Trump: ‘We’re Not Going to Have Farms’ Without H-2A Foreign Visa Workers

Breitbart ^ | April 1, 2020 | John Binder

[itsahoot]

Yes, strawberry harvesters on on the way, but they aren’t here in 2020.

Yes they are. They plant the berries on a raised bed shaped similar to concrete highway dividers, the vines hang down and the same kind of flail they use to pick grapes harvests them. I also saw a brief glimpse of a berry picker selecting single berries. Notice that most of the harvester videos on YouTube are a year or two old.

Did you notice how the harvest root plants? How about corn that the run a harvester maybe 30 foot wide and the machine deposits the shucked corn in a bin and leaves the ground clean.

Granted the small farmer cannot compete with Multi-million dollar machines and they likely will fail, can't be helped, or prevented. Mechanization killed the slave industry of cotton picking, it will do the same to small farmers, who use slave labor from Mexico.

[minnesota_bound]

The company I am at hire a guy from India a little more then 2 years ago who in turn hired another who then hired another who is the boss of my manager. The manager and supervisor are probably worried when are they going to be replaced by people from India.

[SanchoP]

I must admit,I'm surprised that you two are graduates of the

school of economics. You should launch your own agribusiness. You should be wildly successful.
When the Bracero Program ended in 1964, American farmers complained to the government that the Mexican workers had done jobs that Americans refused to do and that their crops would rot in the fields without them. In response, U.S. Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz, on May 5, 1965— ironically Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday—announced a plan intended to replace at least some of the hundreds of thousands of Mexican farm workers with healthy young Americans.

Called the A-TEAM, an acronym for Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower, the plan called for the recruitment of up to 20,000 male American high school athletes to work on farms in California and Texas during summer harvest seasons. Citing the farm labor shortage and the lack of part-time jobs for high school students, Sec. Wirtz stated of the young athletes, “They can do the work. They are entitled to a chance at it.”

However, as the farmers had predicted, fewer than 3,500 A-TEAM recruits ever signed up to work their fields, and many of them soon quit or went on strike complaining of the back-breaking nature of harvesting ground-growing crops, the oppressive heat, low pay, and poor living conditions. The Department of Labor permanently benched the A-TEAM after the first summer.

Good luck

[central_va]

Sancho,

Her is a quiz for you. It is a math quiz so I am not sure you will get it.

Mexican national Paco Browntooth works at a melon farm and picks 30 melons/hour. Paco is paid $10.00 hour so the cost per melon for stoop labor is $0.33 per melon. The border is secured, finally, and poor Paco is not coming this year. Farmer Subsidy McGreedy now has to pay TWICE as much for hourly labor or $20.00/hr to attract Americans! The horror!!! Farmer McGreedy hires Billy Whitehead who also picks 30/melons per hour and makes $20.00/hr. So how much is the INCREASE in the cost of stoop labor at the new rate per melon?

1. $33.00/per melon
2. $3.30/per melon
3. $0.33/per melon

[NobleFree]

AOC is against immigrant labor? Link?

[SanchoP]

Still using the AOC school of economics and I'm just not up for pig wrasslin' today.
OK,you win. The extra zero on the market price was a typo. Could I still use you as a reference on my resume' to the CDC?

[NobleFree]

“They got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 fruits.” - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/when-the-u-s-government-tried-to-replace-migrant-farmworkers-with-high-schoolers

There’s the problem right there: a government-created program with government-set wages ... the real AOC approach. What central_va and I advocate is core conservatism - a free market, in which employers pay Americans what it takes to get them to show up and do the job.

[NobleFree]

AOC is against immigrant labor? Link?

[Balding_Eagle]

I retired from farming a long while back and still follow with interest.

Yes, the berry machines you mention are out there, but they are still a long while from being a practical machine that can be used for even small scale harvesting.

Here’s a bit of corn harvest in KY last year.

https://youtu.be/rX5-zyMgFCo?t=41

[itsahoot]

Yes, the berry machines you mention are out there, but they are still a long while from being a practical machine that can be used for even small scale harvesting.

The machines are ready the farmers aren't. Takes time to arrange new methods of planting. The world will continue to be fed because of these machines, because a couple tractor drivers can harvest in an hour what it would have taken a week by a crew of pickers.

For the crops that can feed a population, machines have developed much faster, berries are on a different priority list. I remember a corn shucking glove on my grandfather's back porch used it myself a few times. How many weeks would it take for a man with one of those gloves to fill a truck with shucked corn?

[Balding_Eagle]

Show me a mechanical strawberry picker.

[itsahoot]

Show me a mechanical strawberry picker.

Here is one, there are others.
Another one.
Article & Picture only.
STRAWBOTICS: THE NEXT GENERATION IN STRAWBERRY HARVESTING TECH WITH HARVEST CROO

Didn't find the video I wanted to show you but maybe you could find it on your own. The one I was talking about required a special bedding system but no more complicated than grape production.

[Balding_Eagle]

Here is a commercial grape harvester, the kind that’s in mass production with various companies manufacturing them.

https://youtu.be/Xn5wuyyx3bA?t=43

There are no machine strawberry harvesters. Everything, including those you linked to, is still in the experimental phase.

Right now, if you buy strawberries they are going to be hand picked. That’s just how it is, and will be for some years.

Trump is right.

[itsahoot]

Right now, if you buy strawberries they are going to be hand picked. That’s just how it is, and will be for some years.

I don't need strawberries to survive and neither do you. All the products needed for basic survival have been harvested without the use of slave labor for years, so what is the issue, do you raise strawberries?

[Balding_Eagle]

So you’ve moved the goalposts?

Let me know if that’s the case so I can give you a proper answer.

[central_va]

BS. Americans will pick fruit it you pay them market wages. You don’t set a wage then try to find fools/illegals to fill the positions. It works the other way around in a free market.

[Balding_Eagle]

You have a new goalpost also?

[central_va]

Here is a quiz for you. It is a math quiz so I am not sure you will get it.

Mexican national Paco Browntooth works at a melon farm and picks 30 melons/hour. Paco is paid $10.00 hour so the cost per melon for stoop labor is $0.33 per melon. The border is secured, finally, and poor Paco is not coming this year. Farmer Subsidy McGreedy now has to pay TWICE as much for hourly labor or $20.00/hr to attract Americans! The horror!!! Farmer McGreedy hires Billy Whitehead who also picks 30/melons per hour and makes $20.00/hr. So how much is the INCREASE in the cost of stoop labor at the new rate per melon?

1. $33.00/per melon
2. $3.30/per melon
3. $0.33/per melon

[Balding_Eagle]

Why don’t you answer the question i raised instead of the question you wished I asked.

[Balding_Eagle]

Here is the question I asked “Show me a mechanical strawberry picker.”

Go for that instead of trying to fake it.