Farms can’t find workers

Get ready, food prices are going to skyrocket.

Places near me are begging people to come work. The farms can’t compete with the local stores which are now starting at $15.
Either everything is going to have to get automated or we are going to have to accept immigrants. Or farms are just going to have to start
Paying more, which we know they aren’t going to do.

People just don’t want to pay more for food. It has worked in other countries but here in the US we wants cheap produce.
Well you can’t have it all can you?

www.bloomberg.com...

Sonya Beltran is growing more than enough white button mushrooms on her family’s Pennsylvania farm to supply restaurants seeing a boom in business in the post-pandemic economy. But instead of cashing in on the resurgent demand, her mushrooms are dying in their beds because she can’t find workers to pick them.

a reply to: JAGStorm

this was on sunday, they gave away about $180.000 dollars worth of asparagus

Down On The Farm

farmers cost can be enormous, this farmer pays 16.00 bucks a hr.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Greetings Jagstorm,

Definite Flag & star from me on this very important news.

Yep, I can tell you the same thing is happening in Australia as well.

A lot of the farmers depend on back packers here in Oz. The backpackers stay a while earn some money; enough to move on in their journey around the world.

Covid, and lockdowns, etc.. have made fruit and veggie workers very hard to find in Oz at the moment.

It surely must be a worldwide issue. If not, it soon will be I reckon.

It is peak citrus season in Oz now, and farmers are begging for orchard workers.

Some of the retired folks will travel the "harvest trail" and work, but it is hard work; and most old folks aren't fit enough to do it. So, there is a few workers, but nothing like they need.

It will certainly affect food and crop supplies down the road a ways.

Pravdaseeker

a reply to: JAGStorm

Come on, it’s because they pay crap wages and spawned more than the demand. If she hasn’t automated her business by now, it needs to go anyways. Automated indoor cultivation is a cakewalk.

The whole article was her playing the blame game about why her business is failing, while pretty much omitting the fact that the major factor in her business failing is the forced shutdown of 2020.

I grew up on a farm and I learned that working on a farm is doing society a service....one that is often not appreciated by the masses in the society. Start charging more for food, it is a necessity, and if it all gets more expensive, maybe people would not waste so much of it.

We ate the potatoes that did not make the grade when I grew up. The perfect ones were sold to the customers. We made jam and strawberry shortcakes out of the button berries and odd shaped ones from the fields to feed the family. We got used to eating stuff the public did not want to buy because it did not look perfect.

I know how much work it is to grow stuff and to process meat from animals....I do not waste much food at all because of this. I also respect the animal or plant that died so I may live. but I guess I am not normal in today's society, people complain about everything and do not eat all of their food, they do not take care of the leftovers and eat them for lunch the next day a lot in the society we have created. It makes me sad.

My grandfather picked potatoes along with us and also strawberries and veggies and tended the fields up until he was eighty three, he never woke up one morning in the late fall....the first time he ever went to a doctor was to be pronounced dead, he was born on the farm. I like to work in the fields and fish for food, but I kind of wore out my body by working too hard and long for many years on dangerous jobs. I feel inferior to my grandfather who was pretty strong and healthy right to the end of his life.

We need to train the young to believe working on a farm is a good and necessary profession and pay them decently instead of paying immigrants substandard wages to work the fields. I have no problem with legal immigration, within reason. But lazy immigrants that want to make money off of robbing people are not good on farms either, good trustworthy immigrants are good for this country. And train our youth to work along side these young people symbiotically in the field, to work as a group....we can all get along if everyone pulls their weight. Why should a person picking fruit in the fields in blaring heat make way less than someone punching data into a computer game company? Which job is necessary in this country?

Pay farmers more for their produce and they can pay their help better....it takes time to teach youth how to farm, the majority quit after a short time and the farmer never gets his money's worth out of them. When they gain a season's experience, and they produce, pay them more..both base and commission on quantity and make the consumer pay. Enslaving people in other countries to produce our food for peanuts is not good either, we can pay more for food if we do not waste so much of it.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I live in central PA and there are produce stands everywhere. I try to buy from them as much as possible to support them and not major chains. If I had an opportunity that paid decent for a welder/ machinist/ do whatever you need I’d do it. I grew up on my grandpas farm when I was a boy and he was all produce no cattle, I learned a lot about life and nature there.

Just a thought here with no recommendations on my part. What about something like the old Bracero program.

What if all these businesses that are crying ''we can't find anyone to work'' are really pulling for open borders to allow people willing to work for wages they want to pay to come in and do the work citizens won't. I know it's an old old argument but what the hey. It's an old solution played out from generation to generation , ethnicity to ethnicity.

Give the foreign pickers a burlap sack to sleep on and three bucks an hour. That's the ticket. Every McDonalds can build a ''workers bath'' so low paid immigrants can clean up before a shift of flippin and fillin and baggin. Maybe give em a billet and a shower in a shuttered K Mart for four bucks a night. Fifty cents more for ''towel included'


Solve a lot of problems right there.

Where's the sarcasm icon??

I'm in Pa. No surprise, signs out at all businesses. Many starting at $18-$25. So that's another problem in employee competition. I don't think the extra Fed money with unemployment ends until September either.
Max unemployment if I recall $600 weekly plus $300 from Feds. Even collecting less with Feds, $15 isn't going to get workers off the vacation.

"And there will be shortages in the land of plenty"

a reply to: JAGStorm

We have the same issues in the UK with Coronas virus stopping local business from getting to workers to their agriculture and hospitalities, it was onltnb b few days ago the BBC was reporting from the Lakes districts and the hotels, cafes, etc they can'rt get their businesses up and runnuing again as they don't have the staff to do it. These places rely over here in foreigners coming in from the EU to do the running around yet with Corona stopping travel there is a massive recruitment shortage in these places and the tourist industry is grinding to a halt just as it attaemps to pick its elf up again. Crazy days and so similat to what is going on im the States

The "can't find workers" is all BS. It's part of a propaganda program and people get screwed 😃

Well let me upset a few here. Farmer, farmer, that's a misnomer especially in the US. A farmer, or rancher for that matter, farms the land and at most needs one or two extra people to help him at the busiest times. Any "farmer" that employs multiple people to work for him is NOT a farmer but a manager. His farm is not a farm but a company.
We had this discussion a few years back with the grape growers in Cali. Yeah, the supposed farmer does his bit and also reaps the monetary rewards from the multiple workers at no extra cost to him. When the dollars are flowing you hear nothing from them, now they've got to pay the price or go under. So what, they got too big. Get back to being a farmer with a manageable farm for himself and a couple of helpers and let others have a manageable piece of land to farm. But they wont do that cos they want a big "farm" for a big payout.

How many of these stories are taking place in states with the extra COVID "relief"?