• Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca
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    9 hours ago

    “Too spoiled to do” I hate that phrasing and blame on workers. It used to be that summer farm work could be done by university students or other summer workers. It was always part of the year, part-time work so no one who needed an annual income could afford to do it. However no one in the farming industry wanted to find a way to make full year round jobs out of it or team up with other types of employment so their necessary workers could work the other 6, 7, 8 months of the year somewhere else and survive. They simultaneously want the work to be classed as piecemeal/poverty wage and then also demand workers skilled in the type of farming work that they need. Farmers, as a whole, have only themselves to blame for what is now happening. They supported every step in a several decades long process that has gotten them to today. Sad it has taken them until now to realize that they have created their own demise.

  • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    “The whole thing is screwed up,” said John Painter, a three-time Trump voter who runs an organic dairy farm in Westfield. “We need people to do the jobs Americans are too spoiled to do.”

    What wages are you offering? Perhaps you are the one who has been spoiled by cheap labor.

    “We moved to H-2A out of necessity,” added Sarah Zost, an orchard grower in Gardners, Pennsylvania. “No one wants to use the program. It’s a paperwork nightmare.”

    So it’s fine to require these immigrants to jump through all sorts of hoops and navigate the beauracracy, but for these poor American farmers running businesses it’s simply too much to ask.

    The cognitive dissonance with these fools is astounding.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      6 hours ago

      he calls people spoiled, but i dont see him milking the cows. these farm owners got so coddled and comfortable of NOT WORKING themselves.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      13 hours ago

      What wages are you offering? Perhaps you are the one who has been spoiled by cheap labor.

      The thing is that if you increase wages, food products in the supermarket get slight (but only very slightly more expensive). We’re talking: the apple costs 34c instead of 32c. It’s very slight increases, because labor in many types of food products make up only a small part of the total cost of the product. Basically people are fear-mongering that food would become unaffordable, but it’s only a slight increase, and it would be more than compensated by the better wages, which make the products more affordable.

      • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        No. That means that the farmer’s costs go up. The price in the supermarket is set by consumer demand, so an increase in cost at any point in the chain (farmer, logistics, retail) reduces the profits of ownership.

        This is why minimum wage increase have been consistently proven to NOT have the dire effects that conservatives claim they will.

  • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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    19 hours ago

    “People don’t understand that if we don’t get more labor, our cows don’t get milked and our crops don’t get picked,”

    Oh, trust the people understand. It’s the fuckwits you keep voting for that do not.

    • Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Nah they understand too.

      They want their constituents to fail. They were never profitable enough to bribe them anyway.

      The people who are want to buy that land for dirt and have prisoners worked to the bone on it.

  • Michael@slrpnk.net
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    16 hours ago

    I doubt they 1) pay well 2) have decent working conditions 3) are looking very hard 4) want Americans at all - instead wanting H-2A workers to replace the undocumented immigrants they are used to exploiting.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    “It’s a shame you have hard-working people who need labor, and a group of people who are willing to work, and they have to look over their shoulder like they’re criminals,” Porter said. “They’re not.”

    And your three-time vote for Mr. “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” made it that way.

    If you want hands on your farm, you’ll have to pay more.

    If you want hands on your farm, you’ll have to accept trans- and non-binary people for who they are.

    If you want hands on your farm, you’ll yave to support Democrat-style immigration policy.

        • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          “it’s got to be because of the trans people! Or ms 13! Or communism! Or Jewish space lazer!”

          Is funny watching them take zero accountability for their actions. They just can’t understand why the rest of the world isn’t throwing themselves at Trump’s feet.

  • Renorc@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    I just can not believe this and other “leopards ate my face” stories like it. This man knew his business and livelihood depended on immigrant labor. He knows exactly how his farm operates. And Trump was very clear on his intentions regarding immigration. It was one of his core policies he ran on. It’s impossible that this farmer had not considered this outcome. This story and others like it have to be fiction.

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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      5 hours ago

      It’s impossible that this farmer had not considered this outcome. This story and others like it have to be fiction.

      Ahhh, Cipolla might help you understand, our farmer is 3 and you are 4.

      These are Cipolla’s five fundamental laws of stupidity:

      1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

      2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

      3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

      4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

      5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      I think over the past few decades, immigration enforcement has been a benefit to these people.

      The government cracks down on illegal immigration publicly, which keeps an environment of fear among a community that knows they can’t rely on the government to ensure fair wages or safe working conditions. The people hiring them then know they can exploit immigrants without any scrutiny.

      In the past, maybe immigration enforcement loss them 5% of their labor, but saved them 20% in wages (completely made up numbers). Maybe they expected the same now?

    • PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Having interacted with many of these people, I think their delusion was that when the immigrants disappeared, local high schoolers would just show up and work for minimum wage.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        6 hours ago

        they tried it before, but americans arnt willing to do such a brutal physical job for such a wage. if they think about using prisoners, its the same thing, the prisoners will only do enough that wont get them in trouble. they arnt doing 12+hrs a day. also if they arnt being monitored, they arnt going to do work anyways.

      • Renorc@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        I don’t see that business model working out well either. I’d like to see our youth educated in hard work and being exposed to where our food actually comes from. But motivating teens is challenging. And if it were my child I would rather they experience nature in a way that doesn’t permanently damage their back. I don’t particularly want to see poor immigrants being exploited either. Maybe this whole strategy of destroying family owned farms, and selling them to Vance owned private equity firms could result in a more equitable way of farming in the end? But I know that’s extremely unlikely.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          6 hours ago

          teens are more vested in getting into college, or other easier work. why work on a farm when even walmart, target pays more and less stress. even trades, for being physically brutal and will wreak havoc on the body is easier than farm work by slavemasters.

          even with how bad career development from colleges, the expensiveness, low prospects. its still better than slavework on the farm.

    • Bristlecone@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      It’s because of identity politics man. Conservatives have to suspend disbelief of a lot of things to vote the way they do, I trust those in their immediate lives and purposefully don’t consider the outcome if those people are wrong.

    • Sundray@lemmus.org
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      16 hours ago

      His only alternatives would have been to vote for a Democrat, or stay home and risk a Democrat being elected.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        6 hours ago

        nah, he cant have that dint he wont be able to say he voted republican to hurt the libs, or get ostracizes from his community.