Artificially Interpreted

[The Grand Nudger]

It's complicated. If we think about rich farmers in a way that means anything across crops and states they're the least likely to employ hand labor. They're in grain and cattle, they had the funds to mechanize. Fresh fruit, fresh veg, and cotton are your big hand picks but the farms tend to be smaller and only a portion of each in the respective industries is hand picked. I won't have totally up to date numbers here ...and they get smaller on the hand pick side every year through mechanization and consolidation...but it's something like 50% for fruits and 25% for veg and cotton. The highest concentration of hand pick is the stuff at your local farmers market, which isn't the segment of the industry that has tons of political pull to get generous labor carveouts nor are the operators particularly wealthy by ag or any other standard. There are more immigrants in processing and retail than production...and we see how that plays out if we recall the captive labor forces during the pandemic. Basically, there are two very distinct types of ag in the us right now and the difference is apparent all the way down to the genetic level. With one type working on amenability to mechanization and transport, and the other on flavor and presentation.

In sum, less fresh food, more processed food, all of it at higher cost. The idea that white people won't do the work is a myth sold by racist fucks who don't want to pay anyone for the work. If a migrant can get any other job here they'll pick that job over picking cotton too. If whitey is forced to work for substandard wages or starve..well..we see that he picks substandard wages. Less than a 5th of farm labor is done by migrants.