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Interesting video and article about Farm Jobs and how Americans do not want them.

trixare4kids said:
A "peon job"?

Oh the humanity!

These jobs are stepping stone jobs. Bump the pay a bit and the employers will get the workers who are both legally here, and free to apply
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With the possible exception of promotion to foreman (given a large enough operation), what career path is available to a farm laborer at a family farm? Not beating on you here, but this city-boy is not aware.
 
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marke said:
LBJ had a pretty lucrative deal going on under the table involving the Agriculture Department and coconspirators like Mac Wallace, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. Fortunately for LBJ, JFK was assassinated just in time for LBJ to shut down the Senate investigation into his criminal dealings.
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Well that may - or may not - be, and I thank you for the historical footnote. But the last I looked, the name on the White House stationary said:

"President Donald J. Trump"
 
Chomsky said:
I have great respect for independent proprietor-owned farmers. I admire their self-reliant individualism, and their ability to make a living off the land. And I'm somewhat aware of the variables involved.

But I'm attempting to do objective economic analysis. And during normal times in a free-market environment, if our farmer can't get adequate workers at 12 bucks an hour, he needs to raise his wages or provide other benefits and/or conditions & terms. If he can't do that within his cost structure, his business model is simply not working for him.

I'm not making a value judgement here, but simply stating economic principles. Pay well enough, you'll get workers. I know more than a few workers that dislike their jobs/employers/employees/bosses, but they do a reasonable job for an extended period because they get paid well enough that it's worth sticking around for awhile. That's life.
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I'll just pass along some anecdotal information from the dairy farmers near me. Their industry is cut throat with very low margins, and the problem with "raise your pay and you'll get workers" is there are millions of recent immigrants, many of them illegals, and if your business pays $18/hour to get someone to show up 7 days a week and work a hard job, then you will go bankrupt, because those other guys are hiring illegals paying them $10 plus a little mobile home.

We had a long discussion with one dairy farm owner who leased a couple fields for a dove hunt to make a little extra, and he said the biggest problem for him is the local good old boys just weren't reliable. They'd take the job, work a few weeks or months, figure out it's really demanding, get drunk one Saturday night, skip their Sunday shift leaving him in a bind, because the cows can't wait, and never show up again. The 'illegals' worked when they said they would. He offered several families on-site lodging and if dad was sick, the kids did the job, or momma, but the job GOT DONE very reliably. So his entire crew was recent immigrants and he didn't care if they were legal or not - they made the place WORK.

So the pay thing works when the industry is cleaned up, but not when you're one dairy farm, and you're competing with 100 others in the area. It's one reason why I think you'll agree, because I'm pretty sure you've said so many times, the 'immigration' issue that needs addressing more than any other is holding illegal EMPLOYERS accountable. Even if the subject in the documentary wants to do the right thing, he cannot and keep his dairy farm.
 
Luckyone said:
Here is a video of a farm owner in Minnesota and the problems he has had trying to get people to fill the job positions that he is offering.

He is offering $12 an hour in pay (decent for a peon job) and all the white Americans that have applied have said it is not something they want to do. It is "too hard" for them.

What is he to do if Americans don't want the job?

This is how hard it is to find workers for a dairy farm - CNN Video
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Sorry but having married into a farm family (my first marriage) I am calling BS, PARTIAL BS.

1. He advertised on Craigslist? HAHAHAHA OMG!
Here is the Craigslist Help Wanted "General Labor" page from St. Cloud MN, which is where he most likely placed his ad...
Take a look at the kinds of JOBS being offered.

2. There are only THREE "FARM HELP" ads and I bet this ad right here is likely HIS ad:

Farm help - general labor - job employment

3. Farmers don't generally hire off Craigslist, is my point. Three farm operators are asking for help but what MOST farmers do is go into town and put up notices on the board at the local feed stores. That's where FARMER types are likely to go if they're looking to get hired on a farm.
That's the way it is, that's the way it's always been.

He says he interviewed twenty-five people. I'm betting that most of them were from St. Cloud, a city of 70 thousand people, most of whom normally work in finance, medical/healthcare, bus and truck/trailer assembly & manufacturing, warehousing and distribution and Electrolux. (the vacuum cleaner company)
The Saint Cloud VA Medical Center also employs 1300 people.

I'm betting most of those St. Cloud kids have never worked on a farm in their lives.

That doesn't discount his point or the point of the story but the point being overlooked is, American employers who use unskilled labor have been addicted to cheap illegal immigrant labor for DECADES. I don't just mean in the last ten years, I'm saying they've been addicted to it for fifty years.

There are plenty of local born and bred American people who WILL do this hard work, but I suspect most of those people are already employed on all the other farms in the surrounding area and don't want to leave their present jobs. Minnesota's farming business is and always has been very robust and there has always been a lot of demand for extra help up there.
Minnesota's dairy industry is every bit as legendary as Wisconsin's (America's Dairyland)
And from the looks of it Pat Lunemann is probably the top milk producer in the state or close to it, so I imagine his dairy farm is probably enormous.

And it sounds like there is more to the story, because I wager not only is he short on help due to the immigration situation, I bet he is perennially short of help all year round. And if he is advertising on Craigslist, he must be desperate.
 
Luckyone said:
Sure he will but then again he would have to pay "all his other workers" the same and that is where problems begin with making ends meet. He would have to raise his prices and he would be less competitive and could even go out of business ultimately.

If it was that easy to just raise wages and raise prices.
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Twin Eagle Dairy is not a tiny operation. He has almost a thousand cows.
That tells me he's probably a supplier for supermarket chains.
Also, dairy farming has been on price support for thirty years because milk prices are part of a USDA farm subsidy program.
Without those milk subsidies 75 percent of ALL dairy farms in the entire country would be belly up.
 
JasperL said:
I'll just pass along some anecdotal information from the dairy farmers near me. Their industry is cut throat with very low margins, and the problem with "raise your pay and you'll get workers" is there are millions of recent immigrants, many of them illegals, and if your business pays $18/hour to get someone to show up 7 days a week and work a hard job, then you will go bankrupt, because those other guys are hiring illegals paying them $10 plus a little mobile home.

We had a long discussion with one dairy farm owner who leased a couple fields for a dove hunt to make a little extra, and he said the biggest problem for him is the local good old boys just weren't reliable. They'd take the job, work a few weeks or months, figure out it's really demanding, get drunk one Saturday night, skip their Sunday shift leaving him in a bind, because the cows can't wait, and never show up again. The 'illegals' worked when they said they would. He offered several families on-site lodging and if dad was sick, the kids did the job, or momma, but the job GOT DONE very reliably. So his entire crew was recent immigrants and he didn't care if they were legal or not - they made the place WORK.

So the pay thing works when the industry is cleaned up, but not when you're one dairy farm, and you're competing with 100 others in the area. It's one reason why I think you'll agree, because I'm pretty sure you've said so many times, the 'immigration' issue that needs addressing more than any other is holding illegal EMPLOYERS accountable. Even if the subject in the documentary wants to do the right thing, he cannot and keep his dairy farm.
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Great post Jasper, and I thank you for it. And yes, I very much do agree.

(BTW, the line "the cows can't wait" is absolutely priceless!)

But this is exactly why I stated in my post, "during normal conditions in a free-market environment", and "or his business model is simply flawed".

When you allow illegal employment, or get involved with subsidies as Trump is doing, you distort the markets. Free-market principles work well-enough - ironically - if they're fairly & reasonably regulated. But as you stated, that's not what's happening here. These farmers, American labor, and other American citizens, have all been let down by our government and pols for a great many years. And it's distorted our markets.

Honestly I really don't see this mess ending, until the employers face legit consequences. But that's unlikely to occur with our reigning plutocracy, and the often poor & uneducated from other countries will be exploited, to their detriment and that of American labor.

Additionally as we speak, Trump and our political parties are moving forward to increase H1B immigration and hasten the path to citizenship for them & their families! After decades of hollowing-out the labor, working, and middle-class, it now looks like they're gunning for the technical professional class. Nothing changes it seems, except the name of the guy in the White House and the 'R' or 'D' before their name.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Twin Eagle Dairy is not a tiny operation. He has almost a thousand cows.
That tells me he's probably a supplier for supermarket chains.
Also, dairy farming has been on price support for thirty years because milk prices are part of a USDA farm subsidy program.
Without those milk subsidies 75 percent of ALL dairy farms in the entire country would be belly up.
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With your information here and in the post above, I Googled them. Geezus! 800 head + 1500 acres! These guys are no Ma & Pa Kettle!

I bet there's some angle here, that we're not seeing.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Sorry but having married into a farm family (my first marriage) I am calling BS, PARTIAL BS.

1. He advertised on Craigslist? HAHAHAHA OMG!
Here is the Craigslist Help Wanted "General Labor" page from St. Cloud MN, which is where he most likely placed his ad...
Take a look at the kinds of JOBS being offered.

2. There are only THREE "FARM HELP" ads and I bet this ad right here is likely HIS ad:

Farm help - general labor - job employment

3. Farmers don't generally hire off Craigslist, is my point. Three farm operators are asking for help but what MOST farmers do is go into town and put up notices on the board at the local feed stores. That's where FARMER types are likely to go if they're looking to get hired on a farm.
That's the way it is, that's the way it's always been.

He says he interviewed twenty-five people. I'm betting that most of them were from St. Cloud, a city of 70 thousand people, most of whom normally work in finance, medical/healthcare, bus and truck/trailer assembly & manufacturing, warehousing and distribution and Electrolux. (the vacuum cleaner company)
The Saint Cloud VA Medical Center also employs 1300 people.

I'm betting most of those St. Cloud kids have never worked on a farm in their lives.

That doesn't discount his point or the point of the story but the point being overlooked is, American employers who use unskilled labor have been addicted to cheap illegal immigrant labor for DECADES. I don't just mean in the last ten years, I'm saying they've been addicted to it for fifty years.

There are plenty of local born and bred American people who WILL do this hard work, but I suspect most of those people are already employed on all the other farms in the surrounding area and don't want to leave their present jobs. Minnesota's farming business is and always has been very robust and there has always been a lot of demand for extra help up there.
Minnesota's dairy industry is every bit as legendary as Wisconsin's (America's Dairyland)
And from the looks of it Pat Lunemann is probably the top milk producer in the state or close to it, so I imagine his dairy farm is probably enormous.

And it sounds like there is more to the story, because I wager not only is he short on help due to the immigration situation, I bet he is perennially short of help all year round. And if he is advertising on Craigslist, he must be desperate.
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I don't expect to get decent, reliable help for less than $100 cash per day.
 
Chomsky said:
With your information here and in the post above, I Googled them. Geezus! 800 head + 1500 acres! These guys are no Ma & Pa Kettle!

I bet there's some angle here, that we're not seeing.
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Not an angle, just the reality. He has more cows than there are farmhands to work them.
It means he's a prosperous dairy farmer.
That was the case even back in the 1970's when dairy price supports were miniscule and temporary.
Minnesota and Wisconsin dairy farmers are a powerful part of the workforce and the state economies.

I really do wager that he already exhausted all other means of attracting help the usual way and is still shorthanded, hence why he finally decided to try Craigslist. I am telling you guys, farmers do not generally hire off Craigslist.

That's because generally speaking they know they'll get a bunch of townies and hipster types, the kind that generally read Craigslist! :lamo
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I don't expect to get decent, reliable help for less than $100 cash per day.
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Nope.
Even back in Texas in the 2000's when I was still at peak, and I was hiring left and right for shoot after shoot, even if I hired a lowly gopher/PA (unskilled production assistant) I was still paying even the rookies at least $150 a day for eight hours.
And that's slightly similar to the kind of work a band roadie does, work like Hell for a couple of hours, spend a couple of hours sitting around, work like Hell again for a couple of hours, sit around some more and then work like Hell again at the wrapup.

Sound guys wanted $250 a day and I was charging $450 a day minimum for just me and my bod, with production supplying the camera gear and lighting. If they wanted MY gear and lighting, more like $850 a day minimum.

Then the bottom started to fall out around 2010 with the advent of all those cheap HD video capable DSLR cameras and all the twenty year olds getting them from their Mommies and Daddies. Those kids would work as a Director of Photography with their camera gear for $250 a day.

Producers still were willing to pay top dollar anyway if you had a good reputation but a lot of smaller producers just started hiring these rookie kids.
 
Last but not least, DAIRY FARM work is some of the absolute HARDEST farm work there is.
It is MUCH more difficult than just picking crops. And picking crops IS very hard work.
But dairy farming and cattle ranching is way harder, and you actually have to know what you're doing, too.

Cows weigh between 850 and 1500 pounds, so any kind of farm work involving COWS is potentially dangerous, too.
 
Luckyone said:
You have a point but then again:

There are now 42 million people who identify as Black or African American living in America, making up 12% of the total population. According to the most recent American Community Survey, the Black population in Minnesota is 305,403 – at 5.6% of the total population of Minnesota.Dec 9, 2018

The man in the video suggested that only white people applied.
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Why would someone apply for a job they have no intent of taking?
 
bullseyelqcs said:
To be fair.....if the listing doesn't state the wages, one might apply for it only to find out what is being paid and decide not to take the job.
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So what's the purpose of a news story that lacks all the details?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I don't expect to get decent, reliable help for less than $100 cash per day.
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Where I live, I'd have no trouble finding many people willing to work a week for half that much.
 
Luckyone said:
Why don't you apply for the job. You think you are up to doing it and therefore back up your words?
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I have a job, and I've already earned my stripes doing hard labor. By working on a farm and helping raise cattle since I was 12. If they don't want to make money, then they just don't have the drive to have a job.
 
Individual said:
Where I live, I'd have no trouble finding many people willing to work a week for half that much.
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WTF? Half of that ($50 for 8 hours) is $1/hour below the current federal minimum wage.
 
Individual said:
Where I live, I'd have no trouble finding many people willing to work a week for half that much.
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Yeah, and they are probably either working another job to make ends meet, or illegal. Congrats on being part of the problem.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
WTF? Half of that ($50 for 8 hours) is $1/hour below the current federal minimum wage.
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I live abroad, the U.S. Federal minimum wage does not apply. And that would be $50 for 40 hours, or about $9/day.
 
Individual said:
I live abroad, the U.S. Federal minimum wage does not apply. And that would be $50 for 40 hours, or about $9/day.
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Living abroad changes things as far as the legality of it.....still pretty questionable on the morality of it, though.
 
bullseyelqcs said:
Yeah, and they are probably either working another job to make ends meet, or illegal. Congrats on being part of the problem.
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Quick to make baseless accusations, aren't you?
 
Individual said:
Quick to make baseless accusations, aren't you?
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What was it you just said about an article without all the details? Same applies with your comment. What I said was perfectly applicable if you lived in the United States, and it wouldn't have been baseless were that the case.
 
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