Posted on 12/02/2005 4:53:42 AM PST by Crackingham
You used gas as an example. Demand for gas is inelastic. Demand doesn't change with price. With the huge spike in prices caused by yhr gulf storms, demand fell matbe 2%.
With labor shortages the labor supply is inelastic. It doesn't make any difference if demand rises(wages increase), there is still no more labor available.
We import large amounts of oil. We import large amounts of labor.
LOL you almost sound like you believe that.
There is lots of underemployed illegal labor available. Communities all over the country are howling about these nuisance illegals standing around in front of 7-11's and Home Depots. These day laborers do not have steady work but they would rather be unemployed two or three days a week then work for these farmers in abusive conditions at slave wages. Unlike gasoline, we have never actually seen the farmers try raising wages so your assertions about wage inelasticity are untested.
There is also quite a lot of underemployed citizen labor. Much of this work used to get done by teenagers and I am sure, with the right wages they could be induced to do it again. I would not have a problem requiring welfare recipients to take these jobs if they were available but that would take some sensible legislative action.
Tomato farming is very automated and has been since the 60's when we ended the Bracero program. When we got rid of the cheap labor productivity and production went way up and the price dropped.
I don't know much about strawberries but grapes and raisins are among the most (illegal) labor intense crops farmed in California. And the farmers who raise grapes for wine and raisins are among the biggest whiners about the need for illegal labor. But in Australia where they don't have a ready source of cheap labor, they manage to make wine that is cheaper and as often as not better quality than ours that does not rely on labor intensive methods. They do the same with raisins. Despite all the whining, it turns out that automation is totally feasible.
Necessity is the mother of invention. I bet after we get rid of the illegals somebody figures out how to pick strawberries with a machine just like the Southerners figured out how to automate the cotton harvest when we got rid of the slaves. Otherwise strawberries will get more expensive. That won't be the end of the wold when we figure in all the money we will save by not having to subsidize the cheap labor.
Dead on. Their ownership of that property is under law - who guarantees that right, the Mexican government? They expect the rest of us to respect all of the rights that protect them - private property, zoning laws that devalue their land as agricultural land (the Pajaro valley in California would be wall to wall subdivisions without that) so that their property taxes stay low, ordinary police protection against theft, vandalism, etc - but when it comes to them respecting the laws we have made that guarantee our ownership of the country, they break them with glee.
Why bother even chatting about it? Arrest them, take their land. They don't exist as little feudal serfdoms independent of the rest of the country. They are nothing but latter day slave owners, wannabe feudalists.
I always crack up when I hear the OBL apologists babble that about "the labor shortage". In Santa Cruz County, CA, home to one of the largest concentrations of illegals in America (the entire town of Watsonville), they cry about the 3000 "homeless", and then propose more subsidized housing (everyone should move here and get their names on the list! Live on the Beach for free!). Those "homeless" could be out working in the strawberry patch, but nooooooo....that's beneath them.
Labor shortage my butt.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
section 8 subsidy= 8.00 hr.
food stamps= 4.00 hr.
medi-cal/denical= 2.00 hr total not to work= 14.00 hr.
I imagine not. I remember when there was a huge outcry from pot smokers back in the late 70's when they learned that the DEA was spraying the defoliant paraquot on pot plants in Mexico. The Mexicans were picking it and selling it anyway.
But fortunately it is not necessary to spray defoliant on tomatos in order to automate the harvest. Here is an excerpt from a good article that talks a lot about the Bracero Program:
These predictions were wrong. Take the case of processing tomatoes. In 1960, 80 percent of the 45,000 peak harvest workers used to pick 2.2 million tons of the tomatoes used to make catsup in California were Braceros, and growers testified that "the use of Braceros is absolutely essential to the survival of the tomato industry." In 1999, about 5,000 workers were employed to ride machines to sort 12 million tons of tomatoes harvested by machine on 300,000 acres. In the tomato case, the end of the Bracero program led to the mechanization of the tomato harvest, expanding production, and a reduction in the price of processed tomato products, which helped to fuel the fast-food boom.
There Is Nothing More Permanent Than Temporary Foreign Workers
In 1960, 45,000 workers were picking 2.2 million tons of tomatos and and by 1999, 5000 workers were picking 12 million tons of tomatos. Roughly 1/10th the workers picked 6 times as many tomatos.
I went to college in Southern California and I remember seeing huge trucks full of green tomatos. My understanding is that they are picked green and are treated with cyanide gas to force them to turn red. That's almost as gross as defoliant but I eat them anyway.
These farmers are finding out the hardway that illegal aliens won't be picking their crops when they can get better work elsewhere for better wages.
I agree with your statement.
>>>In 1960, 45,000 workers were picking 2.2 million tons of tomatos and and by 1999, 5000 workers were picking 12 million tons of tomatos. Roughly 1/10th the workers picked 6 times as many tomatos.
It is important to note that the case you present refers to processing tomatoes and not tomoatoes to be sold fresh. Processing tomatoes tend to not require the same degree of care as the fresh variety since they are mostly going to be crushed anyway.
Similarly, there are mechanical harvesters for grapes to be used in juice, but they don't work well for table grapes.
I'm not saying that it is impossible to mechanize all of this, but there are likely some crops that just do not lend themselves to mechanization.
It's definitely feasible.
Raisins
Lee Simpson, a raisin grower near Fresno, is believed to have a vineyard of the future. Vines are planted five feet apart and with eight feet between rows, closer than traditional 12' by 8' spacing, and trained to grow across rows rather than parallel to rows.
The vines holding bunches of grapes are cut in August so that the raisins dry on the vine. Bunches of dried raisins are machine harvested with a beater bar knocking them onto a conveyor belt, a blower expels leaves, and the raisins go directly into boxes carried on the machine. This system eliminates almost 90 percent of the usual 80 hours an acre of labor needed in raisin harvesting.
Olives
Olives are the most costly tree fruit to harvest that is later processed. Ag-Right Enterprises of Madera [California] has developed a mechanical olive harvester that can harvest olives from trees that are pruned in a hedgerow fashion to produce a flat wall of trees. Hand harvesting costs about $300 a ton, and mechanical harvesting is expected to cost about $150 a ton; the machine is expected to cost $100,000.
Rural Migration News
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=296_0_3_0
In Texas, wine grape harvesting is entirely automated.
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