Around 75% of immigrant farm workers in Bakersfield, California, ditched their shifts after Trump ramped up his threats by removing protections against ICE raids in “sensitive areas,” including schools and workplaces.
Voters every other election, after four years of people fixing shit:
The spring season is coming… No one planting seeds to sow. That’s gonna be fun. Plus hey, if you don’t plant nothing, you don’t need nobody to pick nothing. And we’ll loose some weight? All beautiful skinny ass Americans again! Yey!
Planting is easier to automate than harvesting. Pretty sure everything has been using seed drills for a while now. Harvesting and meat packing are going to get hosed though.
Wow the exact fucking thing everyone with a brain said would happen! Amazing! Depopulation is TERRIBLE for your economy and wellbeing!
But wait. There’s more. When are the tariffs coming in? My money is on next week.
So yeah… this is going quicker than I thought. I was expecting a couple of months.
We told you so.
Not many conservatives on lemmy I’m guessing.
There are some.
Good. Agriculture shouldn’t be built on the backs of almost slavery
If a sudden increase in prices is what it takes to fully automate agriculture logistics and infrastructure, then it is welcome
The solution is really easy. Bring back the Bracero program os something similar and prosecute the employers who hire illegals.
That’s the plan…private prisons… Fill them with legal residents and brown and black citizens. Then you get self sustaining legal slavery!
Bravo! Slow clap please!
Don’t we already do that?
Yeah, they’re just setting up many more.
While certain things can be automated the robotics technology to fully replace humans is probably still decades away.
Mostly likely they will use prison slave labor, using the same immigrants.
The tech to automate most of the stuff already exists, it’s just not being used as long as abusing humans ends up being cheaper.
How do you automate the harvesting, ground work and maintenance? For example a peach tree?
When I was in the valley, 2 inches of rain basically stopped a whole day’s work for entire fields. Ground machines aren’t even workable on that day.
The farms actually pay alright. Migrant farm work is good work, but it’s remote, and seasonal, making it impractical or impossible for most people. Usually farm workers move with the seasons to harvest and work in farms in different climate zones on rotation, these workers have been targeted by anti immigrant policy since the Clinton administration, and no one has ever worked to reduce their burden and the red tape it takes to migrate in and out of the US as these migrating workers tend to also work in Canada and Mexico. More and more, we can’t harvest our own farms in CA and we import more and more food. Weakening our economy, eliminating exports, and losing power because we need other countries with less racist laws to provide our necessities. Again and again. The racist bullshit that is America harms and hinders everything.
I’m fine with prices going sky high so long as we are eliminating exploited labor.
The reality is though these folks will seek jobs elsewhere and without any social safety nets they are in for some harsh times. I can only hope they have enough friends and family here to make it.
Don’t worry, it would t be like this for too long. They’ll solve this “problem” by rounding up everyone brown into
concentration campsprivate prisons. Then, they can hire them back out as slaves to the farms at what they were paying them before. The exploitation is about to get a lot deeper.
I agree with this. If this is a job that simply cannot afford… Or rather refuses to have a well paid work force then I welcome the automation. Better than humans being treated like replaceable working parts.
All I can say is that Americans, myself included who voted for Harris because I’m not a dumbass, deserves all of this.
Don’t you have that backwards…? Why would you deserve this just because you voted for the opposition?
The ones who voted for Trump do and that’s it.
I for one, don’t believe people deserve to suffer.
no, we don’t.
Oh no. What an unexpected development! Who could have predicted this?
Don’t worry, I’m sure the tariffs will help bring food prices down.
What does ICE stand for? I guess its some form of border/immigration police?
Apart from that this is probably one of the things the american population will notice quite fast. But I don’t think I have to tell you that trump supporters voted against their own interest.
Internal Combustion Engine.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Thanks
Mmm, can’t wait to pay $15 for produce. Fucking idiot Americans voting against their own interests.
Let me start to say that I’m on our side (probably), but are you implying that you want those workers to be underpaid and have no worker rights so your produce price stays low?
Start your “vistory” garden now.
I think the real issue is we’re using undocumented immigrants to do these jobs. They don’t get the same protections that legal workers get.
Absolutely, but we are well past people using logic and reason. We wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place, and we could have spent time actually solving legal immigration (among many other things) instead of years of focus on her emails and all the nonsense of 2016-2020.
That may be an underlying issue but when the baby is incessantly screaming and crying, it doesn’t help to throw boiling water on it
Didn’t some morons vote for trump literally because of the egg prices?
I just spent $5 on a carton of eggs. Thanks Obama, for bird flu
Anyone I know who voted for trump for “economic reasons” are people I know to have the weakest grasp on what economic factors determine the price of eggs.
No, eggs will be cheaper, I’m sure of it. /s
This also highlight how many companies are taking advantage of these people in a modern form of slavery…
In Canada too, we just gussie it up as the “temporary foreign workers” program, and bring immigrants over here for a while to do shit jobs we white people don’t want to do, like work in Tim Hortons or drive for Uber, and leave them trying to afford housing and cost of living, and many just come here and move into shelters, or live in extremely large family settings, which makes locals hate them more because of the housing crisis.
I think immigration needs huge reform in Canada, and that the pathways to citizenship through massive tuition fees bumping out citizens from higher education and using diploma mill “colleges” need to be closed, but the temporary worker program is just slightly polished up slavery and nothing more. If we’re going to offer immigration it should be to skilled people who can work in their field here and can afford to live here, and not just dangling scraps in front of vulnerable people because it’s somewhat better than living in an underdeveloped country’s slums so they can be our slaves, while we all fight over housing and resent each other. At least the migrant agricultural worker program doesn’t hide the fact it is farm labour and temporary.
There’s got to be a way to ethically have migrant workers
The agricultural migrant worker program is ok. They come in understanding what the job is and what they will get. The Mexican crew at my SO’s old job have been coming for years, they’re very much part of the family, and good friends with all the staff, and enjoy the season they spend there, and they make some amazing food for the harvest parties. I’m not saying it’s perfect but at least it’s honest about what they will receive, it’s usually pretty friendly, and they’re not handed a Tim Hortons uniform and directed to the nearest shelter while promised a better life, and having Canadians resent them for being there and taking up resources like housing (the migrant agricultural workers live on the farm or surrounding properties in more of a dormitory situation instead of finding their own housing). There is nothing pretentious about it and in my experience they’re very peaceful people.
One thing I think would be better is to create an educational bridging program for doctors who come to Canada and don’t qualify to work here. If we offered training at our standards to internationally trained doctors and made a deal with them they had to take a job in an underserviced area for family medicine in exchange and have a full roster of patients, that would be a better use of resources and would benefit everyone. There are so many who can’t practice here, and I just think they could really be a valuable resource. I know a pediatric cardiologist from Pakistan who works as a cardiovascular testing tech, a geneticist from Brazil who is working as a translator, my own GP was a respirologist in Croatia and went through med school here again to practice in family medicine. Hell I know a German psychiatrist, who actually does have the same level of education and training as Canadian doctors, and they made him go through five more years of residency that he had finished 15 years before. Set them up to have the correct education to be GPs and sign a contract with them that they have to work in an area that is low in family doctors. I bet that would solve a lot.
fuck that. we shouldn’t only be open to one class of immigrant. I don’t pretend to have answers but I know that this idea further a class hierarchy and as such is crap.
Funny how we never demonize the fucking companies taking advantage of these people.
I think a lot of them are here for the jobs, because they couldn’t make that much money in their home country.
And I think that’s intentional too.
I’m torn.
Obviously taking advantage of cheap, desperate labor to maximize profit is wrong.
On the other hand, the whole thing feels like a deliberate act by the ruling class to turn the working class against each other. I’m hesitant to hate on farmers when billionaires are also suppressing wages so harshly all of society.
Nothing to be torn about: there are no “farmers” anymore, just Big Ag (Tyson, General Mills, Bayer (formerly Monsanto), etc.).
I had no idea im not a farmer anymore.
Now what should i do with all these cows and corn?
Are you genuinely independent, selling your produce at roadside stands/farmer’s markets/directly to restaurants/etc., or are you under the thumb of Big Ag anyway* even though you aren’t literally an employee of them?
When I claim that the vast majority of people who call themselves “farmers” these days are in the latter situation, am I wrong?
(* Yes I know that’s about chickens, not beef or corn. Are you gonna tell me the agribusinesses concerned with those crops don’t have similar issues?)
I’m more raging against the corporations that have no problem benefiting off undocumented workers, underpaying and exploiting.
Any individual farmer out there is trying to stay afloat is competing with John Deere and Monsanto already
I don’t understand how this is supposed to make eggs cheaper.
(obligatory FUCK ICE)
Advocacy group America’s Voice believes that U.S. rural and agricultural regions will likely be the hardest hit by Trump’s immigration policies, which threaten mass detention and deportation of millions.
Border Patrol agents in unmarked vehicles have allegedly been carrying out racially profiled raids in California’s agricultural center after stalking immigrants outside stores, CalMatters reports.
Estimates suggest that between 400,000-800,000 people are farmworkers in California, which is responsible for about 13% percent of the country’s agricultural production value that is worth more than $25 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The USDA estimated that between 2020-2022 about 32% of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7% were immigrants who had obtained citizenship, 19% were authorized immigrants, mostly permanent residents or green-card holders and the remaining 42% were unauthorized to work. The majority of these workers have Latino backgrounds.
The AV report noted how anti-immigrant crackdowns in the past decade have led to devastating impacts for farms, such as crop rot, across several states, including Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
"The unmarked cars, the racial profiling, abusive harassment, and wide dragnets are likely just the tip of the spear of the incoming administration and the signs are unmistakable: there are ‘enemy invaders’ within threatening everything ‘real Americans’ hold dear, and the federal government will be interested in critical oversight in how local officials deal with the ‘enemy.’
It warns, "The tone and culture they set will be just as important as the policies they begin to implement. As individual law enforcement and vigilantes feel empowered to take drastic action with little concern for consequences or oversight, our situation could get out of hand quickly and mass family separations will likely begin again. And, as we saw, the impacts will be felt by families, communities, businesses – and, frankly, all of us.
Advocacy group America’s Voice believes that U.S. rural and agricultural regions will likely be the hardest hit by Trump’s immigration policies, which threaten mass detention and deportation of millions.
Also known as trump supporters
