Vegtables/crops rotting in the fields because of #Trumps crackdown on migrant workers!... pics...

[riversedge]

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Stop Trump 🍷 @StopTrump2020
11m11 minutes ago

How is this #MakingAmericaGreatAgain #MAGA
#defendDACA #migrants #Harvest18

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Barry Sensa @nadiepetah

Crops rotting in fields across this country. Georgia other states learning a hard lesson , immigrant workers kept us fed.

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[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. My give-a-shit's broken. He said he was gonna.

[tblue37]

2. K&R for visibility. nt

[underpants]

3. Even here in Virginia the Eastern Shore is seldom discussed

and what it contributes except that Gov Northam is from the Eastern Shore.

[malaise]

4. Make tomatoes rot again

Get thee to the greatest page

[C Moon]

29. :D

[NurseJackie]

5. Pity.

[Igel]

10. Where are the plants?

That's what my garden used to look like after a sudden freeze. Plants dark and mushy, tomatoes just lying there.

Can't find any independent reporting on a current labor shortage, at least not one worse than a decade back.

[pangaia]

32. Good point. I missed that.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. MAGA. Making Agriculture Go Away

[yardwork]

7. Everybody suffers, nobody wins.

[RandomAccess]

8. As if food prices aren't high enough

God, it's terrible living in a kleptocratic kakistocracy.

[Duppers]

24. +100

[blueinredohio]

9. I realize all our food prices will go up but I have no sympathy for any of these people.

[treestar]

11. Numerical limits on this visas are ridiculous

Prove there are US workers or issue visas in a number required for each year. That would put an end to the "illegal" nonsense.

[S.E. TN Liberal]

12. Gas prices up. Food prices up.

Corporate profits up.

Wages stagnant.

Pensions stagnant, if we manage to keep them.

Social Security stagnant.

Retirement benefits under pressure, especially once the stock market does its' usual "republican't-in-the-White-House" dive.

Yep. It is easy to tell the republican'ts control the economy.

[Duppers]

25. Great post!

[wasupaloopa]

13. I live in Santa Maria CA and the strawberries

are ready.

We have want ads in the paper for “harvesters.”

[tritsofme]

14. Cry me a river, if they pay market wages, the jobs would be filled.

[BigmanPigman]

20. You nailed it!

[SeattleVet]

36. No, they actually would not fill those jobs.

Two years ago here in Washington they tried paying a decent amount ABOVE the prevailing market wages when they were trying to get apple pickers to keep the crops from rotting on the trees (and this is not nearly as arduous a type of labor as harvesting strawberries, tomatoes, or a lot of other crops).

A lot of people initially signed up to pick, but most of these people lasted one day (or left sometime during the first day), and the vast majority were gone within a week. Apples rotted on the trees, or became groundfall (which you *might* be able to sell for cider, if they weren't too far gone). Apple prices around the country spiked up because the supply was down, even though the crop was huge, since they could not get people to come in and pick them.

Even with a very lucrative salary these jobs were NOT something that even some of the most desperate people would actually work at for more than a day or two.

There are somethings that you cannot get American workers to do for any extended period (crop harvesting, marrying a tRump, etc.) even if you are paying way above the norm for the job.

Multiply that across a vast number of agricultural (and seafood - see the example of the crab packers in Maryland) products that depend on manual labor and get prepared for sticker shock when you see how more you have to pay for many food items over the coming year.

tRump has kicked the bucked out from under the American agriculture industry.

[tritsofme]

37. If the American agriculture industry can't exist without sub-minimum wage labor...

Exploiting vulnerable migrants here illegally, who clearly wouldn't choose this type of work, especially for such low pay, if they had any other choice

Is it an industry that really should exist? At least in it's present form? Not sure why I should be shedding any tears for these big farm owners.

[SeattleVet]

41. Nobody said anything about exploiting sub-minimum wage labor, or undocumented people.

They can't get enough LEGAL visa holders to do the work, because turd-boy has cut the number of people allowed in under the H2B program.

Of course, Merde-a-Loco got their entire allotment of via holders, but there are places (like the crab processors mentioned in the original article) that can't get the labor to stay in business. The wage doesn't matter - American workers will NOT do the dull, repetitive hard work involved, even when paid above-market rates.

Many of these are definitely NOT 'big farm owners'. The ones being hurt the most are the smaller farms, processing facilities, or other businesses that didn't 'win the lottery' and get the people to do the work, while the other guy down the road did manage to get lucky and get a labor force.

Unfortunately, the entire country will be paying the price for the Orange Horror's misguided attempt at immigration reform. A lot of migrant workers that USED to come to work the fields (with or without benefit of a work visa) and support their families are also getting hit hard by the crap he's pulling.

[Raine]

43. I agree

they need to take less profit and pay people more, then they can get people willing to do the work instead of having to exploit them.

[Achilleaze]

44. And if you paid True Prices for food grown by workers paid fair wages

you would indeed cry a river. The system keeps prices artificially low by paying poverty wages to workers, and a host of other mercenary policies.

[keithbvadu2]

15. Donald has thousands of coal miners wanting work... put them to work in the fields.

And it will cut back on the unemployment.

Get busy, Donald.

[Sam McGee]

16. Well, I'm heartbroken

I live in rural Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay. I'm fortunate to be retired with a decent pension, Medicare, a little money in the bank, good health and no debts. Not so with my struggling neighbors. The crabbers are in a hurt and slipping deeper every day -- Hispanics came in every year to pick crab meat from crabs -- not so this year. Only about 25% as many pickers showed up this year. So, the guys who catch the crabs can't sell them to the processors, instead, they must sell whole crabs to the restaurants and that's a limited market.

Friends on the Eastern Shore are telling me about the crops rotting in the fields for lack of pickers, thanks to Trump's limitations on seasonal work visas.

All these people are Trump voters.. I'm betting they will NOT turn on him. Doesn't matter if he kills their livelihood -- just so they can keep their guns, keep the brown-skinned people in their places, keep the gays in the closet and keep women barefoot and pregnant -- that's all that matters.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-03-30/chesapeake-crab-houses-struggle-to-find-retain-american-workers

[KY_EnviroGuy]

38. I recall vast peanut fields on a drive westward going home...

from a job in Franklin, Virginia. Love Virginia peanuts and boiled peanuts from anywhere. I would guess that could affect that industry as well.

Prices on a lot of American favorites like crab cakes and peanuts could go out the roof.

[BobTheSubgenius]

17. I don't know what caused the shortage, but about a year and a half ago,

cauliflower was in short supply. A local news show took a clip of a till receipt from a carriage trade sort of grocery store in Vancouver. $12.50

$12.50 for a cauliflower?!??! These are the kinds of prices that could be coming.

[freethought]

18. Let's also not forget

Crops like soybeans and corn. One does not need migrant labor to harvest them, but when China cancels orders for what would have been $16 billion in soybean exports. That's going to hurt a number of American farmers.

Who will China buy them from? Looks like a good chunk of those orders will be filled by Canada.

Nice goin' Trump voters!

[lunasun]

28. Brazil

The agriculture of Brazil is historically one of the principal bases of Brazil's economy. While its initial focus was on sugarcane, Brazil eventually became the world's largest exporter of coffee, soybeans, beef, and crop-based ethanol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Brazil

[freethought]

33. I stand corrected

Trump's screw up becomes Brazil's windfall.

[lunasun]

34. China should have aligned themselves earlier but they were so star struck with the U$A $$power

Expect more US propaganda about evil SA countries as they are supplying more to EU and China now

[airmid]

42. We live in the midst of Ohio soybrean and corn land, In the last two weeks we have

noticed a spike in farmland converting to cattle.

[democratisphere]

19. The only thing that should be rotting in the field is drumpf et al.

Hopefully the farmers that voted for drumpf got the message for 2020.

[lunasun]

30. Doubt it . Who ever runs will have emails or some manufactured bullshit they want to believe

so they don't have to vote dem

[Grokenstein]

21. "Georgia other states learning a hard lesson, immigrant workers kept us fed."

This won't be the first time Georgians were presented with this lesson.
Are they capable of learning it?

https://www.agprofessional.com/article/manual-farm-labor-too-hard-georgia-parolees

(2011) As laws against undocumented laborers are being tightened, farmers in the U.S. are being caught in the middle, forced to switch crops or sell their farms. And the latest state to put farmers in the squeeze is Georgia, which earlier this spring passed legislation copied from portions of the Arizona law restricting the hiring of undocumented laborers.

In a report filed by a Georgia television station, out of work probationers/parolees, from the state's prisons and court system, volunteered to pick cucumbers under a program that the Georgia governor dreamed up. But the first day didn't go too well as 19 probationers started the day and eight quit by noon.

“The invisible hand of the market has moved over 84,000 acres of production and over 22,000 farm jobs to Mexico and shut down over a million acres of US farm land due to lack of available labor. Because apparently, even the invisble hand doesn’t want to pick beans.” -- Stephen Colbert, 2010

[struggle4progress]

22. Deportee

The logic of the market ...

[BigBearJohn]

23. as long as he has his KFC, all is good /nt

[lunasun]

31. Maybe ...isn't a lot of chicken coming from china now

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/07/the-dark-side-of-trumps-much-hyped-china-trade-deal-it-could-literally-make-you-sick/

[Crash2Parties]

26. Best part? They'll vote for him again.

Why? Because he & the GOP promises them they can keep being racist / sexist / ableist / imposing their religion on others.

[lunasun]

27. First tweet ..in Trump country

[burrowowl]

35. We live in interesting times

Dump is really really screwing things up, BIGLY!

[Cha]

39. Getcher Buyers Remores to

the Polls in November, trumpers.

"Going out of business" doesn't sound like " so much winning".

[KY_EnviroGuy]

40. Everything Trump touches dies....including food crops.

...... ........

[JustAnotherGen]

45. Putin is laughing

That thing would like nothing more than to see food shortages in the US.

[scarletlib]

46. Listening to Sirius Progress 127 last summer and a guest on one of the programs pointed this out.

He stated that contrary to popular opinion this type of work, while it is manual labor, is actually highly skilled. He stated it takes knowledge and skills to know how to pick the fields quickly and efficiently without damaging the food you are harvesting.People coming in without this knowledge just can not do the job well enough to complete the harvest fully.

[Hortensis]

47. Georgia Republicans have been hurting our farmers bad

since 2012, even became famous among red states for it. In 2017, GA applied for and obtained more temporary labor visas than any other state. No doubt that'll lessen the hit, but not eliminate it. It is forcing farmers who can to upgrade their automation.

[calimary]

48. And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's all focus on Chinese jobs, too.

I think those two words will ensure that Dems take back the House. If only they'll USE THEM!!!