It takes a certain kind of person to do that work. I did farmwork as a teenager but I’d end up dead in the field if I tried it today.
If you intend to employ adults with families and homes, you’re going to have to pay far more than welfare or unemployment.
We’ve always had a sizable migrant labor force on the farms but they are evaporating as it becomes ever easier for them to collect benefits.
How can it be easier for them to collect benefits?
I picked bulbs as a teen one summer.
If I had to, I’d pick bulbs for food money. I’m 44 now and I’d definitely survive the first day.
But my second day wouldn’t start until four days later, when I could move again.
Keep any farmers from hiring illegals and they’ll all be able to afford American workers. Also, there will be more innovation in farm technology, just as there has been in other industries where we haven’t relied on cheap immigrant labor.
Lots of this work is very seasonal, and enterprising employers could do a good job luring college students with something of a spring break atmosphere, for example.
Local teens could also do a lot of the work, as they have done in the past.