Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread

Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread by _bxg1 on Sunday March 29, 2020 @06:56PM (#22723538)

Before you panic, what I heard when this came up about Europe is that it only applies to "luxury crops". Certain fresh fruits and vegetables; not basics like grains. The latter are easy to harvest with minimal labor. It isn't good, but nobody's at risk of starvation.

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Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread by teeray on Sunday March 29, 2020 @08:20PM (#22724032)

What about the second order effects though? Even if it’s a luxury crop, those are calories that will have to be consumed elsewhere, putting strain on the basics. Maybe we can turn up production on those, but what if we can’t? It could prime us for a cascading failure.

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Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread by lm28469 on Monday March 30, 2020 @05:14AM (#22726362)

Nobody's going to starve, most US citizens could go weeks if not months without food and still be fine anyway.

We're talking about strawberries, raspberries, cherries, peppers and things like that.

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Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread by _bxg1 on Sunday March 29, 2020 @09:24PM (#22724389)

Another thing someone pointed out is that we feed grains to cattle. If livestock started declining for reasons like these, there would be excess grain for humans.

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Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread by jelliclesfarm on Monday March 30, 2020 @11:44AM (#22728897)

Grain grown for feed and fodder is inedible for humans.

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Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread by jelliclesfarm on Sunday March 29, 2020 @08:07PM (#22723951)

Grains are commodity crops and mechanization has already hyper optimized that sector.

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