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California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

JacksinPA

JacksinPA

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Immigration: California Crops Rot During Farmworker Shortage | Fortune

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.
 
JacksinPA said:
Immigration: California Crops Rot During Farmworker Shortage | Fortune

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.
Click to expand...

A bigger problem is that increasingly mexicans feel like they are too good to pick vegetables.

Like Americans.
 
JacksinPA said:
Immigration: California Crops Rot During Farmworker Shortage | Fortune

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.
Click to expand...

There is a rot problem every year.

Care to research the problem before you look to make any liberal talking points?
 
Inflation is a beautiful thing.

#MAGA
 
RetiredUSN said:
There is a rot problem every year.

Care to research the problem before you look to make any liberal talking points?
Click to expand...

You are not addressing the OP: immigration policy & resulting losses to farmers due to shortage of immigrant farm labor. Americans re not going to do that kind of work for the wages they pay the immigrants.
 
JacksinPA said:
You are not addressing the OP: immigration policy & resulting losses to farmers due to shortage of immigrant farm labor. Americans re not going to do that kind of work for the wages they pay the immigrants.
Click to expand...

So....raise the wages.
 
JacksinPA said:
Immigration: California Crops Rot During Farmworker Shortage | Fortune

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.
Click to expand...

Those crops can be picked if the farmers want them to, they just don't want to pay the money necessary. Their competitors are building machines to solve the labor problem and finding an additional competitive edge in the process.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
A bigger problem is that increasingly mexicans feel like they are too good to pick vegetables.

Like Americans.
Click to expand...


What’s got into them? Hate when folks don’t know their place........
 
KevinKohler said:
So....raise the wages.
Click to expand...
Exactly! Wasn't that one of the complaints about the illegal immigrant workforce? I'm happy to pay a little more if it provides employment to a fellow Americans.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk
 
jeffchap said:
Exactly! Wasn't that one of the complaints about the illegal immigrant workforce? I'm happy to pay a little more if it provides employment to a fellow Americans.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


Next thing we’ll be doing our own lawn care ........
 
Rexedgar said:
What’s got into them? Hate when folks don’t know their place........
Click to expand...

Do try to stay on track...





So what are we to do.....we can either find a new place to import labor from or we can go with mechanization.

The farmers have decided to go with mechanization.

But it takes time to develop the machines.

Sometimes they never work.
 
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/08/wav...olds-potential-to-ease-farm-labor-crunch.html

From strawberries to apples, a wave of agriculture robotics may ease the farm labor crunch

-Robotic machines to pick everything from strawberries to apples are being tested and could one day help ease the farm labor crunch.
-Another agricultural technology in development involves small robot fleets operating in swarms.
-However, robotics won't steal all the farm jobs in the future but could be disruptive, according to experts.

Some farmers are responding to the worsening farm labor shortage by turning to automated harvesting equipment and other advanced technology that perform tasks such as pruning, seeding and weeding.

Robotic harvesting vehicles are being tested in Florida and California to pick strawberries and replace labor-intensive tasks normally performed by dozens of farm workers. Also, robotic machinery is being tested to harvest apples and other crops, and efforts are underway to develop small agriculture field robots that can attack weeds or take care of other farm work.
===================================================
Big farming companies are partnering with robotic developers & testing the robots on their farms. They don't take breaks, they can work 24 hours/day & they don't need health insurance. But robots require capital investment which adds to the cost of the harvested crops.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Do try to stay on track...





So what are we to do.....we can either find a new place to import labor from or we can go with mechanization.

The farmers have decided to go with mechanization.

But it takes time to develop the machines.

Sometimes they never work.
Click to expand...

We are running out of people to exploit. It’s one thing for machines/robots to work in clean, climate controlled factories, it’s quite another to have a machine out in the elements and the dirt. Also what cost will be needed to simulate the human touch? Works in prosthetics, but very expensive......
 
JacksinPA said:
You are not addressing the OP: immigration policy & resulting losses to farmers due to shortage of immigrant farm labor. Americans re not going to do that kind of work for the wages they pay the immigrants.
Click to expand...

Bingo
 
JacksinPA said:
Immigration: California Crops Rot During Farmworker Shortage | Fortune

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.
Click to expand...

There must be zero % unemployment in those areas, or are those collecting checks too good to get dirty?
 
Rexedgar said:
We are running out of people to exploit. It’s one thing for machines/robots to work in clean, climate controlled factories, it’s quite another to have a machine out in the elements and the dirt. Also what cost will be needed to simulate the human touch? Works in prosthetics, but very expensive......
Click to expand...

That is what I used to think till I opened my restaurant and saw clearly how entitled and lazy and all to often stupid the younger people are now. I have decided now that besides the wage issue the farmers were telling the truth when they claim that Americans will not do this work either at all or unless you pay them like $30/HR because that is what they think they are worth picking vegetables.

Increasingly the Mexicans are trending the same, which is why the farmers are now doing what ever they can to get rid of labor needs.

BTW I just last week saw a piece about just this re fast food.
 
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Fledermaus said:
Don't you want to pay a living wage to farm workers?
Click to expand...

Thing is, what the pickers get paid isn't a large factor in produce prices when compared to all the factors:

1. Seed costs
2. Agri-machinery (tractors, combines, plows, etc)
3. Processing
4. Warehousing
5. Transportation
6. Pesticides
7. Distribution

And since most of them are large corporate firms, add in all the other corporate overhead as well.
Nope, even if you raised agri-job picker pay to minimum wage, the agri-businesses would complain, yes of course, but in the end the price of produce would only rise about 5% tops.
Big hairy deal.

Here's the big hairy deal: Tossing out MILLIONS of tons of Romaine lettuce nationwide because of e-coli worries, meat recalls, processed food recalls, by the dozens, every single week. We're at the very lowest bleeding edge of holding down pay and the system itself is showing cracks BECAUSE it is reaching a point of diminishing returns.

Airlines are starting to have planes with cracked windows and exploding engines because airlines are trying to slough off maintenance costs.
Again, diminishing returns, because a dozen monster wrongful death lawsuits from families who saw their loved ones sucked out of a window cancels out all the savings.

You can ONLY CUT SO MUCH, then if you go beyond that, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Thing is, what the pickers get paid isn't a large factor in produce prices when compared to all the factors:

1. Seed costs
2. Agri-machinery (tractors, combines, plows, etc)
3. Processing
4. Warehousing
5. Transportation
6. Pesticides
7. Distribution

And since most of them are large corporate firms, add in all the other corporate overhead as well.
Nope, even if you raised agri-job picker pay to minimum wage, the agri-businesses would complain, yes of course, but in the end the price of produce would only rise about 5% tops.
Big hairy deal.

Here's the big hairy deal: Tossing out MILLIONS of tons of Romaine lettuce nationwide because of e-coli worries, meat recalls, processed food recalls, by the dozens, every single week. We're at the very lowest bleeding edge of holding down pay and the system itself is showing cracks BECAUSE it is reaching a point of diminishing returns.

Airlines are starting to have planes with cracked windows and exploding engines because airlines are trying to slough off maintenance costs.
Again, diminishing returns, because a dozen monster wrongful death lawsuits from families who saw their loved ones sucked out of a window cancels out all the savings.

You can ONLY CUT SO MUCH, then if you go beyond that, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Click to expand...

Exactly my point....

We COULD pay the farmers more if we would accept a slightly higher cost on food products.

One study I remember stated a head of lettuce would increase 10-25¢ were we to increase wages... A drought year tends to outstrip that cost.
 
Fledermaus said:
Don't you want to pay a living wage to farm workers?
Click to expand...

Of course.

That's not what this is about.

We're going to get inflation with no social benefit.



Kind of like how the GOP raised the debt for no social benefit.
 
JacksinPA said:
Immigration: California Crops Rot During Farmworker Shortage | Fortune

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.
Click to expand...

Why can't the private sector rent or lease, the largest combine harvesters in the world; to show Venezuela, the way to go?

 
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