Ex-farm worker here.
We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing.
Not true AT ALL.
Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.
The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.
At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.
I know "650 lbs an hour" sounds crazy, because it kinda is.
But that also just means filling one of these buckets every ~3 minutes. That's doable for the average healthy adult.
(Doing it 10hrs/day for weeks in a row is the hard part.)
The average orange picker pulls 876 lbs/hour.
At $20/hr, that would cost 2 cents per pound for labor.
Here's the source I'm using for lbs/hr btw:
https://swfrec.ifas.ufl.edu/docs/pdf/economics/extension/econ_labor_pr.pdf
A *slow* strawberry picker can get 20lbs/hr. If they make $20/hr, that's only $0.75 for a pint basket.
Sure, that's a noticeable price difference. And it's still nowhere near "doubling or tripling" the cost of food, as I've seen people claim repeatedly.
@Superilla @sarahtaber
Though some of us shopping at farmers markets return them to the farmers, who reuse them. And appreciate our actions - both from a cost and environmental perspective.
Of course, supermarkets can't do this - I'm lucky, I don't need to use supermarkets, so I can participate in the reuse cycle.
(I have access to year round farmers markets, and that's not the case in many regions)
Sarah Taber
Superilla
Paul Wermer, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0