Sowing, reaping: Maybe you should've thought this through

[Rick]

Truck crops, I don't eat pickles, I don't eat blackberrys, if I have to go without Peaches for a season so be it.

Illegal's take up more jobs than just farm labor...

[dgs49]

Seems to me:

If the farmer's choices are (a) to allow the crop to go to waste and derive NO REVENUE from it, or (b) pay workers more than anticipated to harvest the crop and sell it at a loss, (b) ALWAYS WINS.

Retailers sell products at below-cost all the time, because the alternative is to have costly inventory sitting around eating (floorplan) money.

No one is "evil" for buying a commodity (in this case, labor) at the lowest price possible. It would be stupid to do otherwise. But if the market changes and you have to pay more for labor, there may be a time while profits are lost. A friend of mine used to do taxes for a lot of farmers (in California), and his take on farming was, you don't make much money in bad years, but you can make a ton in good years. Just the nature of the business.

[Scooter]

And if the cost of labour to bring the crop in exceeds the revenue that can be gotten for it, what then?

[dales]

Gov't subsidies (ie: milk, corn, etc.).

[Long Run]

With the restrictions on illegal immigrant labor, why didn't the farmers think ahead (which is what farmers do) and figure out where their workforce was? The prisoner/parolee workers would obviously have a high drop-out rate since that population pool is not known for its overall industry in legal pursuits.

The whole point of making it harder to hire illegal immigrants is to force their former employers to hire legal workers. This story highlights that the first half of the policy is working: less illegals are being hired. It is up to the employers to find legal workers to replace them. That may change the cost of some food items, but then so does the minimum wage and not letting young children work and any number of other policies that limit the workforce and increase the cost of labor.

[Scooter]

The bill was only passed in April. Two months is not exactly an eternity in the world of manpower planning.

[Gob]

When I first moved out here, I was amazed to discover that they were growing rice in Southern California...about the most water intensive crop you can imagine, being grown on an industrial scale in a region where the vast bulk of the water has to be brought in from outside the area...

It makes absolutely no sense.

You'll never guess where else that happens...

http://www.rga.org.au/rice/growingau.asp

[Long Run]

The bill was only passed in April. Two months is not exactly an eternity in the world of manpower planning.

Fair point. It would have made sense to give folks a bit of time to figure out how to deal with the change.

[Sean]

When I first moved out here, I was amazed to discover that they were growing rice in Southern California....

[cue]Don't they get much rain there then?[/cue]

A one... a two... a one, two, three...

[rubato]

There are large rice farms north of Sacramento where there is plentiful local water. I don't know of any rice production in southern California.

They've done a lot to restore the flocks of migratory ducks, geese, &c by agreeing to leave part of the rice unharvested as food for fowl.

yrs,
rubato

[Sean]

Here's one!

[Guinevere]

There are large rice farms north of Sacramento where there is plentiful local water. I don't know of any rice production in southern California.

They've done a lot to restore the flocks of migratory ducks, geese, &c by agreeing to leave part of the rice unharvested as food for fowl.

yrs,
rubato

Actually, I've done a lot to restore the migratory birds by banning the pesticide used on rice that was responsible for large bird kills.

[Lord Jim]

It would seem that those who have pointed out that a significant increase in wages for farm laborers would not hugely impact the cost of produce are correct. From a study on this done by UC Davis just two years ago:

If the influx of immigrant workers were slowed or stopped and farm wages rose, what would happen to expenditures on fresh fruits and vegetables?

In 1966, the United Farm Workers union won a 40 percent wage increase for some table grape harvesters, largely because Bracero workers were not available. The average earnings of US field workers were $10.07 an hour in 2009, according to a USDA survey of farm employers; a 40 percent increase would raise average hourly earnings to $14.10. If this wage increase were passed on to consumers, the 10 cent farm labor cost of a pound of apples would rise to 14 cents, and the retail price would rise to $1.04.

For a typical household, a 40 percent increase in farm labor costs translates into a 3.6 percent increase in retail prices (0.275 farm share of retail prices x 0.33 farm labor share of farm revenue = nine percent. If farm labor costs rise 40 percent, 0.4 x 9 = 3.6 percent). If farm wages rose 40 percent, and this wage increase were passed on to consumers, average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables would rise about $15 a year (3.6 percent x $429), the cost of two movie tickets. However, for a typical seasonal farm worker, a 40 percent wage increase could raise earnings from $10,000 for 1,000 hours of work to $14,000, above the federal poverty line of $10,830 for an individual in 2008.

http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1573_0_5_0

So the idea that we need to employ people who have no legal right to be in this country to do this work or the cost of fruits and vegetables will skyrocket is pretty much a strawman.

It would be illegal to employ children to pick crops,even though that would no doubt reduce the cost of produce. If we're not going to allow the laws to be broken just to lower prices by looking the other way at child labor, why should why should we do so in the case of illegal alien labor?

[Rick]

Illegal farm labor provides profits to the individual farmer.

Without it he has to drive the same truck he did last year.

The biggest problem with this sort of labor is that it is seasonal, even more so than construction.

The ability to rely on migrant workers is important in that respect only.

They follow the crops, not that ya'll didn't already know that...

[Scooter]

So the idea that we need to employ people who have no legal right to be in this country to do this work or the cost of fruits and vegetables will skyrocket is pretty much a strawman.

It would be illegal to employ children to pick crops,even though that would no doubt reduce the cost of produce. If we're not going to allow the laws to be broken just to lower prices by looking the other way at child labor, why should why should we do so in the case of illegal alien labor?

I don't believe anyone is condoning the use of illegal labour, but only recognizing that eliminating it is going to have consequences, as it did in this case.

Most businesses cannot afford that sort of increase in their labour costs without going under. If prices can rise to absorb it, that's fine, we'll all be paying a little more to ensure that the people producing our food can earn a living wage. Otherwise, there are a lot of farmers who are going to go out of business unless something is done to help them. Someone mentioned making changes to the perverse morass of farm subsidies. That might be a start.

[Andrew D]

Measured by how much we actually eat, the great majority of crops are mechanically harvested anyway.

[Rick]

Is the US the only guilty party?

USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) has released the latest report on foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land. The publication contains statistics through Feb. 28, 2009, regarding the 22.2 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in which foreign persons hold an interest.

Canadians hold the largest amount of land: Over 7.7 million acres, or 34 percent

Beware the link in the Article is over 18 megs...

[Rick]

When it comes to "migrant" labor I will readily admit the US has a poor track record as far as protections.

However the US is not alone...