California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

Fortune ^

[SMGFan]

Vegetable prices may be going up soon, as a shortage of migrant workers is resulting in lost crops in California. Farmers say they're having trouble hiring enough people to work during harvest season, causing some crops to rot before they can be picked. Already, the situation has triggered losses of more than $13 million in two California counties alone, according to NBC News.

The ongoing battle about U.S. immigration policies is blamed for the shortage. The vast majority of California's farm workers are foreign born, with many coming from Mexico. However, the PEW Research Center reports more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming here.

[dfwgator]

[fuzzylogic]

So they admit that they were exploiting illegal aliens, driving down the wage for American workers. Pay real wages and we’d see barely a blip in grocery prices.

[Viking2002]

Yep. Welfare reform ought to be a sidecar to immigration reform. These deadbeats and brood mares would rather sit at home in an air-conditioned, taxpayer subsidized public housing project than go out and maybe get dirty(er) performing those 'jobs that Americans don't want'. If they can't or won't find some means of self-subsistence, then make them invest in a little sweat equity for those WIC cards they're getting from our tax dollars. Pick up roadside trash. Pick cucumbers and watermelons. Mow grass. Empty trash cans in public parks. Develop a work ethic. I am so sick of seeing these mouth breathers holding up the line in the supermarket because it takes five minutes to process their damn government cheese cards, and all the while they're jabbering on their iPhone 6 that they have in a jeweled case.

[Chaguito]

I’m betting this story was written at least six months ago for today’s release.

[Albion Wilde]

Fake news.

[Grampa Dave]

Vegetable prices may be going up soon! (fake news)

According my wife, head chef, veggie and fruit buyer, the only veggie with big price increases are avocados!

Consumption surges in U.S., China; prices doubled in a year

High demand in China, USA and other countries is causing the price increases. The chart below shows how the price of avocados in Mexico has increased, and there is no shortage of Mexican avocado pickers in Mexico.

[Thank You Rush]

Whatever happened to the seasonal workers that used to work from coast to coast in crops and then went home? They were happy to do so, could bring their families with them and were happy to go home again. No law chasing them and they had the best of two worlds - ready to come back the next season. I seem to remember it was one of the BROWNS in CA who botched that up - either father or son...

[ptsal]

Endless welfare / social service agencies providing family assistance and in-home medical care with translators.....

C’mon hubby is out in the field picking crops and mommy is working the welfare system.

[bgill]

The less illegals, the less they have to be fed.

Rotting plants will help fertilize for next season.

[bigmak007]

I chatted with a local farmer a few years back. (Oregon)
He sends buses down to the border every year, to pick up workers legally. He grows for major food chains. He pays over minimum, and treats the workers well.
He said he has tried to hire Americans over the years, but out of over 2000 attempts, only one could handle the job.
Plus the Mexicans can outperform the gringos three to four times, and they won’t quit working. He has to make them stop after 10 hours +.

I suspect this article has an agenda to keep cheap labor.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

Welfare peoples are getting money for nothing

Yup. They need to be moved into the now empty wetback-barracks, and get used to doing a little "workfare". That would free up some of the "affordable housing" for some honest working people who would actually pay rent.

That way, the former ghetto denizen could get some fresh air, and develop a work ethic, the farmers could get free labor, and the Mexicans could go back home and have a revolution.

Once the new "agriculture workers" discover they could move on and make more money working a regular job, a new batch of gimee-girls would come in and take their place.

[Hugin]

However, the PEW Research Center reports more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming here.

And they ridiculed the idea that illegals would ever "self deport".

[Bookshelf]

Exaggeration? Undoubtedly.
Many years ago, when Cesar Chavez was around, the U.S. ended the Bracero Program that allowed Mexicans to pick crops in the West. The result was cataclysmic. However, Food Machinery Corporation working in conjunction with seed companies came up with a machine that would harvest tomato vines and cull the good fruit from bad. The seed companies came up with a tomato on which 50 percent ripened in a given week’s time. The result was a revolution in tomato harvesting. I’m not sure it still works, but scarcity (or warfare) is the mother of invention.

[odawg]

I have often wondered why the hue and cry about farm workers. Why aren’t the “eleven” million already here not doing the harvesting? I mean, is it necessary to import an additional work force every year to do the harvesting? What happened to last year’s harvesters?

[Fiji Hill]

We used to have the Bracero Program here in California which did just that, but the Blacks claimed the Mexicans were taking their jobs, so the program was cancelled. Funny thing though, we didn’t see the Blacks getting up off of their lazy asses back then and head out to the fields.

Braceros were promptly replaced by illegal aliens, but I don't recall Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan or other so-called black "leaders" protesting that they were continuing to take jobs away from blacks.

[montag813]

I will gladly pay higher prices...for NON-California produce

[wjcsux]

Once upon a time, Cesar Chavez and his guys tried stopping illegals from coming over the border to take farm workers jobs from Americans. Things have changed.

[VideoDoctor]

Vegetable prices may be going up soon,

GOOD! Even more reason NOT to have to eat vegetables. /s

[montag813]

Europe doesn't have millions of illegal alien laborers to use, so they AUTOMATE crop picking using robots. They are FAR ahead.

[boop]

"I call BS. Why can’t the farmworkers get green cards to work here like they did before."

I totally agree!

I've grown so tired of the "jobs Americans won't do" argument.

Really?

So nobody in America ate salads 50 years ago?

This a *new* thing, eating vegetables?