Farmer on NPR said he couldn't find an American who would pick fruit...

[Cellblock2429]

There is no subject on which more people are stupider than on economics.

This farmer cannot find Americans to work for a price he can afford to pay and stay in business.​

So if farmers had to hire Americans and the price of milk went from $3.40 to $3.89 per gallon to cover the increase in wages, the farmers would go out of business? All the dairies would shut down and America would be a country without milk for our cereal? Is that what you think?

​

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You keep harping on milk, one of the least labor intensive agricultural products. Why not make this same calculations for lettuce or strawberries or grapes.

Thanks for proving my point for me! Even with the robot picker there are still a dozen people doing the packing, which way more than it takes to run a dairy farm

"Thanks for proving my point for me! Even with the robot picker there are still a dozen people doing the packing, which way more than it takes to run a dairy farm"
​

Oh my God. This is why democracy can't work. Do you actually believe what --never mind. It's obviously a waste of time.

/----/ Democracy can't work because of dairy farms????

 

[Harpy Eagle]

It is unbelievable that that is put out by the USDA. This quote alone:

The most recent data from ERS indicate that labor accounted for 42 percent of the variable production expenses for U.S. fruit and vegetable farms, although labor’s share varied significantly depending on the characteristics of the commodity and whether the harvest was mechanized.
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In the first place, labor doesn't account for 42 percent of the retail consumer cost, it's 42 percent of the "variable production expenses". So that probably doesn't include cost of machinery, cost of storage, cost of transportation, taxes, the farmer's profit, etc. It is likely only the labor, seed, irrigation, fertilizer, and, possibly, tillage, so, yeah, it could be 42 percent, that STILL is a negligible part of what you pay in the store for a box of strawberries.

Actually, machinery, cost of storage, cost of transportation, taxes and more are counted as production expenses. There is a survey of farmers done every year called the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) that ask all those and more. This is on top of monthly Ag Labor reports which tracks just the labor.

You really should learn what you are talking about prior to coming on such a forum as this.

42 percent of the variable production expenses for U.S. fruit and vegetable farms

Yes, "variable" as in always changing, not set. Transportation cost change with the cost of fuel, off farm storage cost change based on the demand for the storage and so forth.

 

[Picaro]

There is no subject on which more people are stupider than on economics.

This farmer cannot find Americans to work for a price he can afford to pay and stay in business.​

So if farmers had to hire Americans and the price of milk went from $3.40 to $3.89 per gallon to cover the increase in wages, the farmers would go out of business? All the dairies would shut down and America would be a country without milk for our cereal? Is that what you think?

​

​

You keep harping on milk, one of the least labor intensive agricultural products. Why not make this same calculations for lettuce or strawberries or grapes.

Thanks for proving my point for me! Even with the robot picker there are still a dozen people doing the packing, which way more than it takes to run a dairy farm

Oh yes, it does. But I posted the video to show that automation is the future of agriculture and not foreigners or illegals. The people sorting through the leaves are not doing any grueling work. It's a job I think many Americans could handle. It's really not much different than people who work in factories inspecting parts for a living. They simply sort through the product, put the good product in one bin and defects in another. I did the same kind of job when I worked for a temp agency when I was very young. It was at a peanut plant where the nuts would pass by on a vibrating conveyor belt, and I took the burnt or severely broken nuts and threw them in the waste basket. It was one of the easiest jobs the agency sent me on.

Optical systems are coming online that do away with the sorter jobs as well, which is what most illegals do, not picking; even blueberries are being picked by machine now. The University of California Agricultural Agency has all kinds of studies out there on comparisons of automated picking versus hand picking, same for Florida and orange picking machines.

 

[Picaro]

Most crop picking is not paid by the hour, they get paid by weight or some other standard. 'Claiming they're getting paid '$15-$18 an hour' is just bullshit thrown out by the farmers and their lobbyists.

 

[Picaro]

There is no subject on which more people are stupider than on economics.

This farmer cannot find Americans to work for a price he can afford to pay and stay in business.​

So if farmers had to hire Americans and the price of milk went from $3.40 to $3.89 per gallon to cover the increase in wages, the farmers would go out of business? All the dairies would shut down and America would be a country without milk for our cereal? Is that what you think?

​

​

You keep harping on milk, one of the least labor intensive agricultural products. Why not make this same calculations for lettuce or strawberries or grapes.

For lettuce, the field labor represents about a nickel per head. We could pay field hands $40 per hour and the price would rise on a head in the store by 20 cents. I've never calculated strawberries, but there is no reason to believe it would be any different, and if it were, then we would do like Japan does. Build machines to pick strawberries. Do you think it is impossible to get a strawberry in Japan?

I have a link to what lettuce pickers get paid, and it isn't anywhere near 5 cents a head. I'll try and find it. Their quotas are anywhere from 1 to 2 tons per hour, somewhere in that range, and they slow down a lot as the day goes on.

 

[Nova78]

Illiterate illegals are trying to turn starter jobs that teens used to do to learn business practices into "living wage" paying careers with the help of the Democrats.

I ask you, what fry flipper is worth $40,000 per year, plus benefits?

None ,now they will be replaced with automation and kiosks..

 

[Tehon]

Anyone that supported free market capitalism. Primarily conservatives and neo-liberals..

The biggest economic hit on rural Mexico was NAFTA, and the biggest cultural hit has been mass illegal immigration to the US. The villain is globalism, nationalism is the cure.

Yes, of course I'm talking about NAFTA. NAFTA devastated Mexico's agrarian communities.

And yes I know Clinton signed it into law. But it was years in the making and the outcome was telegraphed from the outset, Reagan laid out the vision and the rubes swallowed his shit and begged for more. Reagan and Bush Sr. did the heavy lifting, Clinton was there in time to get the accolades.

Globalism was sold to the rubes as free market capitalism. Government is the problem they said. We have to allow our corporations to compete globally they said. And the rubes begged for it. Now they wallow in their own stupidity and look for a savior to reverse course. Only their ignorance has led them to the greatest con man we have seen thus far. Trump is not a nationalist, he is an opportunist and a megalomaniac.

I'm not sure who you mean by "rubes", but the free trade true believers are found along K St and in a sprinkling of libertarians around the country. Free trade has never been a "one-issue-voter's kind of issue". In other words, it isn't so much that the "rubes" swallowed anything, but, rather, they weren't asked.

We live in a representative democracy. Of course there was a very long national dialogue surrounding trade liberalization that dates all the way back to GATT. It didn't just begin with NAFTA.

Of course Reagan kicked it into high gear. He sold the people on the idea that the government was the problem and business needed to be free from its persuasion. Freeing capital to seek out the cheapest labor, totally ignoring the costs to our society here at home. Yet the idiots that hung on his every word, and do to this day, ignore the fact that in the US we have a people's government. Government isn't the problem, the problem is that globalists are in control of it. Just as they were in control of Reagan. Reagan sold their message and the rubes still hold him up reverentially, seemingly unaware of how they have been played.

GOVT conficates 20% of GDP and spends it poorly (private jets, 6-figure pensions at early age....etc.). GOVT is a problem. Trump elected to attempt a cleanup. We can spend OUR $$$ better than they do. We also can't go into catastrophic debt, not most of us.

Don't get your hopes up, republicans aren't really known for cleaning up spending problems.

Federal Spending Grew More Under Bush and Reagan than Under Obama

We were given about as good a system of government as we could hope for. It is our duty to maintain it. Government isn't the problem, we are.

 

[Cellblock2429]

The biggest economic hit on rural Mexico was NAFTA, and the biggest cultural hit has been mass illegal immigration to the US. The villain is globalism, nationalism is the cure.

Yes, of course I'm talking about NAFTA. NAFTA devastated Mexico's agrarian communities.

And yes I know Clinton signed it into law. But it was years in the making and the outcome was telegraphed from the outset, Reagan laid out the vision and the rubes swallowed his shit and begged for more. Reagan and Bush Sr. did the heavy lifting, Clinton was there in time to get the accolades.

Globalism was sold to the rubes as free market capitalism. Government is the problem they said. We have to allow our corporations to compete globally they said. And the rubes begged for it. Now they wallow in their own stupidity and look for a savior to reverse course. Only their ignorance has led them to the greatest con man we have seen thus far. Trump is not a nationalist, he is an opportunist and a megalomaniac.

I'm not sure who you mean by "rubes", but the free trade true believers are found along K St and in a sprinkling of libertarians around the country. Free trade has never been a "one-issue-voter's kind of issue". In other words, it isn't so much that the "rubes" swallowed anything, but, rather, they weren't asked.

We live in a representative democracy. Of course there was a very long national dialogue surrounding trade liberalization that dates all the way back to GATT. It didn't just begin with NAFTA.

Of course Reagan kicked it into high gear. He sold the people on the idea that the government was the problem and business needed to be free from its persuasion. Freeing capital to seek out the cheapest labor, totally ignoring the costs to our society here at home. Yet the idiots that hung on his every word, and do to this day, ignore the fact that in the US we have a people's government. Government isn't the problem, the problem is that globalists are in control of it. Just as they were in control of Reagan. Reagan sold their message and the rubes still hold him up reverentially, seemingly unaware of how they have been played.

GOVT conficates 20% of GDP and spends it poorly (private jets, 6-figure pensions at early age....etc.). GOVT is a problem. Trump elected to attempt a cleanup. We can spend OUR $$$ better than they do. We also can't go into catastrophic debt, not most of us.

Don't get your hopes up, republicans aren't really known for cleaning up spending problems.

Federal Spending Grew More Under Bush and Reagan than Under Obama

We were given about as good a system of government as we could hope for. It is our duty to maintain it. Government isn't the problem, we are.

/----/ Oh for crying out loud Spending went up under Reagan and Bush because they had to rebuild the military after Carter and Clintoon destroyed it. And I bet you already knew that

 

[Syriusly]

It really requires just a few simple steps:

1. Pay the full "living wage" and bennies the liberals are whining for. The ways they so fervently believe will attract American pickers - but won't.

2. Price the fruit according to production cost (including labour and bennies) to wholesalers. If wholesalers won't pay it? Let it rot on the trees and lay off the pickers.

3. Ditto if the wholesalers will pay the price and consumers won't. Let it rot on the supermarket shelves until the stores and wholesalers wise up then let it rot on the trees. Lay off the pickers.

4. American liberals take the opportunity to invest in Mexican fruit growers to expand their production and demand zero import duties since the fruit is not available in The U.S.

5. Former orchards are stripped to bare soil to make way for low cost (read "free") housing for indigent Americans who wouldn't pick fruit.

End result, consumers still get economically priced fruit, Mexican workers get Mexican wages and many go home to where the jobs are. Of course Mexican workers who used to work and pay tax in American won't be paying tax here anymore, so Americans will need to pick up the slack.

See how simple it is!

Raise tariffs on those countries that don't pay an American living wage to create an even playing field.

Then those countries put a tariff on our products and hurt our exported goods.

When it's more expensive here to buy imported goods it becomes smarter to make it here, paying Americans living wages, and not paying the tariffs. Yes they'll be more expensive. But Americans making living wages will be able to afford them.

Too bad it's never worked. Ask George Bush when he tried to use tariffs on imported steel.

Don't have to reach that far back- Trump's administration just slapped a 200% duty on certain jets imported from Canada.

That will bring the jobs back!

 

[Syriusly]

There is no subject on which more people are stupider than on economics.

This farmer cannot find Americans to work for a price he can afford to pay and stay in business.​

So if farmers had to hire Americans and the price of milk went from $3.40 to $3.89 per gallon to cover the increase in wages, the farmers would go out of business? All the dairies would shut down and America would be a country without milk for our cereal? Is that what you think?

​

​

You keep harping on milk, one of the least labor intensive agricultural products. Why not make this same calculations for lettuce or strawberries or grapes.

Because the argument is a strawman.

This OP is based on a lie about a NPR article about the difficulty finding labor to pick apples. Of course cnelsen would prefer to address his own strawman rather than the topic.

Where agriculture can mechanize and automate- it is doing so as rapidly as it can. Dairy has been mechanized for decades, as has grain and much of livestock production.

It is produce- fruits and vegetables- that are hard to mechanize or automate- and those are the commodities that have the highest labor costs.

Easy enough to see how that affects American produce- compare the price of Chinese garlic to American garlic- almost twice as expensive- almost all due to labor costs- even with the cost of transporting the garlic from China.

 

[Harpy Eagle]

/----/ Oh for crying out loud Spending went up under Reagan and Bush because they had to rebuild the military after Carter and Clintoon destroyed it. And I bet you already knew that

Put down the koolaid and step away from the table

 

[Syriusly]

Most crop picking is not paid by the hour, they get paid by weight or some other standard. 'Claiming they're getting paid '$15-$18 an hour' is just bullshit thrown out by the farmers and their lobbyists.

Those damn liberal farmers........

 

[Tehon]

Yes, of course I'm talking about NAFTA. NAFTA devastated Mexico's agrarian communities.

And yes I know Clinton signed it into law. But it was years in the making and the outcome was telegraphed from the outset, Reagan laid out the vision and the rubes swallowed his shit and begged for more. Reagan and Bush Sr. did the heavy lifting, Clinton was there in time to get the accolades.

Globalism was sold to the rubes as free market capitalism. Government is the problem they said. We have to allow our corporations to compete globally they said. And the rubes begged for it. Now they wallow in their own stupidity and look for a savior to reverse course. Only their ignorance has led them to the greatest con man we have seen thus far. Trump is not a nationalist, he is an opportunist and a megalomaniac.

I'm not sure who you mean by "rubes", but the free trade true believers are found along K St and in a sprinkling of libertarians around the country. Free trade has never been a "one-issue-voter's kind of issue". In other words, it isn't so much that the "rubes" swallowed anything, but, rather, they weren't asked.

We live in a representative democracy. Of course there was a very long national dialogue surrounding trade liberalization that dates all the way back to GATT. It didn't just begin with NAFTA.

Of course Reagan kicked it into high gear. He sold the people on the idea that the government was the problem and business needed to be free from its persuasion. Freeing capital to seek out the cheapest labor, totally ignoring the costs to our society here at home. Yet the idiots that hung on his every word, and do to this day, ignore the fact that in the US we have a people's government. Government isn't the problem, the problem is that globalists are in control of it. Just as they were in control of Reagan. Reagan sold their message and the rubes still hold him up reverentially, seemingly unaware of how they have been played.

GOVT conficates 20% of GDP and spends it poorly (private jets, 6-figure pensions at early age....etc.). GOVT is a problem. Trump elected to attempt a cleanup. We can spend OUR $$$ better than they do. We also can't go into catastrophic debt, not most of us.

Don't get your hopes up, republicans aren't really known for cleaning up spending problems.

Federal Spending Grew More Under Bush and Reagan than Under Obama

We were given about as good a system of government as we could hope for. It is our duty to maintain it. Government isn't the problem, we are.

/----/ Oh for crying out loud Spending went up under Reagan and Bush because they had to rebuild the military after Carter and Clintoon destroyed it. And I bet you already knew that

A nice example that illustrates our ineptitude at holding government accountable.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

There is no subject on which more people are stupider than on economics.

This farmer cannot find Americans to work for a price he can afford to pay and stay in business.​

So if farmers had to hire Americans and the price of milk went from $3.40 to $3.89 per gallon to cover the increase in wages, the farmers would go out of business? All the dairies would shut down and America would be a country without milk for our cereal? Is that what you think?

​

​

You keep harping on milk, one of the least labor intensive agricultural products. Why not make this same calculations for lettuce or strawberries or grapes.

Thanks for proving my point for me! Even with the robot picker there are still a dozen people doing the packing, which way more than it takes to run a dairy farm

Oh yes, it does. But I posted the video to show that automation is the future of agriculture and not foreigners or illegals. The people sorting through the leaves are not doing any grueling work. It's a job I think many Americans could handle. It's really not much different than people who work in factories inspecting parts for a living. They simply sort through the product, put the good product in one bin and defects in another. I did the same kind of job when I worked for a temp agency when I was very young. It was at a peanut plant where the nuts would pass by on a vibrating conveyor belt, and I took the burnt or severely broken nuts and threw them in the waste basket. It was one of the easiest jobs the agency sent me on.

Optical systems are coming online that do away with the sorter jobs as well, which is what most illegals do, not picking; even blueberries are being picked by machine now. The University of California Agricultural Agency has all kinds of studies out there on comparisons of automated picking versus hand picking, same for Florida and orange picking machines.

And as that happens, the Democrats are going to lose ground supporting immigrants coming here and doing our work.

 

[initforme]

If illegals are gone and no Americans apply.....then farmers will have to pay more that's all......or the jobs are left unfilled and that's OK is it not?

 

[Cellblock2429]

If illegals are gone and no Americans apply.....then farmers will have to pay more that's all......or the jobs are left unfilled and that's OK is it not?

/----/ Whatever happened to the guest worker program that allowed Mexicans enter the US for harvest and then they'd go back home?

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

If illegals are gone and no Americans apply.....then farmers will have to pay more that's all......or the jobs are left unfilled and that's OK is it not?

/----/ Whatever happened to the guest worker program that allowed Mexicans enter the US for harvest and then they'd go back home?

Seems they decided to stay and not go home. After all, we don't do much about it anyway........

 

[toobfreak]

I remember watching a show months ago where they were talking about immigration and when the apple season comes in Oregon, Mexicans come from Mexico, go up there and pick apples for something like $15-$18 a hour. They hustle, they work hard, they send some money home then I guess they go back after it is all over.

Long way up from Mexico? Expensive round trip? Do they all pile in an un-insured Pontiac? Where do they live? Eat? Shower? Who pays their medical? 60 hours = $1000/week. 5 week job? $2K round trip? Maybe they never go back? Food stamps, sect8

Hey, that was the report by an expert in the field. So however they do it, obviously they make a great profit at it. They probably drive up and back, the apple farm puts them up year after year, 2K round trip? Where's your math?! Assuming about 26 mpg, ROUND TRIP gasoline at $2.75 a gallon would be around $160. Squeeze 8 Mexicans into the car, that's $20 a head. Maybe they use an old Pontiac station wagon. Pretty good deal to make something like $4800 tax free under the table. And who knows---- they might have more than one gig here. After Oregon, they might head down to California to pick other things there.

To be clear, in my scenario, they collectively make $38,400 tax free, for about a $160-$200 investment, if they ONLY go to Oregon! That is equal to a US Citizen making FIFTY thousand.

 

[Picaro]

More recent MJ article.

Trump’s Plan to Make America Great Again Using Cheap Foreign Labor – Mother Jones

Some labor advocates say the shortages are a product of inferior wages. They point to Christopher Ranch, a 4,000-acre farm in Gilroy, California, which at the end of last year was short 50 workers it needed to peel and package garlic. In January, the company announced that it would raise its farmhand wage from $11 to $13 an hour—an 18 percent increase—and boost it to $15 in 2018. Soon it had a waitlist of 150 people. “I knew [the pay raise] would help,” ranch VP Ken Christopher told the Los Angeles Times, “but I had no idea it would solve our labor problem.”

...

But the imbalance of power can also enable horrific abuses. A 2015 investigation by BuzzFeed found that thousands of H-2 visa holders had been badly exploited: deprived of fair pay, imprisoned, starved, beaten, raped, and threatened with deportation if they complained. And guestworkers seldom report labor abuses. When they do, advocates say, they lack the resources to fight for restitution. Former Rep. Charles Rangel once attacked the H-2 program as “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”

Of course Democrats like Syriously are just fine with modern slavery, as long as there is a chance they can bleat 'rayciss' 20 times a thread.

These 'labor shortage' claims and visa programs are just scams, period.

With fresh water shortages being claimed all across the country why is anybody wasting water on worthless crap food like iceberg lettuce in the first place??? It has almost no nutritional value and sucks up massive amounts of water.

Haven't looked for the data on how many bail out of the buses overstay their visas and camp out in the barrios on food stamps and public housing there in Cali and 'sanctuary cities' yet.

 

[Manonthestreet]

I hear a million PR's are headed this way