These guys are certainly the landlords of our time
Been farming most my life - and f*ck those guys, let them fail.
Industrial ag was always built on the premise of a slave labor force, and cannot sustain without it.
These men, poison their land, strip their topsoils, blame everything else when crops fail and are first in line for some big-daddy socialism, whist decrying anything progressive or sustainable as hippy commie shit.
Maybe offer better compensation if you can’t find workers. No one wants to bust their ass all day for a shit wage. Unless they’re desperate.
day for a shit wage.
Underpaying Immigrants and Outsourcing both tech and design to China has rightfully fucked us. Smarter every day tried to make an OK grill brush here, it has to be $75.
I don’t like either of the answers the administration is providing to these problems (nor do I think they’re legitimately trying to solve them), But we’re going to dead end if we don’t do something about it.
Tax the rich, pay generous wages, focus on local manufacturing, fix pricing and force market competition.
Unless the system doesn’t oversee them, because then the standards of the system don’t apply to them, and they can be exploited.
Farmers can go fuck themselves for doing modern day slavery exploitation.
Oh, your profits were based on how little you can pay your employees? HOW ABOUT YOU SUCK MY FUCKING DICK.
“You reap what you sow” originates from farming wisdom. Just putting that out there.
It’s weird to think the agricultural workers, who can’t vote and don’t have legal status and are often living on subsistence wages, deserve to be snatched off the street and fed into a concentration camp system in order to deprive a few agricultural wholesalers of their profit margins.
I don’t see that as reaping what you sow at all. Fascism does not fall heaviest on the fascists.
Supporters of facism and their narcissism. Specifically, they use their privilige to moan about their own challenges, seemingly without much thought for those taken into concentration camps. They will only ever understand what hurts them.
Just buy a Musk-branded, doge- approved, exploding slave neck collar and perimeter fence kit. Keeps your child employees motivated, on-task, on-location.
get dog barking e-collars. When the kids beg for humane working conditions, they’ll be shocked into getting back to fucking work.
Proles hate this one easy productivity hack, the results will shock you!
Not too long ago, historically speaking, kids were in coal mines, chimney sweeps, etc
And Sarah Huckabee Sanders is trying very hard to get kids back into the workplace.
And she wonders why people hate her.
Arkansas is a failed state.
Finding new and different applications for the Musk RTO technology!
I’m surprised that they haven’t considered using prison labour yet.
It is also ironic that people in the US criticize alleged slavery in other countries but ignore their agricultural economy
I’m pretty sure parts the US are actively using prison labor already. It varies by state, but I remember reading about one state where they were basically renting out prisoners to companies. I think they used the term “hiring”, but the money the company paid didn’t go to the inmate… The prison system has been one of the larger atrocities in the US for a while now.
Prisoners make something like a quarter an hour.
Wow. So much ignorant hate here, as always in the enlightened misinformation age.
Most farms aren’t corporations. In America for example more than 80% of farmers are smalltime. They don’t dictate their profits or the wages they can afford to pay, or influence the prices of their crops or all the crap they have to buy to do farming. A typical American farmer makes $40-50k a year, and every year they risk going into the red or bankruptcy because of fluctuating prices. I really don’t know why anybody in their right mind would keep farming. Family tradition or whatever - apparently it’s “in their blood”.
As always, a lot of people here have jumped right onto the binary world tailgate, using their vast 3-second attention spans to make a value judgement about who wears the black and white hats in the situation and who’s evil, then they thumb-type a few decisive words of irrefutable justice wisdom - in this case about evil farmers treating people like slaves.
It’s great that Lemmy is non-corporate and part of the fediverse, but after 7 or 8 months here I’m more and more developing the opinion that it’s just another kneejerk ignorance shithole on the social media superhighwqy. Scroll on, brave justice warriors, scroll on! And enjoy your lunch.
False. Median farm family incomes are $97,984 in 2023 while the median family income for the country was $80k. “In 2023, the median U.S. farm household had $1,439,138 in wealth” while the median US family net wealth was $192,000. Farmers on average are far better off than the average American. Note that corporate farm incomes are NOT included in these figures.
Sources: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/income-and-wealth-in-context https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf23.pdf (page 11)
That sounds like the value of the land and equipment is included as wealth.
For one thing, we’re clearly getting our stats from different sources. For another, “household” commonly means one or two people in an urban setting and 5 or more in a farm family. So I would actually hope their incomes are above median. In any case, I srsly doubt that the people here bothered to look up anything before lighting torches and grabbing pitchforks, which was my point.
When bunker people run the country, the country becomes a bunker.
May not have choice in the coming years.
- Farmhands deported, can’t find replacements
- $200k labor grant suspended indefinitely
- Lost subsidies, making less money on product
- Tariffs jacked up equipment prices and repairs
- Depends on Medicaid, no insurance if it’s cut
Oh boy, way to seriously fuck yourself from every conceivable angle, smart guys. Sumo wrestler lookin leopards after this one.
Add that any products grown for trade are sitting unwanted in fields, or for aid rotting in warehouses because the government canceled the contracts for them. Food is often held in special warehouses where the oxygen is pumped out, but there aren’t enough of those to hold all the excess that was expected to be sent elsewhere
It’s a colossal mess, with an incredible amount of waste
It’s a colossal mess, with an incredible amount of waste
Yes. Yes, he is.
That’s just good old fashioned republican efficiency. These boys better get their bootstraps and figure out which conglomerate they’re gonna sell the farm to.
Big corpos probably lining up to strike a bargain rn
At least during Covid the farms were transporting food to churches/communities at lower prices. They literally have no one now to pick up the produce. Waiting on farms to start pick your own systems like blueberry farms.
This won’t work for orchards and tree based produce. One idiot falling off a cherry picker will ruin a small farmer
This is just a gift for big farm.
Maybe these morons should stop voting to remove their employees. Too smart for these MAGAts.
No no no, they’ll vote for the GOP again, but hope they’ll force inmates or homeless people to work the fields.
You mean slavery?
Yes, but with a nicer name.
I’m certain that when they say MAGA, they mean bring back slavery.
But instead of shipping in the slaves, using the existing stock
I hope the inmates and/or indigent perform plenty of malicious compliance if this happens.
they tried with inmates already, they arnt going to do it, they will do the bare minimum or nothing at all, since they have very little to gain from it.
Don’t you guys have forced prison labour? That ought to do the trick. You can even employ Moore people that way because you need guards and fences, gps tracking on the volunteered workers and all that.
If the prisoners don’t want to work, they won’t. And if prison guards start whipping inmates there will be riots.
If the prisoners don’t want to work, they won’t. And if prison guards start whipping inmates there will be riots.
Its truly incredible.
Their response will just be to fold, to literally sell the farm, and also at the same time never even be cognizant of the fact that they got exactly what they voted for, that Trump repeatedly said he was going to do exactly this, that lefties screamed about Project 2025 and the resounding response was basically ‘pff, he’s just bluffing,’ and then making up a fan fiction version of what Dear Leader will actually do.
They’re just gonna revert back to the ‘no one wants to work’ mantra untill we just literally put our incarcerated prisoners to work in the fields, going full circle all the way back to slavery.
These idiots didn’t even realize how dependant they were on so many massive subsidy programs untill they poofed out of existence, again, 100% in line with Trump’s platform.
Has any nation in history fucking autolobotomized as hard and as fast as we have?
Literally the world’s sole super power 20/30 years ago, and in a single generation we have destroyed ourselves in almost every way possible, short of just nuking ourselves.
Has any nation in history fucking autolobotomized as hard and as fast as we have?
Well, the Khmer Rouge killed everybody who wore glasses because they were “intellectuals,” China killed millions trying to force city kids to become farmers during the Cultural Revolution, and I’m pretty sure other autocratic totalitarian governments have fucked themselves in similar ways. Usually when societies become illiberal, people with brains are the first to be put up against the proverbial wall.
Just to add a point - if the farmers do end up folding and selling off, who’s going to buy the land? My money would be on large corpos.
Yes, it would 100% be large corpos that more or less run and own many farms that same way large landlords run 10s or 100s or 1000s of apartments / rental homes.
Sorry, I had thought this was so obvious it didn’t need to be directly stated, but yeah, it’s not a bad idea to be more explicit and more clear.
Bill Gates owns 270,000 acres of farmland already.
they tried it with prisoners already, they arnt doing it because they are already in jail, why work when you have all the ameneties provided for you, and it barely affects your sentence.
Much like how it is very easy to pass laws and ordinances that fuck over the homeless, it is also easy to pass laws and ordinances that fuck over prisoners.
The US Constitutional + Ammendments explicitly allows slavery as punishment for a crime you’ve been convicted of.
The Supreme Court has now repeatedly just thrown all prior existing legal case precedent out the window and just made such nakedly hypocritical rulings that its fair to say they are a completely biased and arbitrary institution.
The rule of law in the US is dead, is a farsical joke.
Some state will just pass a law that says uh hey, if you’re a prisoner in a facility in our state, and the state has some kind of extraordinary need, we can force you into involuntary labor.
Then other states will copy this once it passes one state’s court, then in 6 months-ish it’ll get to the Supreme Court who will say yep, checks out, carry on, and then every other red state and half the blue states will do it as well.
I am not 100% sure this will happen, but it is very, very plausible. 95% sure something like this will happen within 5 to 10 years, possibly less.
Also… its illegal to be homeless now, and the economy is crashing. Get foreclosed on, can’t pay rent, end up in the streets, living in your car?
Yep, why not crack down on that like ICE is cracking down on migrants, now you’re convicted of being homeless, the punishment is a few years of forced labor.
A few years? Optimistic, are we?
Dude what? Our Constitution literally allows for us to continue slavery as a punishment. Why the fuck would you ever think they had a choice?
I wouldn’t mind being a crop worker…provided I get at least minimum wage, breaks, healthcare, and reasonable quotas that ensure my wellbeing.
…crickets…
I’ve done a lot of seasonal field scale farm work, mostly in Europe - it can be extremely hard work. Couldn’t do it now, you have to be pretty fit.
Which probably means that it would have to pay significantly above minimum wage. But, farmers were getting that labour for below minimum wage because they had the luck to be able to use workers who had no other options.
Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour.
Good luck with that.
I would assume they were joking. Why you would do anything for minimum wage is beyond me
Wasn’t joking. Still, I would much prefer a living wage, like what we see from old-timey videos, where a single person can support a household and feel happy about their fiscals.
Nobody is going to work for slave wages and slavery conditions. Raise wages! Improve working conditions! That’s the point of the whole Trump immigration policies you dumbass!
It is indeed baffling that immigrants worked all this time for slave wages under slavery conditions. USA is full of people taking advantage of others. It is not just Trump, it is the 50% of the population that is anti-social psychopathic sociopath.
it is not anywhere near baffling. it is an example of exactly how disgusting and terrible capitalism is. these times should be moving people radically left.
Meh, I mean sure capitalism sucks, but these people would try to exploit others for personal gain under any system.
And they won’t be able to if they never had the power (money in capitalism) to do so to begin with.
“Try” is the key word here. It only matters if anyone succeeds.
For real. In America being a psychopath is rewarded with money. And what’s worse is that there is something very dark and heartless happening that seems to have a hold of not just the government but the people as well. Like it’s now becoming known at least slightly, that America is not the image it branded itself as and that the people here are very much being manipulated socially and society is being orchestrated to be something that is not for humanity but instead for an ideology that feels like the essence of evil.
We should be realizing our nation isn’t for humanity. It’s all strictly business, and “the game” of conquering life and existence. And anything that gets in the way is the enemy.
As citizens here we aren’t special. They can do the same things they do to other countries to us. We can become the middle east warzone. The only reason they don’t do it inside the nation bluntly is because then it would show their true colors. So what they do is manipulate and divide the citizens over simple things and watch the citizens destroy themselves. The same geopolitical methods they use to overthrow countries they use here.
In America being a psychopath is rewarded with money.
That’s true anywhere on the planet.
Capitalism
I don’t think a lot of them realized just how bad it was, maybe not even a passing thought. I’m willing to give a pass to anyone who isn’t a farmer or has experience farming.
The point is racism and cruelty.
The Republicans don’t give a fuck about workers wages.
they prefer slaves.
The fuck are you talking about? It’s the Democrats saying we need a slave class, that we can’t deport them, not the Republicans.
Psst: the deranged focus on deporting every single undocumented immigrant actually makes it easier for employers to exploit undocumented immigrants. You can’t threaten to deport someone for organizing labor if the government is only deporting criminals.
Removed by mod
The vast majority of the immigrants being deported are being forced to leave against their will. Why do you think they should have no say in the matter? Forced deportation is violent and cruel, and results in the separation of families.
If either party actually cared about the people, or budgets, or morality, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to remove each person, they would just check them in, have them sign a piece of paper, and grant them legal status.
To what Democratic policy or policies are you referring?
The one against deporting illegal immigrants?
Okay, but like specifically what law, proposed or enacted?
25 downvotes, no upvotes?
Downvotes don’t change the past and the fact that Democrats enabled slavery.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_presidential_election
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_realignment
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat
Leaving this here instead of removing this dumbfuck comment for disinformation based on an intellectually dishonest half-truth.
Sorry but I didn’t mean it in that historic perspective and neither did OP.
It doesn’t matter what people say, it’s important what happens. By keeping illegal immigrants in their exploitive conditions, and by e.g. not prosecuting those who employ illegal immigrants, the Democrats created the current situation, together with the Republicans. The Democrats are complicit.
Nevertheless, those are interesting links.
Ah, sorry, that makes sense. If you didn’t know, there’s a common Republican talking point that – because the Democrats were the racist slavers in the 1800s and the Repuublicans the progressive abolitionists – the modern-day Democrats are the real racists because like, like, uh, look at what they did 160 years ago! Completely ignoring, of course, the context I linked to above.
I’m used to it. Lemmy has problems with the reality of the democrat party.
This is what people don’t understand.
Yes, the work is hard, but good old Americans will do the work if they are paid.
No pay, no work.
The point is to get votes and financial support from racists and xenophobes. The policies are just tools for it.
I thought farmers were their base though.
the rich white farm owners, yes. the owners dont do any of the farm work.
You got three sentences correct.
The prices for grocery shopping are much higher in the US than in Germany (30% to 100% higher for unprocessed, healthy food). Yes, we also have immigration workers, but their status is legal and they get the official minimum wage.
It’s not that the US can’t afford to lower prices without illegals, they just want to maximise profit.
https://livingcost.org/cost/germany/united-states (You need to scroll down to the grocery part)
not to mention, the fuckery around shrinkflation/cheapflation. many other products like oral care is heavily shrinkflationed.
You might want to let Trump know that these are his objectives. I don’t think he’s aware that he’s supposed to strengthen OSHA and fight for higher wages.
he already gave the response to people complaining" you voted for what i cammpaigned on, deal with it"-paraphased trump exact words.
That’s the point of the whole Trump immigration policies you dumbass!
Is it? Why would you think that.
get ready for 300-400% inflation on food
It’s not inflation if that is actually how much it always should have cost. Our food is too cheap and full of shit.
That would be unpleasant, yes, and would require further efforts to minimize the consequences for those with low incomes (for instance, expansion of food subsidies, which yes would require even more taxation of those with wealth), however, if food prices aren’t as high as that now because of near slavery conditions, then there’s probably no ethical way to avoid it.
EXPANSION of food subsidies? They just gutted USDA programs providing food to food shelves all over the country. My local food bank recently switched to every two weeks instead of every week. It’s already bad and only getting worse
You may misunderstand, I’m not making any prediction that this administration or any like what we’ve had in a long time, if ever, would do such a thing. What I’m saying is that if some government was installed that actually cared, it’s not an impossibly to improve agricultural labor conditions without driving the working class broke from food cost increases.
Oh yeah, that’s definitely true. But our food system isn’t ass backwards on accident, you know?
even if they did all that, its pretty back breaking work, you will your back or joints will be destroyed in the 30s, thats why also people dont stay in the trades that long either. disc disease from wear, is pretty hard to treat.
Which means the pay has to rise even more.
My guess is that this is a Peter Thiel move and robot companies are almost ready to deploy their farm helpers.
Which raises prices, while wages won’t be
So … Pay the Americans more. That is why they are leaving, my farming friends. It really is that simple.
Yup. I worked a terribly hazardous job that will work you to death at asphalt plants for a couple of years and absolutely only did it for six figure pay in California. Worst people I have ever worked around. Most were dumber than the rocks in aggregate but they always show up, are great at driving in circles, and gossiping far worse than a group of little girls.
