In another comment on this thread, a farmer said he couldn't hire people at $25 / hour. If a machine can do it, then a machine should do it. Especially work that's difficult and can be dangerous - like farm work.
So having 1 farm paying $25/hr, does not change much for the worker.. after they finish at that farm, they'll need to go to another that's paying near minimum wage (the average for a farm worker).. and the result is that they are still in poverty (the average farm worker lives below the poverty line).
The result is that no one is going to move from even a minimum wage job to farm work unless the pay is even higher and/or other farms get onboard with the higher wages.
Anyway, having people do work that could be automated feels like another version of the broken window fallacy.
* in California. So farmers don't matter, just like other workers who lose their jobs to automation. Got it, thanks for the help.
Nobody said that and I can't believe you would think anybody actually sees the world like that. I would hope that we can find more meaningful ways for people to spend their days than doing things that can be better accomplished via machinery. Otherwise we really are just paying one group to break windows so another group can be paid to fix them and that's not good for anybody.
Producers should be looking for ways to produce more efficiently. Governments should be working on the social problems. We all have a part to play in making our economy work well.
Or providing solutions, just automating their jobs away.
Ignore the social repercussions or try and shift responsibility for who should help them all you want, I suggest it is a very unwise thing to do.
How does welfare in the US cover housing costs ?
Farms are heavily dependent on immigrants, mostly illegal immigrants from mexico (90% are foreign born) for crop workers. They work on our farms for very little pay (but probably more than they would have in mexico), work here for 10 years or so saving as much as possible, then go back to mexico. They may travel from CA > WA through the season; or on the east: FL > OH > ME (this prolongs their work season). They're on average very poor, with little education (6th grade is the average).
With the more recent restrictions on the flow of illegal migrants, many are finding it's impossible to come back to the us (or they choose not to come back). Disrupting the flow of illegal migrants that the farms depend on.
That is the source of the labor shortage that the farms are now complaining about.
Essentially for years they have taken advantage of illegal immigrants to depress wages in their industry. And now they have been cut off, and theyre finding it difficult to adjust their wages to appropriate levels so they can compete in the domestic labor market.
Farmers deserve no sympathy for the labor shortage.. it's an exploitative arrangement. They should automate as much as possible, and for everything else they should pay market rates (whatever those may be... even if it's $100/hr or more (remember its short term hard labor, 2nd most dangerous work in the US)).
This shortage is actually a great thing, if it lasts. Whatever workers are left, might finally get paid a livable reasonable wage.
Edit: if your curious about their conditions, here's the National Agriculture Workers Survey that covers all of this: https://www.doleta.gov/agworker/pdf/NAWS_Research_Report_12_...
It's currently "offline for maintenance", so here's google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HiRr7h...
I was trying to find out how things would work if a legal worker alternated between working on farms and living on welfare somewhere out of any work season.
The UK is starting a similar shakeup, most seasonal agricultural work is done by workers from poorer countries in the EU who go back home once the work is done.
I feel that it will be hard to find the market rate for this kind of work in the short term.