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Labor Shortage Leaves $13 Million in Crops to Rot in Fields


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2017 Jun 25, 3:27pm   9,066 views  38 comments

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Last year marked the fifth consecutive year Santa Barbara County’s agriculture industry has struggled with labor shortages, which have ranged from 15 to 26 percent. Farmers, therefore, must leave crops to rot in the fields. An estimated $13 million of strawberries, broccoli, leafy greens, and other unharvested produce were plowed under last year, up from five years ago when losses amounted to an estimated $4.4 million, according to the region’s Grower-Shipper Association.

Central Coast growers do not receive government subsidies for mowing unpicked berries and veggies as Midwestern farmers do for destroying wheat or barley. Some area growers have insurance for losses from heat waves or pests but not for lack of workforce.

In the last decade, according to the Pew Research Center, more Mexican immigrants have been leaving the United States than have been arriving. As Mexico’s economy improves and becomes less reliant on agriculture, Mexicans are having fewer children and “feeling less the push to migrate north,” said Lucas Zucker of CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy).

Making up some of the labor shortage for about three years in Santa Barbara County is foreign guest workers coming in under the H2A program. In 2015, the most recent available data, 1,300 guest workers came to Santa Barbara County, which has the largest number in all of California. Many growers call for expanding the program, but they also complain it is expensive and cumbersome. The Trump administration appears poised to ramp up some kind of a guest worker program. Wilja Happé, a cut-flower grower in Carpinteria, lamented this is not an option in South County, as there is no available housing, a requirement of the program. To that end, major farmers are pumping money into automation, Stoker said, “as a potential option they wouldn’t have looked at 10 years ago.”

http://www.independent.com/news/2017/jun/22/labor-shortage-leaves-13-million-crops-rot-fields/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

#Crops #FoodCosts #Immigation #Economics

Comments 1 - 38 of 38        Search these comments

1   lostand confused   2017 Jun 25, 3:33pm  

Why don't they cut welfare and ask them to work the fields? I think 1 in 4 in LA is in some form of welfare?

2   Tenpoundbass   2017 Jun 25, 3:44pm  

Bullshit that's when farms turn into Upick operations if they don't have federal FDA bailout money, which I'm sure they DO!
You City slickers believe any nonsense poppycock propaganda.

3   lostand confused   2017 Jun 25, 3:45pm  

Robotic automation seems to be all the rage for the IT crowd these days. Anyone worked in it and does it have any benefits-or is it just another fad?

4   Tenpoundbass   2017 Jun 25, 3:45pm  

You guys should try living around farms.
Many will actually let you pick what they sell you.

5   FortWayne   2017 Jun 25, 3:45pm  

lostand confused says

Why don't they cut welfare and ask them to work the fields? I think 1 in 4 in LA is in some form of welfare?

6   Tenpoundbass   2017 Jun 25, 3:50pm  

lostand confused says

Anyone worked in it and does it have any benefits-or is it just another fad?

You need to thoroughly hose food handling equipment down. You need trained staff that can disassemble it, and run each part through a desperate cleaning process. It's that way with soft serve ice creme machines, or pneumatic chili squirters(which still manage to get people sick and bankrupt billion dollar empires) for a burrito operation.
Combines work with grains because they can take abuse, but fruits need more delicate care.
You're not going to make some smart robot device that can navigate a field. Pick the right strawberries and apples, and have it in a format that you can hose down and scrub with a disinfectant.

7   Strategist   2017 Jun 25, 3:56pm  

anonymous says

Last year marked the fifth consecutive year Santa Barbara County’s agriculture industry has struggled with labor shortages, which have ranged from 15 to 26 percent. Farmers, therefore, must leave crops to rot in the fields.

lostand confused says

Why don't they cut welfare and ask them to work the fields? I think 1 in 4 in LA is in some form of welfare?

American DO NOT want to take certain jobs. They like getting fat and watching Opra.
Cut their fucking welfare and watch how quickly they find jobs.

8   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2017 Jun 25, 4:00pm  

Strategist says

anonymous says

Last year marked the fifth consecutive year Santa Barbara County’s agriculture industry has struggled with labor shortages, which have ranged from 15 to 26 percent. Farmers, therefore, must leave crops to rot in the fields.

lostand confused says

Why don't they cut welfare and ask them to work the fields? I think 1 in 4 in LA is in some form of welfare?

American DO NOT want to take certain jobs. They like getting fat and watching Opra.

Cut their fucking welfare and watch how quickly they find jobs.

Exactly. There should be no welfare and no minimum wage. And we place homeless encampments on the sidewalks of the judges on the ninth circuit. After that, arrest those living on public property(to which there is no right) and they can work on farms to serve out their sentence rather than jail. If there's still a shortage of workkers, institute a foreign worker program.

9   HEY YOU   2017 Jun 25, 4:03pm  

anonymous says

Central Coast growers do not receive government subsidies for mowing unpicked berries and veggies as Midwestern farmers do for destroying wheat or barley.

Midwest big govt. teat suckers,how many are Republicans!
Put all Republicans on some form of govt. charity in the fields working.
Let's see how they like free enterprise.
SOCIALISTS!

10   Strategist   2017 Jun 25, 4:07pm  

Fucking White Male says

Exactly. There should be no welfare and no minimum wage. And we place homeless encampments on the sidewalks of the judges on the ninth circuit. After that, arrest those living on public property(to which there is no right) and they can work on farms to serve out their sentence rather than jail. If there's still a shortage of workkers, institute a foreign worker program.

Yup. It's amazing how people whine about the poor and homeless all day long....there are no jobs - no homes - there are no opportunities - the Mexicans are taking our jobs.
There are lots of jobs if you are willing to get your lazy ass off that sofa and go to the job. The job ain't gonna come to you.

11   RC2006   2017 Jun 25, 4:30pm  

lostand confused says

Why don't they cut welfare and ask them to work the fields? I think 1 in 4 in LA is in some form of welfare?

Ton of illegals in LA and there are no crops here, make them work the fields for there anchor baby payments.

12   lostand confused   2017 Jun 25, 6:33pm  

So asking this freak to get a job-picking the fields-is making us a third world country?

www.youtube.com/embed/EdnGTlQI11A

13   Strategist   2017 Jun 25, 7:26pm  

lostand confused says

So asking this freak to get a job-picking the fields-is making us a third world country?

www.youtube.com/embed/EdnGTlQI11A

Ha ha ha. Thanks for posting.
Dear Dan, Jazz, and other socialists. Those greedy capitalists sucked away all her money, and left her with nothing. That poor woman should get a million dollars from the government.

Dear people with common sense, do you think we should give this lazy, useless, piece of crap even a single dollar of our hard earned money?

Dear French Revolutionaries, if you were born in modern day America, you would have all the cake you could eat, just like this fat piece of lard.

14   Shaman   2017 Jun 25, 8:09pm  

An estimated 45,000 homeless infest the Santa Ana river in Orange County. Let's bus them to the fields, get them busy picking and farming, and hopefully some of them will learn a little self respect.

15   bob2356   2017 Jun 25, 10:12pm  

Strategist says

Ha ha ha. I want to end welfare cold turkey for able bodied people.

What is "welfare" to you?

16   Dan8267   2017 Jun 25, 10:20pm  

anonymous says

If my only two choices are high food prices or slave labor, I'll choose high food prices every single time.

17   RC2006   2017 Jun 26, 2:27am  

Humans will always take the path of least resistance like everything in nature, but people have to eat.

18   FortWayne   2017 Jun 26, 4:44am  

anonymous says

The homeless around here don't want a job. They want a hand out, government takes care of the rest. There are jobs, they just don't want to get a job.

19   Strategist   2017 Jun 26, 7:31am  

anonymous says

Cut their fucking welfare and watch how quickly they find jobs

You forgot to mention the yuuggee uptick in crime as well, if there are no jobs they can get to or because stealing etc.

Yes, crime would go up.

20   lostand confused   2017 Jun 26, 8:16am  

Nobody wants a job picking vegetables in 100F. If I had a choice ebtween that and free sec 8, free food, free OBamaphone, almost free utilities etce tc etc-I would choose the altter too.
Illegals are humans too-no less than us Americans. DEmocrats love to abuse the illegals it seems? Why is it ok for them to do those jobs and not Americans? Poitn them to the locations, maybe give them training-it will take a while for a 300# tub of lard to start working the fields-but ultimately they will be happy. Living in welfare with no hope is killing the soul.

22   zzyzzx   2017 Jun 26, 9:41am  

Eventually robots will do this work. Between now and then, there are plenty of blacks who live downtown on welfare that can be bused to the fields to do the work.

23   Strategist   2017 Jun 26, 9:56am  

Goran_K says

The greatest achievement of the industrial revolution was its utilization of labor (creation of the working class), breaking the Malthusian trap of geometrically increasing populations outstripping arithmetically increasing food supplies, and creating income mobility never before seen on the planet.

Before the industrial revolution you had long term poor, unemployed, or indentured, who survived by indentured labor, or on subsistence farming on land they didn't own (owned by lords). You had a large population completely dependent on a larger imposed societal structure that offered no incentives to break free (sound familiar?).

Remember "Braveheart" guys? If you did not see it, watch it.
We've come a long way, folks. We don't get exploited any more by the Lords.
If you must be poor, be poor in America. The poor never had it so good in the history of mankind, as they do in modern day America.

24   Strategist   2017 Jun 26, 10:07am  

Goran_K says

It's completely wrecked the inner city, and destroyed the black family structure.

This has a negative effect on all of us. Keeps people on welfare. Prevents education. Increases crime.
No one has a realistic solution to this immense problem.

26   Dan8267   2017 Jun 26, 12:36pm  

zzyzzx says

Actually, no. That's not the problem. Not even close.

The real problem causing illegal immigration is capitalism, the distribution of revenue by owners based on the far greater bargaining power of owners versus labor. The illegal immigrants migrated and continue to migrate solely because owners, particularly big farm owners, want to constantly import and recycle cheap, powerless labor. They don't want the same people tilling the fields year after year because then those migrant farmers would start to have collective bargaining power, and that would drive their wages and working conditions up, which reduces the revenue the owners can keep for themselves.

The problem of illegal immigration is ENTIRELY caused by capitalism. Remove the ability of the owners to set wages, and set those wages on productivity alone, and we will have no illegal immigration. The incomes of farm owners will, of course, plummet, but fuck them. They aren't farmers. They aren't growing crops. They aren't picking crops. They are sitting on their asses while other people do all the work.

Capitalism will always cause owners to try to suppress the incomes of the wealth-producing people. Capitalism is all about siphoning off other people's wealth production and nothing else.

27   MisdemeanorRebel   2017 Jun 26, 5:39pm  

The Anona was around for centuries, longer than the US has existed. If Rome had banned Slavery, it would have never needed to exist.

28   MisdemeanorRebel   2017 Jun 26, 7:15pm  

Amos Frederico likes it where he is, goddamnit, said the High Lord of the Southern (California) Confederacy of Plantation Owners Grower-Shipper Association

The future is low wages, everybody know them low wages lead to a growing, vibrant society.

$13M is trivial relative to the subsidies, federal and state, they get. Hell, it's probably a rounding error of the big water subsides they get alone.

30   MisdemeanorRebel   2017 Jun 26, 7:26pm  

lostand confused says

So why are these freaks fighting right in the welfare office?

Pay teens and young women on welfare for Injected Birth Control NOW and mandatory if they have one child already. Replace HUD and WIC with Unwed Mother's Homes yesterday.

31   Strategist   2017 Jun 26, 7:29pm  

lostand confused says

So why are these freaks fighting right in the welfare office?

www.youtube.com/embed/TEa_gj8Qy9c

Watching Opra and eating Cake all day long can get boring.
I just hope no one got hurt, because I would hate to foot the medical bills of these losers.

32   curious2   2017 Jun 27, 1:24am  

TwoScoopsMcGee says

Pay teens and young women on welfare for Injected Birth Control NOW and mandatory if they have one child already.

FYI - "Contraceptive injection for men could end need for vasectomy
***
The simple process, which takes just a few seconds, involves injecting a harmless gel into the tube which transports the sperm to create a blockage.

It is the same tube which is severed or tied during a vasectomy, but crucially the new process can be reversed by a second injection which quickly dissolves the gel barrier and restores fertility.
***
Scientists at the Parsemus Foundation in California are beginning trials....
"

If the trials go well, the technology might reportedly become available next year, and could complement existing long-acting reversible contraceptives that are already available for females.

I like the guaranteed national income idea, but if you're paying people, it's reasonable to ask something in return. Long-acting reversible contraception for both male&female seems a reasonable condition for cash benefits.

Also, the American school calendar is based on harvest schedules, for the express purpose of allowing farming families to put the kids to work on the farm. If California school schedules don't fit local harvest schedules, schools can adjust. That could solve teen unemployment and agricultural labor shortages while teaching something necessary and useful.

33   lostand confused   2017 Jun 27, 7:32am  

It must be dangerous to work at the welfare office!!
www.youtube.com/embed/lmbX9r573Qw

34   Goran_K   2017 Jun 27, 7:41am  

lostand confused says

It must be dangerous to work at the welfare office!!

www.youtube.com/embed/lmbX9r573Qw

They don't know how to throw a punch but they certainly look able bodied.

Time to attach employment or training requirements to all welfare benefits.

35   zzyzzx   2017 Jun 27, 8:09am  

Strategist says

It's not possible to deport 12 million people.

Yes it is.

36   Strategist   2017 Jun 27, 10:11am  

lostand confused says

It must be dangerous to work at the welfare office!!

www.youtube.com/embed/lmbX9r573Qw

Please remember it's no point getting into a fight at a welfare office. You can't sue anyone, because they are all broke.

37   curious2   2017 Jun 27, 10:24am  

anonymous says

the myth of being low-paid

American farm labor pays around $10/hr, based on variable piece rates, but the work is unsteady: 12hr days, then nothing. It's best suited to something where the down days can be for schoolwork or something else. It's probably healthier than American football, with fewer TBIs and couch potatoes. Compared to a typical HS student roiding up to play football every afternoon, alternating school and farm work would be an improvement.

38   Goran_K   2017 Jun 27, 10:35am  

curious2 says

American farm labor pays around $10/hr, based on variable piece rates, but the work is unsteady: 12hr days, then nothing. It's best suited to something where the down days can be for schoolwork or something else. It's probably healthier than American football, with fewer TBIs and couch potatoes. Compared to a typical HS student roiding up to play football every afternoon, alternating school and farm work would be an improvement.

My first job in high school was wrangling shopping carts at Home Depot for $7.25 an hour. I worked weekends and 2 weekdays (4 hours after class) basically walking the entire day pushing stacks of carts back to the front of the store since most Americans are lazy as fuck, and leave the cart 2 feet from their driver side door because they can't walk 20 feet to the cart stall.

I weighed 150 pounds at just over 6 feet tall, and had 32 waist jeans with a belt on the 4th notch.

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