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Comment by fzeroracer | Hacker News Reader

As a thought for you: Red states heavily rely on undocumented laborers in order for farms to survive because even with their heavy subsidies they are not able to afford hiring Americans even at minimum wage. In this scenario where the red states are actively chasing away the workforce they need to survive, how are they going to maintain food production?

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You're telling me that you believe the richest country in the history of the world, with some of the highest levels of mechanization and industrialization in the history of the world, with some of the most efficient agricultural production in the history of the world, cannot afford to grow food without essentially slave labor?

Yes, that's an objective fact. Something like 40-50% of farmworkers are undocumented, even more if you consider immigrants as part of the pile.

It's a fact(I guess?) that they are that percentage of farmworkers. It's not a fact that without them that farms would not survive in America.

Sure it is. We've tried it:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/wh...

We already can't find enough labor:

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farm-labor-guestworke...

and unemployment is historically very low.

Maybe we can't find enough labor because 50% of the workers are working illegally, voluntarily and involuntarily accept illegal working standards, and are suppressing wages far below what they should naturally be.

Is your argument that if we kicked every illegal immigrant out of America tomorrow, that Americans would just choose to starve instead of paying slightly more for food, and farmers would just let food rot on the vine instead of harvesting it?

Did you at least read the article that they shared? It answers all of your questions.

> Is your argument that if we kicked every illegal immigrant out of America tomorrow, that Americans would just choose to starve instead of paying slightly more for food, and farmers would just let food rot on the vine instead of harvesting it?

Oh, they wouldn't choose. They'd just have that as the inevitable consequence. Famines happen; just wishing them away isn't really a great approach.

It doesn't help that these decisions take months/years to show their impacts.

How many famines have happened because ample food was readily available, but farmers didn't want to pay a slightly elevated wage to workers to pick the food?

In this scenario, some farmer is going to choose to pay $20/hr for farm workers, and rake in insane profits if there really is a famine. In fact, almost all farms would choose to pay more to collect their food and sell it at a large premium in the case of a food shortage.

> some farmer is going to choose to pay $20/hr for farm workers

And hope that in six months, the trade war hasn't been settled? They won't be paid until the crop matures, and there's a lot of labor before that point. You're also competing with other countries, from whom we already import agricultural goods at reasonable prices.

Again, decisions that lead to famine don't do so instantly.

Literally what futures contracts were invented for.

Yeah, that never goes badly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

You're full of easy solutions to tough problems, aren't you?

Please show me any part of our modern world that has not gone wrong in some way at some time some how.

That's... established fact.

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

> In 1990, the average real farm wage for nonsupervisory crop and livestock workers was just over half the average real wage in the nonfarm economy for private-sector nonsupervisory occupations ($11.71 versus $23.19, in 2023 dollars). By 2023, the farm wage ($17.55) was equal to 61 percent of the nonfarm wage ($28.93). In other words, the gap between farm and nonfarm wages is slowly shrinking, but still substantial.

> The share of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States grew from roughly 14 percent in 1989–91 to almost 55 percent in 1999–2001; in recent years it has declined to about 40 percent. In 2020–22, 32 percent of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7 percent were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19 percent were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42 percent held no work authorization.

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