep them out of America, they say. Let's keep things nice and blonde.

They don't want government interfering in our health care. Let the market sort things out they say. Can't trust government, they say.

Well, they're right about that last thing. Especially when they are the ones doing the governing. I say.

[n2doc]

44. Mike Luckovich has a solution

[progressoid]

94. +1

[tblue37]

100. That cartoon is PERFECT! nt

[n2doc]

46. More competition these days too

Migrant workers are making thousands trimming marijuana in California

They sit for hours at a time, hunched over tables with scissors in one hand and marijuana in the other. The work is tedious, but it pays well — for now. This once mostly black market trade is slowly becoming more regulated, hindering the flow of quick under-the-table cash.

Hours meld, the sound of snipping and sticky scissors clinking when they are dipped in jars of alcohol as the workers groom the weed.

Most people sitting around this table in Mendocino County are migrant workers. They flood into the region during the cannabis harvest in the fall. They are the trimmers, those hired to cut marijuana for hours on end. Many trimmers in the county looking for work this season have come from all over the U.S. and all over the rest of the world, including Spain, France, Portugal and Switzerland.

“You want to get all the big leaf — and all the leaf — off the flower stuff so it shows in a beautiful way,” said cannabis farmer Tim Blake. “You really want to trim it perfectly if you’re going to sell it.”

more
http://abcnews.go.com/US/migrant-workers-making-thousands-trimming-marijuana-california/story?id=46578810

[panader0]

48. Trimming is hard work. Even if you are sitting down.

[n2doc]

50. I don't doubt it. but 1500 to 2500 a week is pretty good money

And it isn't like picking berries is a cakewalk either.

[panader0]

51. Back around 1970 I picked cherries and peaches outside Eugene, Or.

Me and my two friends were the only whites. The other pickers were
Hispanic, with their families. Little kids were taken care of by bigger kids
while everyone else filled their boxes. At lunch, we were invited to eat
with them. Another time, when I was cutting trees in Oregon, we took our
saws to a small town for repairs. A couple of Hispanic dudes invited us back
to their camp in the apple orchards. A huge fiesta and a huge hangover in
the morning. Great memories.

[uncle ray]

66. "An incredible trimmer can make $500 a day in product.

2500/wk in bud is a lot different than 2500/wk in cash. you'd still have to trim the pot that you earned, and then you'd still need to earn your pay by selling the damn pot!

the truth is, trimming, along with just about every job in the legal cannabis industry, is low paying work.

[snooper2]

90. not that bad...my friend works at Rolex fixing watches

Been there for a long time. Imagine sitting at your workstation hunched over looking through a magnifying glass all day working on tiny tiny little parts LOL

He has already had one surgery in his neck

[mopinko]

73. my son was offered a job trimming.

the deal is that you work for a piece of the crop. you dont get paid until it is all picked. so you work for 3 months for nothing and hope to get a big paycheck at the end.

[VOX]

58. Wait until food service & hospitality workers are gone.

When all the bubbas can't get their heart-attack quintuple whopper with a mountain of chili-cheese fries served to them.

Or when any American (of any ethnicity) tries to take a week at their favorite hotel by the lake with no service workers.

Red-state 'Muricans are in for a shock. But they think they're getting raptured any day, so what the fuck?

[countryjake]

67. That's true up here in wa state, too; fear supersedes $11/hr

In my rural county, where agriculture is the economy, the farmers say that everyone is afraid to come and sign up. Even when our local news channels do stories about the dearth of farmworkers up here this season, most migrants and even some farmers are afraid to be interviewed publicly, out of a fear of being targeted for ICE raids.

About those whiners you've mentioned...they couldn't begin to do the work and wouldn't last long out in our fields...it is back-breaking labor.



(on edit)

Immigration Enforcement Fears Cloud Agriculture Labor Forecast
by Aaron Weinberg ~ April 23, 2017

http://www.goskagit.com/news/immigration-enforcement-fears-cloud-agriculture-labor-forecast/article_ac9323b2-03e3-504e-af68-d35cdde3ced0.html

~snip~

A local farmworker, who asked not to be named for fear of being targeted by ICE, said she came to the U.S. alone to find stable work and make a living. She was a preschool teacher in Mexico, but the pay was too low and opportunities were scarce. So she decided to come to the U.S.

Now she is married and has children who were born in the U.S. Through an interpreter, she said she is more fearful of being deported now that she has a family.

“People are more insecure and they don’t feel the stability that they used to to have, especially this year,” she said. “It’s bad what you see on the news and what society thinks of you. People don’t want us here. So we don’t want to make any noise ... I don’t want to be separated from my family.”

[mopinko]

74. i got in trouble on an urban ag listserve

for chewing out someone who was looking for interns at an urban farm. $500 stipend for the season, and of course, they expect 2 years of experience. farmers markets are grueling, as of course is picking.

i told them to learn from henry ford about paying enough for workers to afford your product.
this is endemic in urban ag.

a very successful restaurant w a rooftop "organic farm" (it isnt a farm. it's a garden. farms are in the dirt. how they got organic cert, i dont know.) wanted someone w considerable experience and skills to manage the "farm". a seasonal job. paying $11/hr.
this place is incredibly popular, and the owners cant really hide their wealth.
i resisted knocking them, since i have enough enemies.

i dont know the answer, tho. people need to eat.

[Historic NY]

76. Stuff will rot in the fields.....

my paper is full of ads looking for migrant workers. Most will stay home rather than travel north and face hassles. The Trumplets better get out there and start picking.

Just for ha has' people better start buying frozen, my local farm market has signs out about how storms ruined crops in the midwest and Europe where most of the broccoli , etc comes from.

[alarimer]

82. Well it is true those jobs are so low-paying as to be worthless.

Is anyone watching this season of American Crime? It deals with various forms of human trafficking.

Farm workers are highly exploited. They pay thousands to get here, are in debt and work for nothing until they pay it off. The farmer may or may not provide housing. If they do, it is likely an overcrowded death trap.

Farmers are exploiting these people. WE are exploiting these people by demanding cheap food. Americans won't take these jobs because they are exploitative, not because they are lazy.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

85. They are paying $20.00 an hour in Northern California for pickers.

In the last five years, he has advertised in local newspapers and accepted more than a dozen unemployed applicants from the state’s job agency. Even when the average rate on his fields was $20 an hour, the U.S.-born workers lost interest, fast.

“We’ve never had one come back after lunch,” he says.

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/

HBO did a special. Alabama passed draconian anti-immigration laws. They tried paying competitive wages to lure natives and failed. They tried using prisoners and failed:


https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/watch-our-hbo-episode-about-alabamas-harsh-anti-immigration-laws

I'm not a farmer but I doubt there is a model where you can pay pickers much more than $20.00 an hour and remain profitable. Nobody is going to pay ten dollars for a head of lettuce. Who could afford to?

It has nothing to do with being lazy. It is a physically demanding work that is beyond the capability of many Americans. And yeah there is a stigma attached to the work. I never met a high school student who told me upon graduation he wants to pick lettuce.

[Stellar]

84. Perhaps the coal miners will help out.

[Lee-Lee]

87. Pay more until people will do it

I know, food costs will rise.

So be it.

The idea that we have to import minority workers so we can get away with paying them less to do the work so we can have lower prices is 100% exploitation of those vulnerable populations.

The excuse that you have to pay crap wages vulnerable minority populations to keep costs down is only a step removed from the excuse that you have to keep a minority population as property on your plantation to keep costs down.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

89. They can't find natives at $20.00 an hour.

Ag workers in the NAPA Valley make $42,000.00 a year.

At some point producers will mechanize, automate, import, sell or close their farms. The latter is what usually happens. That's how we get Big Agriculture ( Big Ag).

[modrepub]

91. Maine Blueberry Tale

Been vacationing up in Washington County, ME for a decade. Lots of Blueberry fields up in that area (and not much else). Relatives up there told me when they were young they raked (picking method) blueberries for extra money in the summer. They quite doing it when the farmers switched from paying from the pint to some other larger container that they had to fill with multiple pints but for not the equivalent pay. In came the migrant workers who I saw attach the large rakes on their arms while bending over to work their way through the blueberry patches. More recently I've notice picking has been taken over by small tractors with picking attachments on the front. While this is not as efficient as hand picking it's quicker and less labor intensive.

My guess is in a few seasons most farmers will be purchasing or renting equipment to harvest their crops and there will be less harvesting by hand. If this is true then there will be fewer types of these jobs in the future.

[Jazes]

101. It's happening around the country.

I saw a farmer in Florida that had already posts 10s of thousands of dollars because the crops just rotted in the fields.

I have family in Iowa that sold all the farms years ago, fearing the coming lack of illegal labor.

Americans really don't join the dots.

Saying that, farming done on any scale tends towards labor violations and ballooning labor costs, the solution for decades is illegal labor paid less than minimum wage.

Not sure that's moral either.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

102. I wonder when Americans will see it at the grocery store.

[Jazes]

103. If I had to guess

I'd say it'll be this fall and autumn.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

104. I mostly shop at Costco. I don't pay attention to where the food is coming from.

A lot seems imported.

BTW, welcome to DU. I hope you stick around.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

105. Not just farms.

A lot of hotel housekeepers or slaughter house workers are undocumented. Landscape maintenance workers, and the ladies who work for the cleaning services.

When I had my back yard landscaped last year, all of the men (aside from the boss) seemed to speak only Spanish. The ladies who clean my house every other week do speak both English and Spanish, but converse with each other only in Spanish. I live in a city with a "living wage", currently $11.09/hour, so they are making at least that much. Cleaning houses is tough work as is landscaping, but neither would be as brutal as harvesting crops.