I am so tired of this myth and all the hand wringing about paying a nickel extra for a head of lettuce.
Good read.
There were Americans who might have done this work in the 1960s. In today’s environment? Even if you offered $15 an hour, and needed twenty folks for four weeks of real work, I doubt that you’d get more than five or six. This is the kind of labor that you can’t easily find in this environment.
I grew up on a farm, and every year....we needed extra help for picking up hay. You’d have to offer a minimum of $10 an hour today, and it’s questionable that you’d find several kids who’d do this type of work.
Won’t have to grow food for 10-20 million illegals anyways.
I’d be ok with tax break for cost of supplies related to people having their own veggie garden/fruit trees. Better than tax break for kids which not everyone has. Apt dwellers can be offered roof top or assigned portions of the property with their unit if they don’t have patio/balcony to grow things on.
Freepers, this is a good story to post to your FB page and set it for public viewing. If enough people do it, it will help move the needle on public opinion, which in turn will move our do-nothing Congress to get off their butts.
For many years we had Bracero’s working the cotton fields of West TX but all their work has been overtaken with machinery. Only place you’ll find illegals is in construction, oil fields, hotel industry and some fast food industries.
“there are plenty of technological solutions and American workers available to pick up the slack”
If you can’t make money doing it, stop doing it.
OR, surprise, surprise, surprise .. .
RAISE YOUR PRICES.
You don’t grow oranges in NY, and you don’t grow Apples in the Arizona desert. Maybe we’ll just continue with all these agricultural “Mohair” subsidies.
Crony lives on farms too.
Subsidizing the “Fruits & Nuts” in CA ain’t my idea of money well spent.
The “exceptions” to this rule are fruit and nut farms, located primarily in California
1 out of 3 people in California collect Welfare, every last one of them can be out in the fields picking berries for their daily bread.
“Agriculture is not a labor-intensive industry”
As a guy who owns a farm, works with farmers, talks with farmers every day, and works for a company that makes equipment for farmers to use in daily production, I have one thing to say:
This guy has uttered the most inaccurate-and-down-right-stupid statement in the history of journalism. It is so stupid it entirely discredits any other word in the article by tainting it with stupidity.
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.