Mexicans Afraid of Being in America Create Farm Worker Shortage – Crops Suffer (opens in new tab)

Even if you multiply the cost by 5 to cover markup as it goes through the chain (of distribution), you have... $2.50 going to $2.75, or ten percent more at retail. Not shocking.

I think everyone would prefer that.. but this is a problem the farmers created themselves. They've been using migrants for so long, that they've created a substantial difference in pay between themselves and the rest of the labor market. And with a sudden change in the supply of migrants, they're now trying to figure out what that difference is--what the true cost of labor is for their industry.

If they never relied on migrants, they would already know the answer to this question.

How do you explain why its so much cheaper to buy quality food in European countries?

When I am in France or Austria, quality butter, eggs, fresh egg pasta, salami, and milk are all very inexpensive. Quality cultured butter in the US is especially expensive. (Mache in the US is also extremely expensive compared to France but that's a demand thing afaik. I don't remember the price diff of spinach.) Even Switzerland had better prices than the US when I was there for quality animal products.

(It has probably been a few years, but the point stands: the cost of labor is a small portion of the cost of food.)

Some of smaller organic farms don't hire external workers for labor. They are more expensive, but not that much more expensive.

Slow rises are fine, the economy will adjust, fast rises, say from eliminating a large portion of the workforce at once, will cause much more disturbances in the economy.

If you consider the existence of human labor undesirable then automation is always good.

If you consider jobs the end-goal of human existence then automation is always bad.

In all likelihood you're somewhere in between those, and whether automation is good or not depends on external factors. GP seems to lean more towards the "human labor is bad" side.

No sane person with any other options would take that trade

at the wages offered by farm owners!!! This is very similar to arguments trotted out in support of shitty H1B jobs. You want workers for your jobs? Increase the wages. Increased wages will make you raise the prices for your customers? Do so, or find the efficiencies in your business. Increased wages might drive consumers to produce grown in foreign countries? Have appropriate trade agreements protecting vital industries like agriculture, similar to what we have for defense (and after all, trade agreements are not a suicide pact (TM)).

In Kathy Lohr's report, she spoke to R.T. Stanley Jr., a farmer who says he can't hire locals to do the job:

Stanley says experienced workers can earn as much as $200 a day. He says he's tried to hire locals to do the job — working in the fields eight hours or more clipping, bending and lifting in the oppressive Georgia heat.

"They just don't want to do this hard work. And they'll tell you right quick," he says. "I have 'em to come out and work for two hours and they said, 'I'm not doing this. It's too hard.' "

For Stanley, finding workers is already tough enough and he says the new restrictions are likely to make it worse.

"I got my livelihood on the line," he says. "If I don't harvest these onions, I'll lose my farm."

So first of all let's be honest about that $200 a day figure, they're being paid by how much they harvest. $200 a day is basically never going to happen, it's a dream figure, no onion farmer in america is paying $200/day to pick onions.

In fact at Stanley's Farm you're going to be making a whole lot less than that, from 2013:

The plaintiffs say Stanley Farms paid them less than minimum wage over the last three years and illegally cut their wages. The plaintiffs said they also worked alongside pickers who had work permits and who were paid more money than what American workers received

“We see this repeatedly,” said plaintiff’s attorney Dawson Morton. “Farms complain that no local workers are available. But when they do hire local workers, they don’t pay them fairly and don’t offer them the same pay as their foreign workers. It’s illegal and discourages American workers from continuing in agriculture.”

The suit claims the workers were paid 40 cents for each 5-gallon bucket of onions picked, while foreign workers received more than $9 a hour. Workers also had to purchase work tools from the company, the suit says.

http://www.ajc.com/business/vidalia-onion-workers-sue-georgi...

$0.40 for a 5-gallon bucket, so to get to that $200 figure you only need to pick... 2,500 lbs of onions! Every day! Easy!

And then later in 2014:

A judge on Monday approved the agreement. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution states that Stanley Farms agreed to pay $92,500, with $82,500 going to back wages and damages and $10,000 going to attorney’s fees and costs. The company also agreed to follow specific hiring and employment practices that were outlined in the agreement.

“We’re pleased with the resolution reached, and we’re pleased that the farm is agreeing to pay U.S. and foreign workers the same amount, which we don’t believe they were doing,” said Dawson Morton, a lawyer for the workers. “That should reduce the exclusion of U.S. workers from Vidalia onion work and we hope assure equal treatment and equal pay.”

The American workers and their former co-workers filed a lawsuit last year that claimed that American farmworkers were paid less than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour while foreign guest workers were paid between $9.11 and $9.38 an hour.

https://www.andnowuknow.com/shop-talk/stanley-farms-pay-over...

That same articles states that they now follow certain guidelines like making sure there are enough seats for workers on transportation, that the transportation is properly inspected and insured, that workers can't go into fields until at least 24 hours after application of certain chemicals and that they'll provide tools.

So what kind of farm was Stanley actually running when that article was written? Well it's obvious he was paying less than minimum wage to americans and more to illegal immigrants so that he could have an all immigrant workforce so that he could skimp on labor protections. And after doing this for years and years he settles for less than $100,000. This is the problem with american farming. If Mr. Staley had ever actually tried paying americans $200/day and had provided a safe work environment I'm sure workers would have been lined up. It's a pervasive lie that americans won't do farm work for good wages.

So it seems very much to be an issue pre-Brexit.