I received the latest newsletter from a local, small family farming operation and was surprised to read they had serious problems finding dependable American workers and ended up hiring two foreign workers (one from Africa and another from India) through an international NGO. Think about that - they could not find TWO dependable American…
I received the latest newsletter from a local, small family farming operation and was surprised to read they had serious problems finding dependable American workers and ended up hiring two foreign workers (one from Africa and another from India) through an international NGO. Think about that - they could not find TWO dependable Americans for farm labor - and they're not out in the middle of nowhere, plenty of possible candidates within walking distance. This is not going to improve. Deporting all the people willing to do hard work will not suddenly create a class of hardworking Americans; they've never had to do anything hard and now they're too busy playing games, as intended.
um, no. As a former farm worker and friend of a farmer, I saw how the foreign workers (many here under special programs for the season) worked so much harder than anyone else, even earnest strong college kids.
As a farm worker, I can only laugh at this. The issues are complex, involving housing, health care, transportation, and modern expectations. And stop crying that your eggs cost $5, not $2. That's what they should cost. I pay a lot more for the good ones.
I'm not crying about anything. Anything of higher quality costs more. Your presumptiveness though proves my point. With the arguments you're making you may as well be a 19th century robber baron making profits off of the slave labor of children.
Always always the racist crap card-the favorite Scarlett Letter of progressive left. Augmented now by anti semitism. It would just be pathetically tiresome if it wasn’t always levied with intent to eradicate.
Farmers would love to pay their staff members $50/hour---if they made anywhere near that. The average farmer in Massachusetts makes less than $35,000--and many aspire to that. There is also a housing shortage. And health care coverage is expensive (it used to be a good deal in Mass.). Customers need to suck it up and pay for what high-quality produce, eggs, and meat grown by well compensated staff costs. But instead they whine when eggs cost more than $3/dozen. Do you know what goes into raising chickens and eggs well and getting them to market, where they are marked up by the stores?
Yep! i am not arguing the point that costs are somehow lower than they are. I agree that farmers should be fairly and actually generously compensated given the services they offer. And i am also aware of inflation and the unreasonable costs of everything. My point is that bringing in foreign labor to lower costs is not going to solve the long term problems you bring up. In fact, it will maintain the expectation of people that they can get a dozen eggs for 2 or 3 dollars. It is a like a drug habit. Outsourcing everything has led to the problems we are apparently "arguing" over.
Exactly, but what are folks going to do about it? I'd say it starts with consumers stopping their complaints about costs. Pay for good products made and grown by fairly compensated workers. If consumers are willing to do that, there will be less work for imported labor, if that's the goal.
Yes, consumers need to stop complaining about costs! I paint houses and charge $15K, the other painters in town charge $10K, and they're getting all the work. They need to stop complaining about costs, damnit! My kids need new shoes!
Edit/Clarifying: Your comments here are not consistent. You're saying farms should hire local white people (who really aren't always available), not migrant workers, even if the migrant workers are affordable and work harder? And that farms should not raise prices to reflect the cost of hiring local workers who have local housing and do not work to a top standard! Our farm is all locals but housing is an issue. Farms closer to Boston are able to use the programs that bring in Jamaicans and others legally and for a season and with housing and visa, etc. taken care of. Small farms are disappearing due to costs, markets, labor, etc. And again no one has ever said "did the farm laborers arrive?" at our farm. They are staff
Yes, there should be no imported labor! But we should reserve the right to complain about what we wish to complain about. Reasonableness is often in the eyes of the beholder.
~ Fuck The Crony-Capitalist Plutarchy Farm Industry ~
"Bill Mollison: People question me coming through the American frontier these days. They ask, 'What's your occupation?' I say, 'I'm just a simple gardener.' And that is deeply seditious. If you're a simple person today, and want to live simply, that is awfully seditious. And to advise people to live simply is more seditious still.
You see, the worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.
Alan Atkisson (interviewer): So that's worst from whose perspective?
Bill: Anybody that wants to extinguish it. It's something with a million heads. It's a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can't put a way of thinking back in the box.
Alan: Is it an anarchist movement?
Bill: ...You won't get cooperation out of a hierarchical system. You get enforced directions from the top, and nothing I know of can run like that. I think the world would function extremely well with millions of little cooperative groups, all in relation to each other."
Staff members? Your choice of words is telling, Carol. They are farm laborers. If they don't like low wages, there are plenty of other opportunities. And don't make excuses for them. That's a cop out. It's called personal responsibility - a character trait missing from the Leftists. I don't care how crunchy they are.
But you don't work in the business. Your own terminology and defending cheap goods tell me that. At the farm, we discuss pricing and staffing every week.
Footnote: The State of Louisiana, by it's State Constitution, outlawed slavery in 1864. My guess is that's a few years before she was born, so she's never really resided in a state where slavery is legal.
It brings me joy that you are amused. Though, i haven't a clue who SSS is. But an fyi to bring further levity to the situation..you must have forgotten how many Yankees were slave owners.
Nope. At $10, demand dries up. Mexican farmer's lettuce rots in the fields. The farmers get pissed and petition the Mexican Gov to act the way they are supposed to, per the US Gov. Sanctions/tariffs are a tool for behavior modification.
I worked tobacco in the early '70s with a mix of other white kids and imported Hispanics there for the season. It was gruelling, but working class kids were expected to sweat back then. Wonder what it's like now...
Same here - WNC, although the big tobacco farms were ENC.
"Wonder what it's like now..." ~ Steve
Most all NC tobacco growers sold their allotments years ago. After the spanking Big Tobacco took here, regulation cost too much. Growing went overseas.
Copenhagen snuff @ $0.23 a tin? Now near $10 a tin. Use has declined proportionately - that's economics.
I received the latest newsletter from a local, small family farming operation and was surprised to read they had serious problems finding dependable American workers and ended up hiring two foreign workers (one from Africa and another from India) through an international NGO. Think about that - they could not find TWO dependable Americans for farm labor - and they're not out in the middle of nowhere, plenty of possible candidates within walking distance. This is not going to improve. Deporting all the people willing to do hard work will not suddenly create a class of hardworking Americans; they've never had to do anything hard and now they're too busy playing games, as intended.
"they had serious problems finding dependable Americans"
Did they try offering higher wages? Maybe those farmers are just racist.
um, no. As a former farm worker and friend of a farmer, I saw how the foreign workers (many here under special programs for the season) worked so much harder than anyone else, even earnest strong college kids.
Some people are accustomed to slavery more than others. Sad that so many people still want slaves.
As a farm worker, I can only laugh at this. The issues are complex, involving housing, health care, transportation, and modern expectations. And stop crying that your eggs cost $5, not $2. That's what they should cost. I pay a lot more for the good ones.
I'm not crying about anything. Anything of higher quality costs more. Your presumptiveness though proves my point. With the arguments you're making you may as well be a 19th century robber baron making profits off of the slave labor of children.
Notice the last names on these two. You just nailed it
Always always the racist crap card-the favorite Scarlett Letter of progressive left. Augmented now by anti semitism. It would just be pathetically tiresome if it wasn’t always levied with intent to eradicate.
Outed the jew
Yes..i see
Farmers would love to pay their staff members $50/hour---if they made anywhere near that. The average farmer in Massachusetts makes less than $35,000--and many aspire to that. There is also a housing shortage. And health care coverage is expensive (it used to be a good deal in Mass.). Customers need to suck it up and pay for what high-quality produce, eggs, and meat grown by well compensated staff costs. But instead they whine when eggs cost more than $3/dozen. Do you know what goes into raising chickens and eggs well and getting them to market, where they are marked up by the stores?
Yep! i am not arguing the point that costs are somehow lower than they are. I agree that farmers should be fairly and actually generously compensated given the services they offer. And i am also aware of inflation and the unreasonable costs of everything. My point is that bringing in foreign labor to lower costs is not going to solve the long term problems you bring up. In fact, it will maintain the expectation of people that they can get a dozen eggs for 2 or 3 dollars. It is a like a drug habit. Outsourcing everything has led to the problems we are apparently "arguing" over.
Exactly, but what are folks going to do about it? I'd say it starts with consumers stopping their complaints about costs. Pay for good products made and grown by fairly compensated workers. If consumers are willing to do that, there will be less work for imported labor, if that's the goal.
Yes, consumers need to stop complaining about costs! I paint houses and charge $15K, the other painters in town charge $10K, and they're getting all the work. They need to stop complaining about costs, damnit! My kids need new shoes!
Edit/Clarifying: Your comments here are not consistent. You're saying farms should hire local white people (who really aren't always available), not migrant workers, even if the migrant workers are affordable and work harder? And that farms should not raise prices to reflect the cost of hiring local workers who have local housing and do not work to a top standard! Our farm is all locals but housing is an issue. Farms closer to Boston are able to use the programs that bring in Jamaicans and others legally and for a season and with housing and visa, etc. taken care of. Small farms are disappearing due to costs, markets, labor, etc. And again no one has ever said "did the farm laborers arrive?" at our farm. They are staff
Yes, there should be no imported labor! But we should reserve the right to complain about what we wish to complain about. Reasonableness is often in the eyes of the beholder.
Yes, people are going to complain. Some of the complaints have weight and some don't. But it's a human right.
Stop going to a big ag market that marks up prices. Big ag and big pharma and health insurance companies must go
?
~ Fuck The Crony-Capitalist Plutarchy Farm Industry ~
"Bill Mollison: People question me coming through the American frontier these days. They ask, 'What's your occupation?' I say, 'I'm just a simple gardener.' And that is deeply seditious. If you're a simple person today, and want to live simply, that is awfully seditious. And to advise people to live simply is more seditious still.
You see, the worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.
Alan Atkisson (interviewer): So that's worst from whose perspective?
Bill: Anybody that wants to extinguish it. It's something with a million heads. It's a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can't put a way of thinking back in the box.
Alan: Is it an anarchist movement?
Bill: ...You won't get cooperation out of a hierarchical system. You get enforced directions from the top, and nothing I know of can run like that. I think the world would function extremely well with millions of little cooperative groups, all in relation to each other."
Staff members? Your choice of words is telling, Carol. They are farm laborers. If they don't like low wages, there are plenty of other opportunities. And don't make excuses for them. That's a cop out. It's called personal responsibility - a character trait missing from the Leftists. I don't care how crunchy they are.
Only someone who has no connection to farming would say to a farm worker that she doesn't know what she is talking about. But enjoy your rage today.
Educated in Ag Economics. Sorry sweetie. Try harder.
But you don't work in the business. Your own terminology and defending cheap goods tell me that. At the farm, we discuss pricing and staffing every week.
You don't understand economics, i.e., supply vs. demand.
SSS....with you being from Louisana, that's really bizarrely amusing.
Let me see if I understand your logic:
In the State of Louisiana slavery was once legal.
Dreamy lives in Louisiana.
Therefore, Dreamy is pro-slavery.
Got it.
Footnote: The State of Louisiana, by it's State Constitution, outlawed slavery in 1864. My guess is that's a few years before she was born, so she's never really resided in a state where slavery is legal.
💚💛💜
It brings me joy that you are amused. Though, i haven't a clue who SSS is. But an fyi to bring further levity to the situation..you must have forgotten how many Yankees were slave owners.
Nova, or how many free Blacks owned slaves.
A ton! Especially in New Orleans.
Brilliant logic there, "Maria". Not surprising.
Yeah - $10 lettuces aren't far off - the 25% tariff on Mexican vegetables will mean that local USA growers can finally pay their workers $15 an hour.
Nope. At $10, demand dries up. Mexican farmer's lettuce rots in the fields. The farmers get pissed and petition the Mexican Gov to act the way they are supposed to, per the US Gov. Sanctions/tariffs are a tool for behavior modification.
I worked tobacco in the early '70s with a mix of other white kids and imported Hispanics there for the season. It was gruelling, but working class kids were expected to sweat back then. Wonder what it's like now...
Same here - WNC, although the big tobacco farms were ENC.
"Wonder what it's like now..." ~ Steve
Most all NC tobacco growers sold their allotments years ago. After the spanking Big Tobacco took here, regulation cost too much. Growing went overseas.
Copenhagen snuff @ $0.23 a tin? Now near $10 a tin. Use has declined proportionately - that's economics.
Why were you surprised? Head in the sand? Calling for 'Mass Deportation Now!" are you?