> "In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone," she said in an interview. "If 70% of your workforce doesn't show up, 70% of your crop doesn't get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don't want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust."
Presumably, there will be bigger pocketed entities waiting in the wings to snap up some distressed assets.
What American would want to do the work when you're competing with people who aren't subject to labor laws like minimum wage, break times and so forth?
The bigger-pocketed entities need a plan to make a profit before they buy. That plan isn't easy to make — that's why the present owners risk going bust.
Maybe Americans will finally understand that their cheap food and lifestyle has been dependent on essentially illegal slave labor with no rights. You can harvest your crops with legal migrant workers with legal temporary visas and minimum wages and labor protections but you'll have to pay a few cents more for those strawberries.
Used to stay and work in ND during my Summers in college. One of the businesses I worked for was a bin sealing company. The owner was a successful farmer and during the Summer, he would have two large families get work visas and would come up and help from Mexico during the Summer harvest.
It was basically three months of sun up to sun down work. At the end of the Summer, the family would celebrate and put on a huge fiesta and cook food for everybody. The farmer paid them extremely well and they would leave and go back to Mexico in August, fondly talking about coming back again the following Summer when the farmer needed them again.
This was my first exposure to migrant labor. It was clear the farmer took the appropriate steps to get visas and paid the family well for their efforts. Likewise, the family was thankful for the work, good pay and with the relationship.
When I moved back to Minnesota after college, I started playing hockey again and two of my teammates had done something similar and worked on poultry and cattle farms in the southern part of the state. Their stories were the complete opposite of what I had experienced. Illegals were used all over the operation. They were paid roughly $3/hour cash to work 12-16 hour shifts. If they spoke up about safety issues or the pay, a supervisor would pick them up, buy them a ticket back to the border and drop them off at the bus station.
The stories they had were pretty eye opening to say the least. I felt dumb for being so naive to think farmers just did everything legally.
You famously the key point of slavery (at least the sort that existed in what would become The Confederacy) is that it was for life, heritable, and you had no way out, no human rights, and if you tried to escape you were hunted down and tortured.
It's possible to point out that there are problems with migrant labor without making such an inflammatory and inappropriate claim no one can really engage with you seriously.
I heard a report on the radio about a similar situation with cherry farmers in Washington. Many farmers are in a cycle where they have to take out loans to pay for maintaining their orchards during the off-season, and then make enough during cherry season to pay those loans off but not enough that they won't need a loan for the next off-season.
So far there have not actually been any mass raids on farms in Washington, and not many cases of migrants being arrested when driving from California to Washington for the cherry harvest but the workers know what is happening in California and are afraid it will happen in Washington so many are staying away.
What was baffling is that many of the farmers put the blame for this is on bad actors on the left spreading fear among the workers.
I know little about farming or harvesting, but I’m curious what types of crops actually require manual harvesting?
Do we really need to rely on stoop labor to hand-pick crops, or has a relatively cheap labor pool allowed farmers to avoid the costs of automation?
If labor is to be in perennial short supply in the future, I wonder if American farmers will simply be forced to turn to crops that allow machine harvesting.
There are some crops that they've been trying for years to harvest robotically but they just require too many input variables that a human can see in seconds but a robot just can't do it yet. Do a search on harvesting cabbages with robots, for example they're close but not yet there.
Things that are grown on trees and bushes and are also delicate. Most cereal crops and plenty of ground/root vegetable cultivation is already mostly automated.
Wrecking the agricultural part of California's economy is probably part of the plan...
> One, age 54, has worked in U.S. agricultural fields for 30 years and has a wife and children in the country. He said most of his colleagues have stopped showing up for work.
> "If they show up to work, they don't know if they will ever see their family again," he said.
> The other worker in the country illegally said, "Basically, we wake up in the morning scared. We worry about the sun, the heat, and now a much bigger problem — many not returning home. I try not to get into trouble on the street. Now, whoever gets arrested for any reason gets deported."
Heh, heck of a job Donnie, creating an opressive regime. Anyone remember the 1990's Claire Danes/Leonardo DiCaprio "Romeo and Juliet", which is the Shakespeare play but set in the modern era, with cars and guns? Maybe somewhere out there is a little Latina girl doing a reimagining of "Diary of Anne Frank", but the book will be called Diary of Ana Franco?
Why doesn’t the government subsidize wages/salaries as an incentive for “Americans who don’t want to do this work for such low pay”? Or I guess they could just automate more.
Americans don't have to do it. You can have legal seasonal workers on temporary visas. We do it every year here in Switzerland for the wine harvest and for the ski resorts with workers from Portugal for example.
Why subsidise? If the plantation owners want the crops to be picked, they just have to pay enough to find willing worker. And then increase the price of food to still make same overall profit margin. It is how free market capitalism should work.
[+] [-] acjohnson55|8 months ago|reply
Presumably, there will be bigger pocketed entities waiting in the wings to snap up some distressed assets.
[+] [-] saalweachter|8 months ago|reply
They trust that their bigger political clout will let them continue to employee undocumented migrant workers at wages no one else will work for?
They wait for the political climate to change, and then they'll go back to business as usual?
They wait for produce prices to skyrocket/the job market to crater, and then pay minimum wage for the jobs?
Something something, AI/robots?
[+] [-] zdragnar|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] appleaday1|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Arnt|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] e40|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] comrade1234|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] burningChrome|8 months ago|reply
It was basically three months of sun up to sun down work. At the end of the Summer, the family would celebrate and put on a huge fiesta and cook food for everybody. The farmer paid them extremely well and they would leave and go back to Mexico in August, fondly talking about coming back again the following Summer when the farmer needed them again.
This was my first exposure to migrant labor. It was clear the farmer took the appropriate steps to get visas and paid the family well for their efforts. Likewise, the family was thankful for the work, good pay and with the relationship.
When I moved back to Minnesota after college, I started playing hockey again and two of my teammates had done something similar and worked on poultry and cattle farms in the southern part of the state. Their stories were the complete opposite of what I had experienced. Illegals were used all over the operation. They were paid roughly $3/hour cash to work 12-16 hour shifts. If they spoke up about safety issues or the pay, a supervisor would pick them up, buy them a ticket back to the border and drop them off at the bus station.
The stories they had were pretty eye opening to say the least. I felt dumb for being so naive to think farmers just did everything legally.
[+] [-] EA-3167|8 months ago|reply
It's possible to point out that there are problems with migrant labor without making such an inflammatory and inappropriate claim no one can really engage with you seriously.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|8 months ago|reply
California’s farm workers are not slaves…
[+] [-] e40|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|8 months ago|reply
So far there have not actually been any mass raids on farms in Washington, and not many cases of migrants being arrested when driving from California to Washington for the cherry harvest but the workers know what is happening in California and are afraid it will happen in Washington so many are staying away.
What was baffling is that many of the farmers put the blame for this is on bad actors on the left spreading fear among the workers.
[+] [-] tosser0001|8 months ago|reply
Do we really need to rely on stoop labor to hand-pick crops, or has a relatively cheap labor pool allowed farmers to avoid the costs of automation?
If labor is to be in perennial short supply in the future, I wonder if American farmers will simply be forced to turn to crops that allow machine harvesting.
[+] [-] comrade1234|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] korse|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tom89999|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] netsharc|8 months ago|reply
> One, age 54, has worked in U.S. agricultural fields for 30 years and has a wife and children in the country. He said most of his colleagues have stopped showing up for work.
> "If they show up to work, they don't know if they will ever see their family again," he said.
> The other worker in the country illegally said, "Basically, we wake up in the morning scared. We worry about the sun, the heat, and now a much bigger problem — many not returning home. I try not to get into trouble on the street. Now, whoever gets arrested for any reason gets deported."
Heh, heck of a job Donnie, creating an opressive regime. Anyone remember the 1990's Claire Danes/Leonardo DiCaprio "Romeo and Juliet", which is the Shakespeare play but set in the modern era, with cars and guns? Maybe somewhere out there is a little Latina girl doing a reimagining of "Diary of Anne Frank", but the book will be called Diary of Ana Franco?
[+] [-] chronoc7394|8 months ago|reply
Yeah, people just don’t care. Myself included.
If you want to come to america, come here legally.
We all want a better life for ourselves and family. Illegal immigrants “dreamers” are no different in this regard.
Well, except the fact, they snuck into a different person’s home (country) while hundreds of thousands are waiting in the legal line.
[+] [-] yahoozoo|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] comrade1234|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|8 months ago|reply