Even at wages closing in on 3x minimum wage, we cannot get enough farm labor[1] - obviously low skilled American labor still doesn't want the job. What's the solution?

[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/

Because farm work isn't really low skilled. Sarah Taber did an excellent Twitter thread on this: https://twitter.com/sarahtaber_bww/status/107598191085642547...

I agree, but they can't even get unskilled labor into the pool at that price.

Pay more, else go out of business. Why do I, the American taxpayer, need to subsidize already heavily subsidized farmers?

The ability to grow food in the country has pretty high strategic value. If you let your farmers go out of business your country loses domain knowledge in farming.

How are you subsidizing them? You're getting cheap food - truck crop farming is notoriously low margin. Are you prepared for $15/pint strawberries?

Strawberry pints from farms which do not utilize unregulated workers come in typically at about $6 to $7 pint. They’re typically smaller scale, so large scale can have them at retail for around $5. If that helps all of us, the farmer the temporary worker and consumers, I don’t see a problem with it. Strawberries and such aren’t staples like wheat and rice (highly mechanized and automated).

> Strawberry pints from farms which do not utilize unregulated workers

There is no such thing as “unregulated workers”, just employers that don't obey the regulations applicable to their workers.

How do you know that they're not using undocumented people? That also says nothing of the price increase as the pool of documented farm labor dries up.

As an Australian, this is funny. Your Dept of Agriculture is one of the most socialist "redistributors of wealth" in the world.

Annual subsidies to US farmers is of the order of $25B+ per year. This includes non-tariff barriers such as price supports for sugar, import barriers and quotas such as on lamb and beef, export supports, crop insurance and other benefits.

The DoA has been doing this for 75+ years and the majority of farms are now corporate-owned. The majority of these taxpayer subsidies are directed straight into the hands of corporate shareholders.

> Your Dept of Agriculture is one of the most socialist "redistributors of wealth" in the world.

Redistribution from the many to the wealthy few isn't socialist redistribution.

Those countries import a ton of food...