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well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
(snip)"CLARKS SUMMIT, Pa. (AP) -- Saying the nation's immigration system is broken, Pennsylvania's largest grower of fresh-to-market tomatoes announced Monday he will no longer produce the crop because he can't find enough workers to harvest it.
Keith Eckel, 61, a fourth-generation farmer and the owner of Fred W. Eckel Sons Farms Inc., said he saw a dramatic decline last summer in the number of migrant workers who showed up to pick tomatoes at his 2,000-acre farm in northeastern Pennsylvania.
He said Congress' failure to approve comprehensive immigration reform had hindered his ability to hire enough workers to get his crop to the market. Most of Eckel's workers came from Mexico.
"There are a number of workers hesitant to travel, legal or illegal, because of the scrutiny they are now under," said Eckel, whose tomatoes have been shipped to supermarkets and restaurants throughout the eastern United States. "So there are less workers crossing state lines."
Eckel, who planted 2.2 million tomato plants last year, said he also will stop growing pumpkins and will plant half as much sweet corn as usual, resulting in a loss of nearly 175 jobs.
Eckel, one of the largest growers of fresh tomatoes in the Northeast, said it cost him $1.5 million to $2 million to plant and harvest a tomato crop - too much of an investment to risk not having enough workers at harvest time.
"The system to provide our labor is broken and the emotion surrounding the immigration issue is standing in the way of those in the political arena moving forward to solve it," Eckel told a news conference at his farm in Clarks Summit.
Congress failed to pass legislation last year that would have allowed immigrants - some already in the country illegally and some who would come from abroad - to work through guest-worker and legalization programs.
Carl Shaffer, president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, predicted other farmers would follow Eckel's lead and stop growing labor-intensive crops unless the government developed a reliable guest-worker program.
"The American consumer really needs to wake up to this issue," said Shaffer, who joined Eckel at the news conference. "It's not just an immigration issue, it's an issue that's going to affect everyone's food supply."(snip)
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Or he could actually pay American citizens the legal minimum wage. What a concept!
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
^^^ in this case, not the case ! Further down in the same article ...
(snip)"Though Eckel's tomato pickers made an average of $16.59 per hour last year, he said the relatively high wage is not enough to attract local labor to work the fields.
"A lot of people think with immigration that we're talking about immigrants taking jobs from others. Let me tell you, there is no local labor that is going to go out and harvest those tomatoes in 90-degree temperatures except our immigrant labor," Eckel said. "They come here to do a job that no one else will do in this country."
Eckel said he is scrupulous about asking workers for immigration documents. Nevertheless, he wants to avoid the risk of a federal immigration raid. He cited national surveys that found as many as 70% of U.S. farm workers are in the country illegally.
The acreage he previously devoted to tomatoes and pumpkins will be converted to field corn [ethanol refinery feestock - sic] that is harvested by machines."(snip)
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Sorry, but I call bullshit. There is nothing genetic about Mexicans that makes them particularly eager to pick tomatoes, nor anything about Americans that makes us incapable of doing it. With our economy in the state it's in, I'd bet there are plenty of American citizens that would be happy to pick tomatoes for $16.59 an hour.
And he wouldn't be so worried about immigration if he were really so scrupulous about it.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
I'll have to take issue with your call of bullshit. From a 1995 Cato institute study (the most recent that I could find), Pennsylvania ranked 22nd in terms of 'pre-tax cash equivalent value' of social welfare benefits - specifically $19,700 per year or $9.47 per hour in 1995 dollars. Of course the same study showed the 'pre-tax cash equivalent value' of social welfare benefits paid by other northeastern / New England states to be in the neighborhood of $25,000 per year or $12 per hour in 1995 dollars. This was at a time when the minimum wage was $4.25 an hour (raised to $5.15 an hour in 1996), and a time when the dollar's purchasing power was 1.36 times higher than it is today (or to be totally correct in 2007 vs 1995, the most recent statistic I could find). So if you apply the 1.36 factor to the 1995 social welfare benefit level you wind up with $12.88 per hour. This is the only explanation I can come up with as to why unemployed Pennsylvanians turn down the opportunity to pick vegetables in 90 degree heat ... a < $4 per hour pay differential versus sitting home and soaking up (gov't subsidized electricity bill) air conditioning. The only genetic difference about Mexicans is that, in the state of Pennsylvania at least, they are not allowed to sign up for the same social welfare benefit programs as Pennsylvanian citizens.
<- the state by state chart will surprise you ... and don't forget to multiply all of these numbers by 1.36 to update them to 2007 levels from the 1995 levels in the study
But again this is beside the point. For a fact, many large US vegetable growers are choosing to simply stop growing labor intensive vegetables - for whatever reason. By the law of supply and demand, this is likely to create shortages on grocery store shelves this fall and very high prices for those labor intensive vegetables that are available for sale. This is also likely to prompt a major expansion in foreign vegetable imports both this year and in the future, which not only will spell the doom of the US vegetable farming industry (for food products anyhow), but also will raise a ton of questions about the pesticides and insecticides used on imported food products, e-coli contamination of imported food products etc.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yekhefah
Sorry, but I call bullshit. There is nothing genetic about Mexicans that makes them particularly eager to pick tomatoes, nor anything about Americans that makes us incapable of doing it. With our economy in the state it's in, I'd bet there are plenty of American citizens that would be happy to pick tomatoes for $16.59 an hour.
And he wouldn't be so worried about immigration if he were really so scrupulous about it.
Then why aren't they out there doing it? Although regardless I feel a lot of sympathy to employers in some cases... I know a framing contractor who has two teams, one of caucaisons and one of hispanics. According to him everyone is legal, and he pays them all the same wage. The hispanic team finishes their jobs early 50% of the time. The others have never finished early, and reguarly finish late.
Still though if Americans were willing to go pick stuff, the cotton farmers wouldn't have had to send for truck loads of Mexican pickers in the 40's an on. Cause trust me, they didn't want them.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
But Jester, what is the profit from US Citizens compared to Immigrants in the same field, for lack of a better term.
I'm guessing while farmers do hire immigrants because they are cheaper, thus they create more overhead....simple business rule.
Melonie, for shame, Cato, I mean really your talking that as the honest-to-god's truth? Please take their finding, and any other "think-tank" with a grain of salt, because they are putting out rhetoric that they are paid for by the people/organizations.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
G-Real
But Jester, what is the profit from US Citizens compared to Immigrants in the same field, for lack of a better term.
I'm guessing while farmers do hire immigrants because they are cheaper, thus they create more overhead....simple business rule.
Melonie, for shame, Cato, I mean really your talking that as the honest-to-god's truth? Please take their finding, and any other "think-tank" with a grain of salt, because they are putting out rhetoric that they are paid for by the people/organizations.
The profit isn't good... But what's the profit for Joe Farmer if he either has to double his already high wages to get American's to go pick, or more likely he has no one to pick and loses the crop.
I don't know all circumstances, but it's not all about cheap labor, in some cases it's just about labor.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
the problem isn't the wage, it's that it is seasonal labor. you can't live on 16-18 per hour if you only get it for 3-4 months of the year.
similar issues coming up in the PacNW, down in Yakima valley. the wages are ok (double minimum wage, which is about 8 bucks an hour), but there's only enough work for that high-hourly produce a few months of the year.
find people some work at that same wage when it's not picking season and then they could afford to hang around. but increasingly, 3 months of 16/hr can't stretch for a whole year, not even for immigrants.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
^^^ again we're veering sideways from the basic point. This huge Pennsylvania farmer (and hundreds more like him I'm sure) have already made the decision that they are simply not going to pay the $20 or $25 or $30 or whatever pay rate it would take in order to attract a reliable agricultural workforce to harvest labor intensive crops. They have also decided that they will not risk millions of dollars of personal investment on a gamble that 'reasonably priced' $15 per hour farm labor will be available when they need it !!! Instead they are choosing NOT to plant such vegetable food crops, substituting commodity crops such as field corn (or soybeans or wheat or anything else that is harvestable by machine) which are just as profitable on the agricultural commodities market these days ... although the end use may in fact be for biofuels feedstock rather than for human food.
So the real question then boils down to 'where will Americans get their tomatoes' ? Option one I suppose is to grow your own (which I will most definitely do), but the vast majority of Americans can't be bothered.
Option two is to purchase tomatoes from the remaining low volume American 'specialty' growers, but the 'organic' label they stick on in order to cover their comparatively high production costs will mean that these tomatoes may cost $1 apiece. This is fine for Americans who really aren't affected if their weekly grocery bill grows to $150 instead of $100, and also fine as long as the comparatively small supply of tomatoes from 'specialty' growers holds out, but ultimately the vast majority of Americans are not going to be able to afford this option (and the 'specialty' growers couldn't produce enough tomatoes if they could). Remember also that the list of labor intensive vegetables doesn't end with tomatoes and sweet corn, thus all sorts of labor intensive fruits and vegetables are now ceasing high volume production in the USA.
Which brings us to option three - import the tomatoes from China or India or Turkey, where the extremely low cost of production outweighs the added shipping costs. They won't be as fresh or nutritious. You won't know what sort of pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers were used to grow them. You won't know whether e-coli bacteria are being harbored inside. But they'll look like the Pennsylvania farmer's tomatoes, and they'll sell for about the same price - thanks to Chinese or Indian or Turkish farm laborers working for 1/4 of the pay rate the Pennsylvania farmer was offering, thanks to the use of DDT or similar cheap, highly effective but environmentally unfriendly pesticides etc. And of course there's also the possibility that if the Chinese get pissed off at America in the future, they can simply order a halt to their fruit and vegetable exports. which would create instant shortages on America's grocery shelves.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Well, it's not like the majority of Americans eat vegetables anyway. As long as they've got plenty of ramen and McDonald's (especially in the current economy), nobody's really going to bitch. ::)
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Hmmm.
Tons of migrant workers come and pick crops and Americans shy away.
Tons of guest workers come in to do computer jobs and Americans stop going to university for that.
(Probably cuz they know they won't be or assume not to be hired.)
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yekhefah
Well, it's not like the majority of Americans eat vegetables anyway. As long as they've got plenty of ramen and McDonald's (especially in the current economy), nobody's really going to bitch. ::)
Ketch-up is tomato, right??? Thats sorta like saying purple is a fruit, grapes = purple, purple = fruit
as long as there are corporte farms, I'm sure the tomato harvest will be fine ::)
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
Tons of migrant workers come and pick crops and Americans shy away.
Tons of guest workers come in to do computer jobs and Americans stop going to university for that.
well, in both cases, it would appear that more and more 'work' is being outsourced, leaving fewer available jobs in America regardless of pay rate !
Quote:
as long as there are corporte farms, I'm sure the tomato harvest will be fine
Actually, corporate farms have a problem producing crops like tomatoes. Their business model requires a minimum of actual farm labor, and a maximum of capital investment in mechanization / automation. So while crops like corn, wheat, soybeans ... i.e. crops that can be sewn and harvested using automatic farm machinery ... will come pouring out of corporate farms by the boxcarload, crops that require 'hands on' attention will no longer be grown. This will, as someone has already pointed out, drive average Americans one step closer to Big Macs (with ketchup but no lettuce leaf or tomato slice) and synthetic chicken noodle soup.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
I used to pick berries when I was 10-14 years old. It was really good money for kids that age. It is now illegal to hire kids to pick crops. It's not like bringing in the berry crop took all summer. The harvest was over in a couple of weeks and I had a bunch of money to spend on fun stuff like going to the fair or the beach. (an aside, my younger brother quit his berry picking job because of the illegals harassing him several years after I had moved on to babysitting gigs)
I don't think I could take the heat of working in the sun and humidity now (at my age). Bringing in the crops is the whole reason why children have summers off from school. Now it is illegal to hire them younger than 14. Most kids turn up their noses at the idea of working because they either don't have to (mom and dad earn plenty and can provide for the child's needs) or the kids are too fat (and sick) to handle the labor.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Do you guys know farmers? It's true - the migrant workers have a good work ethic, good mechanical/farm skills, and are loyal. They take up jobs that our "regular" citizens, of any ethnic group, won't do.
If you want the farmer to pay the price for getting "regular" citizens in to do the farm work, then how does a tripling of your produce prices sound? Which means you won't buy them. Which means that the farmer will go broke that much sooner (the family farmers do go broke - it's just a question of how long it takes).
If you want cheap food, you need cheap farm labor (keeping government supports out of the equation for now). The migrant population is what supplies that.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
^^^ not any more. It is now ultra cheap farm labor in Mexico, China, India and Turkey that is supplying the majority of the 'cheap food' consumed in America. The business model has changed from 'shipping in' immigrant farm labor for US farms to 'shipping in' finished goods i.e. the fruits and vegetables harvested at farms in Mexico, China, India, Turkey etc.
a 2007 university of GA report shows foreign imports of vegetables has been growing at a rate of 12.7% per year in recent years based on economic competitiveness alone. As a result of conscious decisions like that just made by this (former) Pennsylvania commercial tomato grower, America's farm industry is now 'capitulating' i.e. freely handing over market share for 'hands on' fruits and vegetables to foreign imports.
Viewed another way, even with legal immigrant farm labor, the American 'hands on' fruit and vegetable industry is no longer globally competitive. Or perhaps more accurately in this specific example about a (former) PA tomato farm, the mechanized production of field corn ... the majority of which will likely be sold as biofuel feedstock ... is a significantly less risky / more profitable use of American farmland. As you point out, one large factor in this development is probably the value of gov't subsidies.
In either case, America has lost unskilled jobs, as well as having lost de-facto control of the quality / safety of foreign food products being imported and consumed by Americans.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
but isn't this what the right wants, free-market, someone profits and someone hurts, or in layman's terms': you can't get something for nothing....
Also, doesn't that just go against your op?
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
but isn't this what the right wants, free-market, someone profits and someone hurts, or in layman's terms': you can't get something for nothing....
Also, doesn't that just go against your op?
Actually there's nothing 'free market' about this. In a very real sense, Federal, state and local gov'ts are actually in competition with American businesses over unskilled labor. The gov't pays unskilled Americans the 'cash value equivalent' of $12+ per hour NOT to work (via social welfare benefits). The same gov't will take away that 'cash value equivalent' $12+ per hour if an unskilled American chooses to take a $14 per hour full time job. At one time there was enough of a 'social stigma' that many unskilled Americans chose to work anyhow ... despite the apparent conclusion that they were in fact 'working for nothing' in terms of improved standard of living. However, after two or three generations, that 'social stigma' has more or less evaporated right along with 'social stigmas' associated with filing bankruptcy or walking away from a home mortgage, more or less leaving the bare economics as the only driving force today.
So, to paraphrase your comment ... in layman's terms, you can indeed get something for nothing from the gov't, from the first person viewpoint at least - but in objective terms American taxpayers and consumers are footing the bill.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
OK, I admit that I have no idea what's being argued here.
Pay farm workers more?
Pay farm workers less?
Government increase help for farmers?
Government stop help for individuals?
Block imported food?
Encourage imported food?
The $12/hour is glib, but I've been there to the land of agriculture, and quite simply, most people, i.e,. citizen-based unskilled labor, aren't working on farms. They don't want to, and if you paid them enough to do so, the work will be crappy.
On the other hand, you can bring in migrant workers, make sure they're documented, pay them, house them, your cost is going to be more than $12/hour, but they'll display a good work ethic, fix the machinery as it breaks down, will leave after harvest and faithfully return next planting season for a new round.
Now, I don't have weighted websites to back that up. Just my own observations.
And you oughta grow tomatoes anyway. I haven't had a truly good tomato for 20 years. You can keep those green plastic things that they gas to turn red to look good on the shelves.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
^^^ well, I have been trying to make the point that large American fruit and vegetable growers have now been driven to give up the growing of labor intensive fruits and vegetables in favor of 'cash crops' like field corn which can be harvested by automatic equipment and sold at very profitable prices as biofuel feedstock.
I have also been trying to make the point that, regardless of the reasons behind this development, it now creates a 'two tier' food system. 'High grade' fruits and vegetables will still be available from small American 'specialty' growers ... in relatively small quantities ... and at extremely premium prices (i.e. the 'organic' lable). Consumer grade fruits and vegetables will now be almost exclusively sourced from China, India, Turkey, Mexico etc. ... with corresponding loss of US gov't control over the pesticides / herbicides / fertilizers used to grow them, over sanitary conditions employed to harvest / package / ship them etc.
I'm not sure that there IS any 'answer' to this situation, other than paying super high prices for 'high grade' American grown fruits and vegetables, or growing your own fruits and vegetables. The vast majority of Americans will be able to do neither, thus becoming dependent on continuing supplies of imported fruits and vegetables to an even greater degree than they already are.
I am obviously concerned that, unlike computers or electronics which no longer have American sources, dependency on foreign food imports can have some very serious and immediate overtones if those supply chains were to be disrupted. Dependency on imported oil has of course prompted the creation of a 'strategic petroleum reserve' such that a disruption of imported oil supply chain will not cause immediate fuel shortages. However, fruits and vegetables don't exactly lend themselves to long term 'strategic' stockpiling !
And since field corn isn't edible by humans, if such an imported fruit and vegetable supply chain disruption should ever occur it could take up to 16 months for US farmers to resume fruit / vegetable / sweet corn production and bring in the first 'new' harvest . This is particularly disturbing since China will now be in the 'driver's seat' in regard to imported American fruit and vegetable supplies right along with manufactured goods, loan and investment capital. This also creates the potential for future 'food riots' and other Mad Max type scenarios if America ever pisses off the Chinese to the point where they decide to stop food exports to the USA.
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The $12/hour is glib, but I've been there to the land of agriculture, and quite simply, most people, i.e,. citizen-based unskilled labor, aren't working on farms. They don't want to, and if you paid them enough to do so, the work will be crappy.
Undeniably true. However, this is a fundamental difference from past periods of serious economic disruption i.e. in the 1930's Americans were willing to travel to areas where work was available, and Americans were willing to work at jobs that weren't 'pleasant', because choosing not to do so meant standing in soup lines, begging for handouts, and living in shelters. Today the social welfare programs have done away with the soup lines and begging for handouts and living in shelters for the most part, with the 'soup' and the 'handouts' and the 'shelter' being provided by the gov't. As such, the argument can clearly be made that gov't policy in regard to maintaining a 'minimum standard of living' via social welfare benefits programs has created the situation where Americans are now free to simply refuse to relocate or to refuse to work at unskilled jobs that aren't 'pleasant'.
Would the 'work ethic' of unemployed unskilled Americans improve if the social welfare programs were cut back severely ? It doesn't matter ! Structurally speaking, the unskilled American farm jobs are disappearing right along with the disappearance of untold numbers of other former American jobs for unskilled labor i.e. checkout clerks, gas stations (except in New Jersey LOL), textile jobs, and a long list of other former unskilled job opportunities. Thus cutting back on social welfare programs is not an option, because there simply are no longer any niches in the American economy where large numbers of unskilled workers can still be utilized productively and competitively at 'legal' pay rates.
If you want to analyze it, globalization has now created a situation in America where some 10% of the US population (from food stamp statistics just released) no longer has any productive role to fill in the American economy. Thus any cutback in social welfare benefits would only result in a Mad Max scenario, as unskilled but now cold and hungry people would undoubtedly decide to 'help themselves' to their neighbor's possessions directly to satisfy their own needs (rather than allowing the gov't do the 'stealing' via taxation and wealth transfer, as is the case with current social welfare programs).
This discussion is beginning to depress me, because the end of the road appears to be a 'bunker' mentality. But there is no denying that the risk of actually needing a 'bunker' some day has increased as a result of this recent change in US fruit and vegetable production policy.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Melonie
^^^ in this case, not the case ! Further down in the same article ...
(snip)"Though Eckel's tomato pickers made an average of $16.59 per hour last year, he said the relatively high wage is not enough to attract local labor to work the fields.
For $16.59/hour I would pick maters!!!!
Fuck that is GOOD money for high school brats and people with lower education.
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jay Zeno
And you oughta grow tomatoes anyway. I haven't had a truly good tomato for 20 years. You can keep those green plastic things that they gas to turn red to look good on the shelves.
You let me know how many you want hun, and either give me an addy to overnight them, or come pick em up yourself, lol!
I grow my own better boy maters every year, no chemicals, and they might not be perfect looking but they are smack your mamma good!
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Re: well, I know what crops I'll be planting a ton of this summer ...
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Originally Posted by
kitana
For $16.59/hour I would pick maters!!!!
Fuck that is GOOD money for high school brats and people with lower education.
You are in the rare minority, plus that's a seasonal wage.