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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

Numbers I've read is that farm labour accounts for ~10% of retail food cost for fruits.

https://www.prb.org/usfarmworkersfoodprices/

If that doubles because they have to pay local labour rates, the price would go up 10%. Possibly less if it just eats into the margins through the rest of the chain.

We might also see a shift toward less laborious foods, which is fine by me.

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Farming doesn't strike me as high margin. This increase in costs could send many farmers out of business. That will push up food prices.

Seems unlikely, the operations would probably just be consolidated with another agribusiness company. "Farmers" are something of an anachronism in most of the agricultural supply chain.

You realise such transitions take crop cycles - if the current crops fail because lack of labour and it leads to a food shortage food prices will go through the roof.

...and not to mention everything is interconnected in an economy. If food prices rise by x%, there is a cascade effect on the prices of everything, not just groceries.

It frequently goes the other way. If people are spending more on food that lowers the demand for services which thus lowers those services costs. Housing for example is limited by people’s ability to pay for it, with clear long term trends showing an inverse relationship between housing costs and food costs.

PS: In the short term inflation and deflation can be caused by a huge range of effects, but in the long term it’s bound by government spending and taxation.

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