Look I will be honest if not polite.
The farmers I know are doing well for themselves. My sample may be biased because I only encounter ones with an interest in technology, but to a one they don't seem to be hurting objectively (feel like they are hurting? Probably a few).
But these are people making something people want, in an efficient way, and capturing a perfectly-reasonable proportion of the value they create.
That's farmers though.
Rural "workers" I feel sorry for but only so much. I don't know these people like I know the farmers I know--farmers I meet through work, these I know only as extended family, friends thereof, and people I meet in passing while traveling for work--but I have met enough and known enough to know what the deal often is.
The standard story for these dudes tends to be they grew up in town, didn't do that well in high school--and these guys are usually older so they missed the big student loan expansions that changed college from rich kids and smart kids only to something most people had a crack at--but at least back then you really could walk onto the proverbial factory floor (or learn a skilled trade, but those guys' lives have tended to follow a different arc and I skip them here) and wind up with a stable, good paying job.
So the standard story continues with them doing hard honest work and being paid well for awhile--long enough to have settled down and started a family--but of course we all know the story ends once the factory shut down fifteen or twenty years ago.
Since then it has been a long, punishing grind, the city they live in has started falling apart, the good kids leave the area and try to make it elsewhere, the young people who are left are a mix of bad kids (drugs, petty crime), the unambitious, and a handful of saints i both admire and pity (hanging around out of a sense of obligation for a sick relative or similar).
It's a sad story, but to treat them as having had no agency in all this time is profoundly insulting--insulting in a way far graver than any any snark I can make in passing--and I refuse to do so.
The local factory closing and thus derailing your world and the life plans you made in it: that's a tragedy for you and yours, and I am truly sympathetic for the difficulties so imposed.
Failing to better yourself beyond "some high school, worked hard and honest for awhile"? That's on you. Spending multiple decades in the same place, waiting for outside forces to benevolently restore the favorable circumstances of yesteryear? That's on you. Failing to go to where there are actual jobs suitable for the skills they have (often, again being honest, out of a fear of urban life that would be comical if the consequences weren't so unfortunate)? That's on you.
We aren't taking about children here; these are grown men, possessed of automobiles, clean criminal records, and an admirable willingness to do hard, unrewarding work...but they are often also grown men feeling entitled to have that work offered to them in the place and manner of their own choosing, on terms of their own choosing, in accordance with the world they grew up in...and affording them a social stature and respect concordant with their own pride and self image.
With deep sympathy: the ask is too high, the world has been telling them that for decades, and after awhile any sympathy I have for their plight becomes entangled with scorn for failing to take real responsibility for their own lives.
It's hard for me, personally: as a rather more devout person than many on this site I really and sincerely believe that every human being possesses an intrinsic dignity and that we are all truly and equally alike in god's eyes and to love everyone as my neighbor...but it's hard not to slip into scorn and derision for people whose pride had lead them to fail to act like responsible adults and transformed what should have been a mere difficult period into a lifetime of struggle, disappointment, and resentment...and I have to struggle at it to keep my own disappointment in them from becoming something worse.
Fine for the single person who is young but not the older guy with kids. Same with college....hence the rise in online schools or scummy for profits.
There are still millions of jobs in agriculture and construction, but they are now poorly paid because they are performed by people who aren't protected by employment laws and have no negotiating power.
The only change that needs to be made is forcing agriculture and construction companies to obey the law.
(I gave you a net 0, upvoting your comment and downvoting your complaining)
I'm going to need a source on that. Here's mine: http://protecttheharvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/numb...
What do you think "productivity gains" means? It doesn't mean we need to hire more workers.
But that graph is relatively flat since 1970, and I seriously doubt they were able to count all the jobs now being performed without documentation and not reported to the government.
I could imagine that illegal immigrants are also a much easier workforce to manage. They won't be forming unions and going to strikes; if you want to terminate the employment, they won't go to a lawyer and sue you. They're humble, they're flexible.
(I don't know that job market so well and I don't even live in the US, but this is the perception I get from the system.)
Small scale production might be better for connecting and jobs and whatnot, but that can't compete price wise. Our small farm isn't exactly a huge money maker as it is.
Modern farming is hardly just grunt work, a farmer has to be familiar with the land and the processes involved. It's actually a bit more technical than many may realize. And the salaries for farming reflect that; it is a pretty decently paid profession. People with this skillset won't go away. You just don't need many of these people per acre.
There is such a thing as labor-intensive crops, of course. But I speculate that any replacement for low-paid "illegal immigrant" grunt work would end up being automation in the end.