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 🙃
Ag 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.
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 🤦🏽♀️
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