Sarah TaberSo. I've been on field manual labor crews where most of my coworkers were convicts.
I've also worked with a lot of tech companies on automating farms.
And this press conference is incredible. Rollins hasn't the foggiest clue what she's on about.
I did a short video on this. For anyone who might need to hear, like, *logistical* reasons for why drafting people into farm work is bad.
Thread format to follow shortly.
Every farm job that CAN be automated, already is. Let's start there.
She thinks... nobody's ever tried to automate picking fruit? Really?
And then we'll talk about the "tehe we'll just make the Medicaid people work the farms" part.
Produce that's hard, OR destined for processing, can be picked by machine.
So carrots, nuts, sour cherries for pie filling, berries & grapes that will be dried, tomatoes for sauce- those are picked by machine already.
Picking Sour Cherries with Modern Machinery
But berries, fruit, tomatoes, etc that are eaten fresh can't be automated w current technology.
I know because I worked for a lot of the startups that tried!
There's no way to pick fast enough by machine to be commercially viable, without bruising so they rot before they get to the store.
Having a USDA Secretary who doesn't know or care about any of this is wild!
Now let's talk this whole "We'll just have the Medicaid people pick the crops!" thing.
And let's just ignore the whole "forced labor is morally bad" issue. Let's focus strictly on logistics.
A thing that kept happening to me, as a white American who worked manual labor field jobs (we are in fact out here, sorry)
is finding out I was the only fool on the crew who was there voluntarily & getting paid. Everyone else was convicts with a sentence.
So they were completely new to farm labor & didn't really want to be there. Part of the job is I was supposed to "mentor" them.
News flash: inexperienced people who don't want to be there DON'T DO GOOD WORK. Even if they want to, they don't know how.
Farmers would hire these crews bc they "didn't want to hire migrants" but also "didn't want to pay real wages."
And they were ALWAYS disappointed w the results. Slow. Sloppy. Kept breaking stuff bc they were clumsy.
No real cost savings compared to just hiring real workers.
This one Florida crew I was on had a rotating cast of 19yo weed & Xbox kids who'd been caught on minor drug charges.
They were harmless. And also, clumsy af. Big kids who had no idea where their feet were. They kept stepping on the blueberry transplants we'd just planted.
Another crew was a bunch of minors who were working as "community service" for juvie.
They all smoked, bc juvie. Tobacco is packed with plant viruses that are super contagious; can be spread just by touch. So "don't smoke in the fields" is a key farm rule.
Not only did the juvie crew not know or care. The FOREMEN didn't know or care. That's how janky this outfit was.
Hope those fields turned out ok 🙃
LoaferAg is a real job.
It takes real skills, knowledge, & people who gaf about what they're doing.
Stop treating agriculture like society's dumping ground.
Diane(Is this where we go watch some @ufwupdates videos of some skilled ag workers ripping through harvesting fields?)
David@alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates
I think we just watch videos of ice raids in crop fields until mobile bands of rebels make chains of linked arms around entire picking operations
Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐@alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates The part of this that you are missing is that there is no such thing as "able-bodied people on Medicaid" who aren't employed.
That's federal law, since the Clinton Administration, over 30 years ago. ABAWDs (able-bodied adults aged 18-64 without dependents) do *not* qualify for Medicaid, at all, unless they are employed, period.
Only children, disabled people, people with dependents who are full-time caregivers, and the elderly get a free pass.
@alienghic This doesn't even begin to address the fact that even if these putative 34 million people existed, most of them almost certainly do not exist in places where they can be employed as farm labor, because they are mostly not in locations that are suitable for modern agriculture.
We can dispense with the notion that this fascist regime is suddenly going to start providing public housing in farming communities for farm laborers.
Everything she's saying is an obviously blatant lie.
Warren Currie 🦠🦐@gcvsa @alienghic to me this clearly states that the administration wants to gather up people on Medicaid into on-site forced work camps (not that would be able to do this physically taxing and skilled work). Sounds familiar somehow...
Dwight Williams (💉 x9)+😷🇨🇦
John Robinson
GhostOnTheHalfShell@DrPlanktonguy @gcvsa @alienghic
Oh, please call them health camps like RFK jr talks of, where people will work off their deficiencies of depression and other forms of mental illness or gender dysphoria.
Of course, this has nothing to do with eugenicist ideas
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @DrPlanktonguy @gcvsa
Ah yes depression is treason. I will not forgot to drink my Bouncy Bubble Beverage ration Mr happiness officer.
Star12Mt@gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates Thank you! I did say this in another thread about this topic. My stepbrother is 50+ years old, has cerebral palsy, can't speak well and is blind. Yes his care requires Medicaid. But sure they can have him out there harvesting crops 🙄
@Star12Mt @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates I know all this, because I have been an ABAWD on Medicaid, and the restrictions only get lifted under particular economic downturn conditions, and even then, only when the Governor of a state requests the waiver, which they don't always do.
ABAWDs do not get public assistance without employment. Period.
Most recently, waivers were granted during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but all those have since expired.
@Star12Mt Furthermore, the *only* forms of public assistance for which ABAWDs can qualify *at all* are:
Medicaid
SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, "food stamps")
and LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, for heating fuel costs)
except that in 12 states only, ABAWDs can receive General Assistance (cash welfare payments, and it's not a lot).
No one is getting rich, fat, and lazy on welfare in the US. The benefits provided aren't even subsistence level.
Jonathan
secretsloth@gcvsa I remember being in my teens and learning someone I knew was on Medicaid, disability, and also worked odd jobs (which they very bluntly told me was less pay than a normal job, but a normal job would report their pay and then they would lose their benefits, and they needed medicaid). I was amazed, because I didn't realize how little disability paid - that people are basically forced to game the system just to make rent, basically. Even back then, $300/mo total wasn't enough.
thepoliticalcat@Star12Mt @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates I'm pretty damn disabled and in almost CONSTANT pain, and I'm not disabled enough to be on Medicaid! TRUST that it is damn difficult to get on it! I just got tired of appealing and said to the spouse, I have savings, I can pay the cost. People who don't have any money at all need this a damn sight more than I do. Sending best wishes for your stepbrother, may he remain safe from these vicious vultures.
@thepoliticalcat @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates i'm so sorry about the pain, I really empathize with that. We've been lucky enough to save a fair amount, but for how long? And now we have two parents diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This country is going to have to come to a big healthcare reckoning
@Star12Mt @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates Times like these, I'm really grateful our parents are gone. I could never manage this with two sets of aging parents in frail health.
@thepoliticalcat @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates yes unfortunately I agree. At least two of them don't understand what's happening. But watching my mother watch the country turn into this has been heartbreaking
prom™️@sarahtaber There are many capitalist wank-heads in German ag, and some far-right groups. But the opposite also exists.
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦@sarahtaber thank you for this thread!
Yet another example that there is no such thing as "unskilled labor" in general.
Su_GYes, thank you for this thread & for kicking off such a great discussion on the basics of what it takes to do agricultural work well. 🙂
Points to a wider issue: complete divorce & chasm between real world & wherever it is Thump & his billionaire backers live. Similar to the growing gap between real value (things in the real world) & share market 'value'. 😐
Rejin@sarahtaber A few years ago there was a story about vineyard owners who couldn't find workers, because there was no affordable housing near the fields and people in nearby cities couldn't afford cars to commute to the vinyards on the wages offered.
But yeah, people just don't want to work these days 🤦🏽♀️
But yeah, people just don't want to work these days 🤦🏽♀️
Steve Hersey@rejinl @sarahtaber
This week I heard a piece on our local NPR station where a potato farmer was interviewed; he said he can't get local workers at $17/hr.
Of course, that's just a seasonal job doing heavy physical labor outdoors in the heat, and the housing and transportation issues are real barriers. And I think his is a small farm, so not necessarily representative of the big ag operations.
Indeed, "people don't want to work" doesn't seem like a satisfactory explanation.
@n1xnx @sarahtaber There are so many examples like this. If they do follow through and deport lots of skilled farm workers, the consequences will be widespread.
su_liam@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber No billionaires are going to starve. Thus, the elites don’t give a single god damn about it.
MWT@rejinl @n1xnx @sarahtaber they tried this already about 15 years ago in GA and AL. Millions of dollars worth of crops rotted in the fields. You'd think that this is still within living memory but I guess not everyone has long term memory.
sidereal@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber Folks around here pay $35/hr for the exact same job, and still can’t get enough workers. No wonder he can’t find people.
@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber Yup. I won’t do it, I live in the city and the reverse commute would be crazy.
I’ve seen other farmers interviewed where they hired Americans. Even where you might consider the wage is pretty decent like in the $20 range. Harvesting crops, particularly fruit is a skilled occupation, as noted in the original post for this thread.
It’s so tempting to make government officials actually try the kind of work they dismiss as unskilled
rk: it’s hyphen-minus actuallyI can’t remember who said it but “no one who works in Aspen can afford to live in Aspen.”
(Aspen, Colorado is home to many famous and expensive ski resorts, for those who might not know.)
@rk @sarahtaber And I think there was a town in California that had to build special housing for their teachers. But what a terrible position to be in, locked into a job or lose your home.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@rejinl @rk @sarahtaber We once tried to define "key worker" so that we could use the definition in housing policy.
We decided that "key worker" was someone who couldn't afford to buy the house they were living in.
We excluded the 20% who were living in social housing. A further 20% *could* afford to buy the house they were living in at today's prices.
Leaving 60% of the population who would meet that definition of "key worker", which was clearly not useful for policy development. So we gave up trying to concoct a useful definition.
Jestbill@rejinl Yearly stories on the news in Colorado. Tourist towns in the mountains have empty, expensive, 'second' homes but nowhere for a teacher to live.
lonely extrovert
A Flock of Beagles
Kudra 
@rejinl @burnitdown @rk @sarahtaber this is commonly what they do with ag workers in Australia, often they are charged exorbitant rates for very overcrowded and often illegal accommodation.
Ben Carver@rejinl @sarahtaber In Italy, it's really noticeable how many immigrant labourers opt for e-bikes or e-scooters as a practical solution to a transportation problem: compatible with local bus and train services, cheaper than a car, no/minimal registration and documentation requirements. It's still, to me, quite a sight, these guys ghosting along in the deep countryside
JD Roy@rejinl @sarahtaber I picked corn in the summer time as a teen. It was a hard, hot, surprisingly itchy job, and it only paid about $5 an hour back then. I hear they pay $10.60 now. For "hard working honest" people, farmers can't seem to wrap their head around workers needing more than poverty wages.
Sorry, not all of us were gifted 2,000 acres, a few houses and $5m worth of equipment by daddy. Some of us actually work for our money.
@rejinl @sarahtaber We turned a bunch of the best near-urban farmland in the world into suburbs, kicked the farms out so far that few people can commute there, and now complain that there aren’t enough farmworkers.
A planned economy would have easily avoided this. The free market has now rendered a lot of the best farmland in the world unusable for growing crops, to build housing, and also nobody likes living in suburbs and we still have a housing crisis.
@sidereal @sarahtaber See also: why is so much of our produce grown as far away as California, Mexico, and Central America? 🤔
You need to understand something. Suburbia is a planned economy.
Suburbia was designed to separate housing, work and retail two separate areas bound together by very expensive transportation system. It was the concept of specializing the functions of a community, just as businessman, specialized the function of jobs and architect and city planners became influenced by those ideas.
..
But there is more to that than just that statement. The United States faced a huge social problem at the end of World War II, where we had the insanely powerful industrial base crafted for the demands of war, and millions of working men returning back into the economy when the foundation for wartime economy has ceased to exist.
Businessman and politicians were terrified of the consequences of a massive recession facing returning seasoned war veterans
Therefore, they instituted the number of programs of which are modern mortgage structure is part to finance the transition from a war time to a peace time economy, transforming all that industrial capacity to peace time use.
The other half of that equation was the institution of suburban land use. The home mortgage industry financed suburbia, and finance the transition of the wartime economy to a peace time one.
But it’s all a bubble
@rejinl @sarahtaber And it’s not like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Duh Donald are in any hurry to go out and work the fields.
samiamsamfarmers have tried to offer $20 per hour to get 'muricans to harvest
they mostly don't last a full day
so.....let's pay our migrant workers $20 per hour because they know what they are doing, they can do the work and they work really fucking hard
Nicole ParsonsSo much of what Republican billionaires fund is leading to a death spiral of their own wealth
Cars so expensive, no one can afford to go to work
Housing markets so expensive, no one can afford to live where employment is available
Funded attacks on public transit, everyone is stuck in traffic
Places so polluted, everyone has cancer & medical debt
Young people so endebted, they can't afford families or to buy consumer goods
Quiet quitting because of wage suppression
excited for the mastodon rise@sarahtaber I'd argue it's an incredibly hard and impressive job given the breadth and depth of knowledge to do it well ON TOP of the hard physical labor.
pandabutter@sarahtaber Don't forget that "wellness farms" are also RFK's plan to deal with mental illness and neurodiversity.
Again, the "forced labor" aspect aside - the privilege required to treat agriculture as a fun vacation is staggering. Not unprecedented, though, and we need to remember that... because we all know what happened to Marie-Antoinette.
jgys@sarahtaber IME growing up on produce farm in the Midwest, farm labor is physically demanding work, too: always bending over and squatting, lifting and carrying, reaching through and beneath plants… and on top of all that, one’s body is already working hard just to thermoregulate in the hot sun.
It is understatement to say that these are not ideal working conditions for people who rely on Medicaid coverage to get treatment for any number of chronic illnesses and/or physical disabilities.
Roy -- the dull oneIt would also be an understatement to say that the privileged, ignorant, office-dwelling narcissists who produce elitist nonsense like this are dimwits.
Geeden_Of_Arden@jgys That's the bullseye right there. This cohort she aims to enlist is already physically vulnerable. These people are fiends. They think they're gods who can fix what's wrong with a policy here or a policy there. They are in fact monsters, who have accumulated influence and use it only for their own benefit. Monsters. @sarahtaber
brood of byrdes@sarahtaber i remember michael bloomberg years ago when he was running saying something like "well just stick the seeds in the ground" speaking about an ag program -- and it was clear he had no idea, no clue, where and how the food he ate came from. mind boggling.
The WookieAs a kid that grew up on a farm this needs to be said louder. AG labor not only takes real skills and knowledge but also a dedication to work long hours when the weather is right for planting/harvesting and the endurance to do it. It also can be a job with zero days off. Ask the average dairy farmer what the weekend or a vacation is and they'll look at you cross-eyed.
If we want a 100% US AG Workforce than let's create a path to citizenship for the people that want to do the work. The immigrant harvesting the fields or working a meat packing plant is not a threat to our nation but not having them is.
And while we're at it let's break up the big AG monopolies so that small family farms and small AG businesses can compete.