Farmers in CA are largely Trump voters. Just sayin.
That’s great but if they go bust, we starve.
California should just buy the farmers for pennies when they go bankrupt.
Use it as a way to help people become citizens.
I’m actually kinda concerned that’s part of the plan, but with the federal government instead of state. Plan a big “bailout” that involves buying all the bankrupt farmers and then use that to withhold food from dissidents.
Yeah, because we’ve clearly shown that naturalization matters at all
Maybe we can learn to bake.
With what flour? :/
It was a double tongue in cheek from Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake.” And the literal there won’t be any flour.
Fuck these farmers for relying on exploited immigrant labor then playing the victim when the people they voted for take that away from them. No sympathy. The immigration crackdowns are wrong but seriously fuck these guys too.
Yes, the fact that the whole system relies on illegal immigrants is fucked up. Just tells that they’re not willing to pay proper wages. Not to mention the workers’ rights issues.
There needs to be a legal pathway for these workers to become full citizens.
There are, and people are getting deported despite doing everything right.
From the paywall link:
Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura County, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown, have frightened off workers.
“In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone,” she said in an interview. “If 70% of your workforce doesn’t show up, 70% of your crop doesn’t get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don’t want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust.”
Most Americans don’t want to do this work.
Well, yeah. Excuse the generalizations, but we don’t live 6 to an apartment or farm housing and ship our wages back home where the dollar goes further. We have to survive here long term and farmers don’t pay COL, savings, and retirement.
Americans don’t do this because it’s a bad deal.
Absolutely, if it paid well enough people would do it. Same problem as always: “how do I replace my slave labor force if there aren’t other slaves anymore?!”
Given they also said the farms barely break even mostly means produce doesn’t pay well enough to afford a good deal to workers, either. These things should cost quite a bit more but don’t thanks to immigrant exploitation.
Not sure what the good deal solution would be, though. Still, people attacking undocumented folk definitely live in a racist fantasy world.
They’re also cutting food stamps which helps keep farms afloat by increasing demand for food.
this has created a tipping point where many will go bust
Concepts of a plan
This is the goal. I hope everyone is ready for great depression 2.0
Absolutely nobody could have seen this coming…
Except everyone paying attention.
Thought inflation was bad before? We ain’t seen shit yet.
The selection of produce is already getting worse, and has been for months.
In a year we’re going to be in a famine because of this nonsense.
Stock up now while you can still get semi-affordable foods. I started gardening even though I’ve never done it before.
We’re a long way from famine. We may have to eat food we’re unaccustomed to. We may be forced into vegetarianism. Lots of grains, whatever vegetables can be harvested mechanically. But the amount of food this continent can produce is truly phenomenal.
A garden is a good idea
Happy cake day, seems like you might want to ration that cake though…
Seeing American industries collapse in real time because they were built off neo slavery is fucking wild. And the American right is all "thank god they’re gone, they’re illegals >:) " and the American left is like “noooo our cheap, expendable, unregulated labour force is being crippled and its hurting businesses >:((” it’s like I’m having a fever dream
Source for the ‘american left’ opinion please, it sounds like projection / bullshit.
“Most economists and politicians acknowledge that many of America’s agricultural workers are in the country illegally, but say a sharp reduction in their numbers could have devastating impacts on the food supply chain and farm-belt economies.”
Did you read the article?
I did. And your excerpt says nothing about the ‘American right’ and the ‘American left’. It only states ‘economists and politicians’. Your argument continues to smell of projection.
Sorry I think I understand what you’re saying now, I’ll explain my thought process.
So the article is about the deportation of American agricultural workers.
The right wing is deporting them
The article mentions the resistance to said deportations from politicians on the basis of economic loss in the farming sector.
Since the right wing is the one deporting, the left wing is the ones protesting on the grounds of losing cheap labour.
Hence my comments.
What exactly am I projecting? My dislike of liberals, conservatives and more broadly American politics? The excerpt describes the thoughts of politicians in America according to Reuters, my comment responds to that.
Still no “American left”, though.
Liberals are the American left. It’s like how english muffins aren’t muffins
Thank you! This argument that we should love immigrants because they will “do the work no one else wants” has never sat right with me. It’s more like no sane and rational person would do this work, in these conditions, for this pay.
What does it say about us that we need an endless stream of impoverished brown people to make our society functional? We can’t build our own buildings, harvest our own crops?
We’ve got a real nasty history and habit of coerced labor in this country.
The reasoning is the important part of why these two opinions exist. The right has no replacement for the labor so when shit inevitably hits the fan and we end up with at best shortages at worst artificial holodomor style famine they will have been the cause. The left is generally smart enough that as a whole even if they hate the system they aren’t stupid enough to more or less collapse it without at least a fallback system if not an outright replacement.
It’s the type of irony that occurs with reactionaries on occasion where they attack an actual problem but it’s done in such a fucking asinine way where that problems traditional opponents have to defend it.
Idk man… If they can’t have millionaire agricultural landowners without an unregistered, unrepresented, underpaid workforce, maybe they shouldn’t have them.
Yes they shouldn’t exist, that wasn’t my point. My point is collapsing the agricultural industry like a fucken smooth brained stalinist is fucking stupid, reform is needed but the current situation is going to get people killed if things go badly enough. I’d love nothing more than to turn these farms into co-ops but that isn’t what’s happening.
Guess I’m coping. I would assume that the food security conscious response would be to pay labourers more and give them protections. From the article it seemed as though that was not an option on the table in American politics though.
The gremlin inside of me is also wondering how the most obese people on earth could be so close to a food insecurity crisis that perpetuating neoslavery is a necessary evil.
American foods are ultra processed crap designed to make the population overeat calories in search of nutrients. Even our produce is less nutritious due to corporate farming practices.
Obesity is more tied to food insecurity than food security here.
Obesity is like the opposite of food insecurity
It’s not just that there’s no political will, it’s that there’s a solid chance the Republicans would try to ban it paying farm workers well outright.
Also everyone is a vulnerable to starvation, if you don’t eat for about a month you will probably be dead. Being obese is at best a buffer, that’s not even factoring in that a lot of that extra fat can be burned off exceptionally easily if you cut soda for example.
Now we get to starve great job MAGAts.
Getting tired of posting pikachus
Awesome, great opportunity to make farmer worker jobs great again. Everybody should hurry to apply.
Has anyone figuted out how long it will take for this to affect our food supply? Surely at least prices will increase, if not outright shortages happen?
Read as “leaves cops unharvested” and wow what a horrible image
surprised Pikachu face
