More farms are turning to automation amid labor shortages | Hacker News Reader

More farms are turning to automation amid labor shortages

grist.org

32 pointsrntn52 comments

This is a good thing imho. If the choices are an underclass of migrant labor whose human rights are always in jeopardy, or automation, automation is the path to success. Subsidies should be provided to help small and family farms with the cost.

There is no shortage of labor, but a shortage of people willing to work at the wages on offer for the job (in the US). Without shortages, humans are treated as a surplus resource. Force the system to achieve an outcome more favorable to the human.

Edit: @potato3732842 and @vivekd Strongly agree with both of your comments.

>There is no shortage of labor, but a shortage of people willing to work at the wages on offer for the job.

I wonder if this is a self fulfilling cycle. I mean if migrant labor and automation were unavailable would we close all the farms and starve to death because labour costs are too high? Or would we increase farm wages and pay the higher food prices if that's the outcome.

It seems to me that the low wages on offer for farm work are a result of so many farms utilizing migrant labour and driving down wages in that sector. And if that option was unavailable we would probably have higher wages in the sector and more people developing expertise in farm work. It would likely also solve the problem of struggling rural economies.

We would import a lot more of our food from countries with cheaper wages, unless the government said, no, you have to pay Americans to farm your food - then we'd be spending ~10% of GDP on food instead of ~5%, and still be getting lower quality food (since you can't grow many things in the US, or if you can it's ridiculously cost prohibitive and still will be low quality).

Additionally, we'd be pinching the labor market further in whatever areas those people left to work on farms instead.

It's not like we have 18% unemployment.

> since you can't grow many things in the US

That is a rather strange claim. The US is represented all up and down this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_producing_coun...

Sure, if you ignore the context of the claim, it doesn't make sense. The context is a US without cheap farm labor. Most of that list depends on cheap labor. Corn & wheat depend on massive machines run by skilled labor, but most of the rest depend on cheap labor.

US Ag needs to figure out how to go from low productivity to high productivity regardless. The world is rapidly aging, the total fertility rate is declining globally (Mexico's fertility rate is below that of the US', for example, and even they are running out of farm hands), and it is unlikely we outsource production of the necessary produce to India and Africa (the youthful, developing parts of the world that remain).

Certainly, farmers will complain they no longer get a cheap labor discount, this is a common refrain in any industry where their labor costs are no longer discounted due to structural demographics. The desire to pay humans the least possible for their labor is universal. Automate or die, those are your choices. If there is a need for subsidies, cost of capital assistance, whatever, we can do that; capital is a fiction, labor is real.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/23/mexico-farmw... | https://archive.today/8rmWI

As long as the US stays very rich and <4% of total global population, we will not run out of cheap foreign labor unless the rest of the world becomes very rich or die off en masse.

I don't believe we can rely on the idea of wealth and a never ending supply of cheap foreign lump of labor from anywhere in the world (it has not gone well for Europe, for example, and Sweden is paying migrants ~$34k to return to their country of origin). A majority of the US population supports deporting the existing undocumented immigrants in country, and limiting further immigration (do they understand this would stoke domestic service inflation? probably not). The wealth is immaterial if the electorate ties your hands politically. Demographic systems and political populism are running head long into capitalism. This story is a symptom of that.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/trump-biden-americans-illeg...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...

(I am once again asking to think in systems)

This is not "running out of cheap labor".

This is tying your hands behind your back and not accepting it.

There's a difference.

The difference is the discussion, the outcome is what matters (imho). If something is technically possible, but impossible to achieve (for whatever reason), it is not truly possible.

There is, to my knowledge, no country that has solved its labor supply challenges with mass immigration in a sustainable manner. I am happy to be proven wrong if my understanding and model is inaccurate.

> There is, to my knowledge, no country that has solved its labor supply challenges with mass immigration in a sustainable manner.

Qatar's population has been happy with their system for a while.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Qatar+migrant+abuse

That's not Qatar citizens complaining.

> Corn & wheat depend on massive machines run by skilled labor, but most of the rest depend on cheap labor.

I’ma say most nutrition is highly-mechanized (even if it may not make up the entire grocery bill if you buy lots of produce).

Highly mechanized would also include carrots, potatoes, onions, beans/pulses, oats, the flavourless tomatoes that make up 98% of the market, peanuts, lettuce & spinach.

Plenty of fruits I’d say are semi-mechanized: apples, pears and most citrus can use a machine that violently shakes the tree onto a net to catch the falling fruit.

You're totally right about the root veg (and I assume peanuts counts as a root veg in this context).

I meant to say cereal instead of wheat which would have caught oats and barley and some specialty cereals. Beans/pulses generally use the same machinery as cereals.

Definitely didn't mean to include tomatoes, lettuce & spinach, though. I know those are partially mechanized, but don't they still include a large unskilled labor component? Or am I out of date?

Farming mostly depends on having the right weather, growing conditions, and soil, which the US has in abundance.

> (since you can't grow many things in the US, or if you can it's ridiculously cost prohibitive and still will be low quality)

That's certainly a statement. It's ludicrous but it technically counts as a statement.

If you want to see the rest of this , take a look at what's happening in Russia now. They've sacrificed a ton of their low skilled labor, and cut off a lot of their migrant labor supply because of the terrorist attacks.

Wages are increasing, but the country is just about maxed in in productivity and looks to be at serious risk of collapsing.

Also, they're in serious trouble because even before the war they were not reproducing fast enough to replenish the labor supply, and immigration was supposed to account for that.

And, in general, the answer to your question is that more immigrant labor actually creates more and higher value jobs than are replaced by immigrant labor. Not just the services they need and want in exchange, but also the comparative advantage of non immigrant labor being able to focus on more valuable tasks.

Before agricultural mechanisation, people used to spend 40% or more of their income on food. (the farm workers weren't really any better off then; they mostly got paid in lodging and farm produce instead of in cash)

We have to account for other improvements like better fertilizers, pesticides and the green revolution which would lower food prices independent of automation and migrant labour.

Also, the amount we spend on food isn't a 1:1 comparison because compared to the 1920s etc we buy much more 'processed food' (e.g. pre-peeled potatoes), which saves labor in the kitchen but is more expensive.

The thing I like about automation and machines is that they are relatively free of emotional baggage. The removal of such emotional baggage from a subject greatly nerfs the ability of people to manipulate public perceptions by tugging at heartstrings with phrases like "underclass of migrant labor whose human rights are always in jeopardy". With the human element removed it's much easier to have sane discussions yielding sane results.

The removal of such emotional baggage from a subject greatly nerfs the ability of people to manipulate public perceptions by tugging at heartstrings with phrases like "underclass of migrant labor whose human rights are always in jeopardy".

Do you believe migrant labor in the U.S. are treated with dignity and are treated well? What about illegal immigrants working in slaughterhouses? More generally speaking, do you believe there are classes of people who are treated poorly?

If such people exist then isn’t it valid to describe them accurately and to describe how “the system” treats them?

With the human element removed, who would be left to even have a discussion?

>With the human element removed, who would be left to even have a discussion?

That's exactly the point. Only people with a fairly direct interest in the industry and its inputs and outputs would discuss it.

Look at how HN discusses political matters.

Look at how HN discusses computer industry matters.

Every industry that can be converted from "everybody weighs in because it's sort of a social issue" to "mostly only people with a horse in the race weigh in" is a huge plus for humanity.

So, what kind of foods are you farming?

> Every industry that can be converted from "everybody weighs in because it's sort of a social issue" to "mostly only people with a horse in the race weigh in" is a huge plus for humanity.

Not if that horse is just wanting to use money to make more money, consequences for humans be damned. Everything can be viewed as that, or as a "complex systems", and then the people who like abstract musings about complex systems can weigh in, and you're free to do that -- but to 99% of all living humans and 99.999% of all who historically lived that is both monstrous and uninteresting. At least that would be my "bet" -- so if your claim is that it would be "better for humanity" (not even "better for HN" where you might have a point) for only experts or capitalists or people who like machines more than vulgar, average people to weigh in, as I said, I'm very confident "humanity" would soundly disagree, and would be correct in doing so.

The maintainers of the automation, who've probably been trained to dislike unionization?

That doesn't mean a surplus of humans doesn't exist, and won't be treated as one. IMO, it may make it worse if the narrative switches from migrant workers are needed to do the hard jobs to migrant workers won't do the hard jobs.

The ideal of Hard working laborers is a lot more attractive than the concept of welfare queens, ect.

It is in deed a good thing if it is taxed appropriately and goes toward a universal basic income for those who are replaced. Otherwise, it will result in a catastrophe.

"If the choices are an underclass of migrant labor whose human rights are always in jeopardy, or automation, automation is the path to success."

I'm not so sure about this argument. Migrant workers come into a country for a reason. Removing this opportunity does harm to the migrant worker. Any migrant worker human rights issues do need to be addressed, however I'm not convinced it is a good reason for automation.

I'm also skeptical of people talking on behalf of others in situations like this. I'd like to hear what the migrant workers think

I appreciate your appeal for further information from people not likely to participate in this forum. Do you yourself have any additional information or argument that would be of interest?

I mean if my boss lays me off I lose a good opportunity. I'm not sure if that means I have a human right to lifetime employment at my company.

I'm Canadian, moving to America would open many doors for me and put me in a better economic position and give me more well defined constitutional rights. Does this mean I have a right to migrate to America.

I understand people in desperate circumstances like refugees should be given special consideration. But expanding that to all migrant labour seems to be a strained definition of human rights

Increased automation without corresponding societal change only means you transfer even more wealth to the ownership class.

In the Netherlands there is a funny situation in which the farmers don't want to live next to the immigrants that they need.

Slavery was a terrible thing but at least there was the deal that the masters had to house, clothe and feed their slaves. The government wasn't gonna do it for you. In modern capitalism everyone wants to escape their responsibilities.

"Labor shortage", except real wages in the usa have been declining since the 1970s. People need to be shamed for using these terms. Inflation adjusted, and even worse, real estate adjusted, wages have dropped like a rock.

Are you sure?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Half of households are below the median. That’s where you’re going to find your farm workers.

"Real wages for hired U.S. farmworkers rose between 1990 and 2019"

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

This the same FED that printed so much money during covid that housing prices doubled? Where is that reflected in this chart?

The increased costs of living are reflected in the difference between that chart (which is adjusted for inflation) and the following chart, which is in dollars and not adjusted for inflation:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=15tO7

I’m not sure if this is the right graph, but I read somewhere, household size has been going down over time, so using household income is a bit misleading actually.

Artificial price ceilings and floors are a classic cause of "fake shortages" in basic economics. I'd be curious what would happen if we eliminated the minimum wage.

We've seen there's some demand for it with gig economy jobs. My guess is it'd be a net improvement, and the fact that our minimum wage is being inflated into irrelevance and wages are still rising suggests that's true.

Instance #9843298 of people not understanding Baumol's Cost Disease.

It is economically ridiculous to imply that, as technology advances, un-teched sectors should continue paying people similar real wages. The only thing that will accomplish that when some sectors are being improved with technology and some aren't is working to apply that benefit as broadly as possible.

Daily reminder of 3 things:

1. There is never a "labor shortage". There is only "insufficient wages";

2. In the US in particular, the agricultural sector would collapse without undocumented migrants;

3. Companies love migrants being undocumented because it suppresses wages for both documented and undocumented workers. We used to have extensive programs for temporary workers (eg the Bracero program [1]).

Automation is going to be a huge issue in the coming years and there are two ways it could go.

The first way is the capitalist way. That is that workers will be laiid off. Unemployment will be used to suppress wages further. Why? So the capitalists can eke out a few extra dollars in profit. This is the dystopian view and the one I consider most likely.

The second way is tha automation makes work easier and take less time. This is essentially the socialist way. This could vastly improve everyone's lives. After all, making it so people don't actually have to work dangerous or just horrible agriculture jobs (or in an Amazon warehouse for that matter). I consider this, given the current political climate, to be highly unlikely.

Our society is rapidly marching towards a future when nobody owns anything (particularly housing). You'll live at the whims of whoever provides worker housing. You'll largely work in service jobs that haven't been automated (yet) at low wages. Things like aged care and maintaining those estates you don't own but are granted housing on.

Welcome to neofeudalism.

[1]: https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program

All migrant agricultural workers are documented. They have to come through a H-2A visa program. This visa runs background and criminal checks on the applicants before they're approved.

From [1]:

> The agricultural sector in the United States relies on foreign workers; 86 percent of agricultural workers [3] in the United States are foreign-born and 45 percent of all US agricultural workers are undocumented.

This is particularly rife in the meatpacking and agricultural industries. The employers themselves call in ICE raids when their workers start demanding fair wages with little to no consequence.

[1]: https://cmsny.org/agricultural-workers-rosenbloom-083022/

> All migrant agricultural workers are documented. They have to come through a H-2A visa program.

This is such a bizarre claim. Are you not aware of the existence of illegal/undocumented immigrants? Or their prevalence in agriculture?

This is a silly take. There can in fact be a labor shortage and there sometimes is. It's quite possible if everyone started bidding up wages this would still be the case. Witness fast food joints basically doubling their wages over the past few years and still having "help wanted" signs in the windows. And you're acting as though any level of wages is economically sensible, and that it wouldn't kill consumers to have a 50% wage increase passed on.

Yes, it probably would. Which is why it's good they're replacing them with automation rather than continuing to lean on illegals.

If a job is fully replaceable with automation, why do you believe it should simply be "made easier" with no cuts to wages, keeping people employed for no particular reason? I think a better discussion is what we can do with the growing chunk of the population who are economically useless and refuse to pick up new skills to make themselves useful.

Automation is why every bag of spinach you buy today turns into green goo in three days and looks like it was punched in the face. I'd like to go back to human hands harvesting.

The refrigerated shelf life of spinach is 10 days.

How long do you think it takes to ship spinach from wherever it grows to every grocery store in the US?

Not overnight.

How long do think it sits on shelves before it sells?

Not <1 day on average.

This has much less to do with automation and more to do with spinach being available almost everywhere in the US at almost all times of the year.

It is a modern miracle that you can buy fresh spinach in the dead of winter in North Dakota.

Do you remember hearing stories of your grandma doing the same?

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