California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

[workinclasszero]

California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage
Chris Morris Aug 08, 2017

Vegetable prices may be going up soon, as a shortage of migrant workers is resulting in lost crops in California.

Farmers say they're having trouble hiring enough people to work during harvest season, causing some crops to rot before they can be picked. Already, the situation has triggered losses of more than $13 million in two California counties alone, according to NBC News.

The ongoing battle about U.S. immigration policies is blamed for the shortage. The vast majority of California's farm workers are foreign born, with many coming from Mexico. However, the PEW Research Center reports more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming here.

http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/immigration-worker-shortage-rotting-crops/?utm_campaign=time&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&xid=time_socialflow_twitter

[hatrack]

1. Wow, what a shocker! Who could have POSSIBLY forseen this?!?!?!?

[workinclasszero]

3. IKR?

Gee I thought Americans would be flocking to all those less than minimum wage/zero benefits backbreaking crop picking jobs.

Oh well republican farmers, let it rot.

Everything Trump touches rots.

[rtracey]

11. well

Well not that Im happy to see this happen, but perhaps this will also happen to some areas where trump won. You know, where the extreme rightwingers would beat up protestors at the rallies. One can only hope the crop sit on the vines and rot.... serves them right, but it also means higher prices for everyone.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Esp. since farmers went thru that after the first crackdown..

Remember a couple of years ago, Alabama and some other states passed a "papers pls" crackdown and all the field workers fled, leaving crops unpicked. Moaning and wailing and complaining then ensued.

Is there no one in this admin. who can think 10 minutes ahead of an idea???

[dae]

20. Who knew immigration could be this complicated?

[Achilleaze]

2. Thanks republicans

You and your ignoble republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief have full responsiblity for this FAIL.

[nilesobek]

4. Hopefully this will compel

these farmers who exploit Mexican families and children to pay a living wage. I have zero sympathy for the farmers. They lived like kings while my family slept in a shack. Fuck them!

[Historic NY]

5. Merican jobs........

that no one wants. Immigrant are taking our jobs.

[Nay]

6. Wait . . . what?? Where are all the big strong white MRA men who are always

demanding that people (especially women) bow down to them because they do all the manly dirty physical jobs?? Why aren't they running toward this great opportunity to show their utter manliness?

[nilesobek]

34. They are all talk and no work.

In the camps we were in they were usually obese locals, good for 4-5 hrs a day. These racists would be fistfighting with the Mexicans at night after spending their meager droll on hooch.

[procon]

7. Surely, Republicans don't eat fresh produce... too healthy and there's arugula.

Ketchup! That's all the vegetables any red blooded Republican needs. Give 'em machine harvested tomatoes that are processed in an automated factory so that no brown skinned person ever touches their food.

[PearliePoo2]

8. Farmers overwhelmingly voted for this asshole cause' you know, he'll lower their taxes,

'Make America Great Again' and stuff like that. Hey guys, how's that working out for ya'?
Did they not believe him when he constantly railed about immigration, the Wall and his racist war on Mexicans?
Fucking morons...what did they expect? Another prime example of people voting against their own best interests.

[SHRED]

9. Every drive through the central valley of California

Anyone who has driven there sees the love of tRump on signs and the hatred of Democrats on signs.

[workinclasszero]

10. Now the republican farmers can see their hatred of democrats

rotting in their own fields!

[not fooled]

14. Along with

wack-a-doodle non-science suspect policy likely to be emanating now from USDA now that Sam Clovis is on the job (chief science official with a non-science background, e.g. former RWNJ radio host).

Good luck with climate change, farmers!

[link:?1487408098|]

[workinclasszero]

15. Right!

Idiot republican voters SMH

[Sunlei]

24. here is central valley California map

35.716709, -119.610116 this loc is about 1/8 mile from my tiny bit of land- look at central valley, its out of water. even the wildlife refuge is sucked dry by local farms, although that's why my land is green. 100 years ago this valley was a giant lake.

put the loc in here and see for yourself. 'aerial' view will show the land/water/farms. https://www.bing.com/maps/

[Auggie]

25. I work with some of these farmers in Central California...

many are run by families that have been in the business for generations. They're pretty smart business people -- not all are as myopic regarding their workforce as may be suggested. I would say their political slant runs libertarian as much as republican.

CA-10 (Modesto), represented by Jeff Denham-R, is considered very flippable in 2018. Expect Devin Nunes-R of CA-22, just south of CA-10, to be just as vulnerable. Any Democratic challenger would be wise to embrace some of this libertarianism in their 2018 campaigns, as least as much as it applies to agribusiness and their farms.

[Nay]

37. Indeed! In this case, these Trump farmers reap what they've sown. nt

[Tanuki]

12. The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting.....

https://m.

[hibbing]

18. Great

I have a couple versions of Dylan and Baez from Rolling Thunder Review singing this one.


Peace

[Kleveland]

26. The Byrds also..

Did a truly excellent version on the "Ballad of Easy Rider" album, which I think is a fine album.

It notably features the virtuoso flat picking of the late Clarence White, also known for his works with The White Brothers and others.

One of the finest guitar players that I ever heard.

A great write-up here on his history and influence on Country Rock:

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

[hibbing]

30. I never knew, thanks!

[Sunlei]

28. this year I got the best peaches from Austin, Texas. with climate change, 20-30 inches of rain a yr!

peaches, strawberries, berries in general need a lot of water. Somehow California needs to create ground cover, grasses to heal the land and build healthy soil. try to reduce the damage from fracking. water just runs off that fracked out, over-farmed, over grazed- compressed land.

[world wide wally]

13. Does anyone body know if crop insurance would cover this?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. Not likely. Crop insurance is intended to cover weather-related crop losses.

[Crowman2009]

17. Why don't they just bring over those Trump-humping jobless coal miners?

Especially since those right-wingnuts in WV have such a hard-on for Trumpy-dumpy.

[Duppers]

31. There's an idea!

[Kleveland]

33. They would rather labor in darkness...

As minions and orcs often do.

Sunshine, some light and air without coal dust settling in their lungs would do them good, but there is little chance of that.

Heavens forbid that they would do a job that worked in harmony with the sun and earth, instead of hastening the demise of humanity producing fossil fuels.

It all will balance out in nature eventually, and their remains will all likely be the source of the next age's fossil fuels.

[DK504]

19. Kim Jung Trump wants nothing more than to become his North Korean

counterpart. He loves the idea of a weak population so no one can fight back, just like the Korean toddler. Ever notice how stick thin his million man army is? No food. PINO wants a stupid, fat and weak population so none of us can fight back.

Don't think he doesn't relish the idea of California's major segment of the economy rotting in it's fields. These farmers are the same a-holes that voted for him so he would get rid of all those awful Mexicans. Did they ever bother to look out to the fields to see who was actually pick the crops? The Central Valley grows, or it did, most of the food for this country. With climate change, the earth boining to death the crops are failing to grow becasue of the heat.

Trump could give a shit if half of the food producers couldn't produce food.

[Sunlei]

21. import from mexico, look at google map all the huge farms are right over the border. with global war

global warming Canada ramps up intensive grows and Canada dairy, their REAL GRASS grazing is much better.

The family farms in Monterrey, Mexico area are beautiful.

[hunter]

22. I can't find a decent source for this story.

No, Fortune and realty show TV news reporting doesn't count.

In any case, government subsidized GOP farmers are always whining about something, especially here in California, and complaining about a shortage of workers willing to take their abuse is a common complaint.

[SWBTATTReg]

23. This is a shame...

and it's happening in Alabama too...where they cracked down on 'illegal' and/or 'legal' immigration...

Sad thing about it, it's probably going to happen everywhere where labor-intensive crops are grown.

Just wait...before long, a year or two down the food pipeline, our food costs are going to be significantly more then what they used to be.

This is true for any field/industry that uses large amounts of labor/legal or not:

-crops rotting in fields;
-less crops being planted; -less fertilizer / fewer seeds required;
-with the smaller labor force, less crops being picked result in less processing downstream;
-farmers going out of business;
-bankers lending to farmers will go down (bad loans hurting bank bottom lines); -impacts other businesses negatively too;
-land costs will going down, hurting farmers (use as security for seed/fertilizer loans);
-restaurants going out of businesses (fewer customers);
-amount of crops are picked,
-with farms going out of business (specially Mom & Pop type of farms), fewer and fewer of new generations will stay;
etc...

This is a true depression/recession cycle, all artificially created because of poor decisions based on untrue evidence...this has been witnessed before in history in this country (hysteria about immigrants taking jobs etc.)

If anything positive comes out of this, it's that more and more mechanized methods of harvesting and processing food crops will be developed, although as to whether Mom and Pop farmers can afford these new technologies, who knows?

[packman]

27. Thank You JESUS

[Duppers]

32. Zactly! nt

[Duppers]

35. Good point. And we suburbanites

Need to grow veggie gardens as they did decades ago.


A few of my neighbors are shamelessly growing tomato and pepper plants in their once groomed lawn beds. One family even has chickens roaming their front yard. Love it!!

[SWBTATTReg]

36. Great!!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

38. Most central California farmers voted for tRump (Republican). . . . nt