Re:US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further ...
by tropo on Thursday May 17, 2018 @06:15PM
(#17096545)
It wasn't four years of a consistent labor situation without any expectation of change. It was four years of ups and downs with changing politics. It would be reasonable for a farmer to expect that there will be a massive amnesty, and then that doesn't happen. Some farmers simply have four years worth of emergency funds and a whole lot of stubbornness.
Also, I should have said "crops MOSTLY don't rot on the vine" because:
Even if the labor supply is stable, some crops will still be left to rot. The production of the land and the demands of the consumers are both subject to change. This affects the price. Given the current price, some farms may decide to not bother harvesting.
Farms aren't always 100% serious. Lots of them are almost a hobby, or for tax reasons. (if you can claim your home is a farm, you may pay lower property taxes, and there are even income tax advantages)
I actually agree with this, but society has decided that "food security" is an important component of national security and that the country would like to maintain domestic food production even if it is uneconomical. And that's fine, if that's what the public wants, but once you do that you have to live with the consequences, like being forced to choose between illegal labor and rotting crops.
> In the long-term, automation may help.
Maybe, but a lot of the produce-picking that can be automated already has been. What's left is crops that, for whatever reason, are much harder to automate.
> At retail level, the cost of farm labor is is tiny portion of the total cost.
I'd like to see a source for this.
> Crops don't rot on the vine if farmers know the labor situation in advance
Please actually read my two links. The first is from 2012, and the second is about how the situation persisted through 2016. You're saying four years of Georgia's law wasn't enough advance notice?