However, it should be noted that protectionism will also help American farmers, as produce from Mexico will become more expensive.
Should also add, allowing illegal immigrants to work benefits no one. Not American workers, not Mexican workers, no one. By bypassing labour laws and minimum wages, it allows for exploitation and also drives wages down.
It's better to legalize and regulate something than to make it illegal. Make the minimum wage to hire a non-citizen the same $15/hour for a citizen and poof all the illegals now compete with the citizens at fair market rate.
And there's already a system in place allowing for legal immigration.
That being said, too much immigration, legal or not, has significant social and economic effects. Tolerating illegal workers and unlimited immigration are both bad ideas.
An actual solution might be to rework the way we do agricultural subsidies, to replace them with wage subsidies for agricultural workers. Then you only get the subsidy if you hire someone legally, which causes legal workers to out-compete the black market.
A UBI (which allows the elimination of the minimum wage) could do the same without the industry-specific treatment.
That's may or may not be true, and could be a combination of a) there aren't enough people around who would do the job even with minimum wage, e.g. depending on how attractive welfare is and b) it's hard to legally immigrate. So the reality is - as usual - complicated. Let's assume somehow magically all illegal immigrants were deported or whatever. What do you think would happen in the short and long run? To e.g. fresh produce? Do you really think American workers would rush in, and the public would tolerate the higher prices?
There's no easy solutions, and many wrong ones that tackle symptoms but not the root cause.
Capitalism has an easy solution. Labour shortage = raise wages.
Yes, exactly.
> How do you think they'd react if fruit/vegetables were twice the price overnight?
If you weren't artificially suppressing wages through illegal immigration, the working class would have more money, the labour market would be at a better equilibrium and everyone would have money to buy food even at the slightly higher prices. Who knows, maybe landowning farmers would even find some way to produce more efficiently, with a little incentive.
But as I pointed out, nothing happens in a vacuum. Rising 'cost' of labour means rising wages, consumers have more money. What's the better equilibrium?
Keep in mind, in most parts of the world, we pay much, much more for food than Americans. Somehow we survive, and live pretty damn well too.
Edit - I should also add, I buy organic lettuce produced in a greenhouse in Canada. It doesn't cost $20. We're somewhat less tolerant of illegal labour than the US as well.
We'd need to decide to stop exploiting workers and work on finding solutions from there (I don't actually see that first part happening).
I don't mean to sound cheeky, and you make some good points, but perhaps US consumers would react to higher prices by not throwing away huge portions of produce. I've seen figures that the US throws away ~50% of our produce.
Which will move the price of the agricultural products to uncompetitive levels, and the agricultural production will move to Mexico. So to the extent that it turns out the determinative input in the cost of fruits and vegetables is labor, the wages can flow to Mexican workers in Mexico or Mexican workers in the United States, and similarly profits can flow to the owners of land and capital in the United States or those in Mexico.
And what is wrong with this?
Corporations always magically get very snippy when capitalism works against them.
In addition, California needs to shut down a lot of farming in the Central Valley due to the water shortage. We should not be growing crops in that area when we have to spend so much to actually irrigate it.
Water usage can be reduced through smarter irrigation methods, and we have a ridiculously-long coastline that could be put to good use by building some desalinization plants (solving not only our own water crisis, but also the relative aridity of Nevada and Arizona). Even importing water from elsewhere is far more reasonable than shutting down California's agriculture.
That said, beef does take up a disproportionate amount of water statewide, and really ought to be moved out-of-state (and I say this as someone whose extended family has a vested interest in Californian cattle ranching). Alfalfa might benefit from California's soil and sunshine, but the cows themselves don't exactly need to be here.
One source of free labour however is WOOF programs but you need to offer housing, farm training, cultural immersion and food to young foreigners in exchange for 3-4 days of labour.
Food is so cheap in the USA that I am pretty sure the organic small farmer makes little to no money. It's ridiculous. Why would anyone want to farm?
Local food is food security. Also..all rural areas will become urban soon.(unless human beings procreate responsibly). It makes no sense to stress resources and cause pollution in large swathes of rural farmland. Makes more sense to have farm 'green lungs' and urban food sheds around which urban areas are built...each local food shed taking care of most of food needs of the local population.
Local distribution is dilution of risk if food security is threatened. For this..a certain percentage of land should be set aside for agriculture and ranchland. Urban density must be normalized.
Back to labour issues: I don't think legality of residency matters. There aren't enough people to do farm work in California. Yes..farm labour abuse does occur rarely but we have a good support system and various agencies and checks and safety nets..but it is not sustainable. Farmers would likely remain tight lipped about the practices and how farm is run..I can understand and I probably would do the same if I weren't just a small acreage farmer. I just don't have enough to share. Even if I did..the 'civilians' just won't understand.
I hope things change and we snap out of our collective delusions about our food and where it comes from..
The part I struggle with is how to pursue illegal immigrants who have been quietly living in the country who might have been brought as kids or have established families. What's the cost/benefit and how many resources do you spend on that?
This illustrates the point that illegal immigrants are bringing down wages.