America's Farmers Don't Depend on Illegal Immigration

American Thinker ^ | Dec 08, 2017 | Spencer P. Morrison

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Liberals frame the debate over illegal immigration as a dilemma: either America grants amnesty to aliens or the economy will collapse. Some even imply that Americans will starve to death because of higher food prices – who will pick America's fruits and veggies if not illegals? Bruce Goldstein, president of a nonprofit called Farmworker Justice, boldly claims that if we were to deport all illegal aliens, "our agricultural system would collapse." Collapse.

This is nonsense. American agriculture will not collapse without illegal labor. Why? Because there are plenty of technological solutions and American workers available to pick up the slack. It is time to put this myth to bed.

Agriculture is not a labor-intensive industry, and it has not been for decades. Less than 2 percent of Americans work in agriculture, according to the World Bank. This figure has declined since 1960, when roughly 6 percent of Americans worked on farms. If trends continue, we can expect the number to continue to fall. This is because of the wonders of mechanization: machines now do everything from threshing wheat to milking cows. The bottom line: Most farmers do not "benefit" from cheap illegal labor, since their labor costs are minimal to begin with.

The "exceptions" to this rule are fruit and nut farms, located primarily in California. Crops like raspberries and almonds are notoriously difficult for machines to pick. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that berries require a "soft touch" – they ripen at different times, and bushes are tough for machinery to navigate. These labor-intensive farms are the main agricultural culprits when it comes to hiring illegal workers. After all, they have the most to gain.

But realistically, even labor-intensive agriculture does not depend upon illegal labor. Orchards could get by without illegal workers

[Jane Long]

Take away life long welfare payouts.

You’d be surprised what people will eventually do for food/survivorship....most will actually end up doing something called work.

It may take a decade, or so, to get “career” welfare folks off the OPM drug, but, eventually they’d come around and even have an added benefit....self pride for a job well done.

[pepsionice]

Maybe taking welfare payments out might push these people along, but I don’t think you can find enough people from either party to accomplish something like that.

The other part to this story is that farmers just need day-labor people who can come in and deliver maybe 1,000 man-hours in a very tight window of opportunity. You add in health insurance, oddball costs....this gets up to $18 an hour easily, and the farmer would laugh because that’s way beyond his ability to pay that kind of money.

Our whole structure of pricing, from the grocery back to the farmer would have to change entirely. Go tell someone that their grocery bill just went up 150-percent, and see quickly they’d freak out.

[zookeeper20]

From the article: “The “exceptions” to this rule are fruit and nut farms, located primarily in California. Crops like raspberries and almonds are notoriously difficult for machines to pick.”

I think Driscolls in and around Watsonville has automated strawberry picking, or at least a part of it. They are probably the largest producer of strawberries in the world.

Automation is the key.