Do Big Aggro Farms Use Seasonal Workers?

[Me.]

Small farmers are regretting their support of Comrade Trump because of the loss of seasonal workers (mainly immigrants) to bring in their crops. But I wonder if the big farms are affected in the same way and if they are will that also dim their support for him who is ruining everything. Googled but didn't find an answer.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. Seasonal workers are needed for food crops that are picked by hand -- fruits, nuts and vegetables.

They're not needed so much for commodity crops such as soybeans, wheat, feed corn, etc., because those crops grow in such a way and are at such a scale that planting, managing and harvest are largely mechanized.

Large brands that own/contract with smaller individual farms may be concerned about seasonal worker shortages, but only because their member farms are having trouble finding people, not because the actual large brand/holding company has to find people. If you're an orange farmer who contracts with Sunkist and you can't find people to pick your crop, you're going to suffer a lot more than Sunkist does.

[Me.]

2. Excellent Answer

Thank you

[Yonnie3]

3. A while back (2005) I did some research on a related topic.

The topic was the Bush guest worker program. I found that the large agricultural companies used few seasonal temporary immigrant workers. The agri-giants supported the guest worker program. Since they did not use the workers this seemed strange. I believe that the reason was that the seasonal workers sent money home and the folks at home spent it on US exports, mainly of corn.

I think that this is less of an issue now for the large agricultural companies since they have the ethanol in fuel situation well supported by the government, so the corn has a supported market in the US.

[Me.]

4. Interesting