dagblog - Comments for "Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All"

Alabama is shaping up to be a

artappraiser — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:57:23 +0000

In reply to Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All

Alabama is shaping up to be a test case on this issue. So far, it's looking like what was in the Times article was not fishy at all:

Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs

By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Business Week, November 9, 2011

In the wake of an immigrant exodus, Alabama has jobs. Trouble is, Americans don't want them

The article starts out talking about catfish cleaning work, but it is mostly about farm labor and farmers screaming bloody murder about the new Alabama law.

I found these grapsh in it particularly interesting:

....The notion of jobs in fields and food plants as “immigrant work” is relatively new. As late as the 1940s, most farm labor in Alabama and elsewhere was done by Americans. During World War II the U.S. signed an agreement with Mexico to import temporary workers to ease labor shortages. Four and a half million Mexican guest workers crossed the border. At first most went to farms and orchards in California; by the program’s completion in 1964 they were working in almost every state. Many braceros—the term translates to “strong-arm,” as in someone who works with his arms—were granted green cards, became permanent residents, and continued to work in agriculture. Native-born Americans never returned to the fields. “Agricultural labor is basically 100 percent an immigrant job category,” says Princeton University sociologist Doug Massey, who studies population migration. “Once an occupational category becomes dominated by immigrants, it becomes very difficult to erase the stigma.”

Massey says Americans didn’t turn away from the work merely because it was hard or because of the pay but because they had come to think of it as beneath them. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the job itself,” he says. In other countries, citizens refuse to take jobs that Americans compete for. In Europe, Massey says, “auto manufacturing is an immigrant job category. Whereas in the States, it’s a native category.”

In Alabama, the transition to immigrant labor happened slowly....

Found this after seeing

EmmaZahn — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:07:13 +0000

In reply to I wonder what the break-even

Found this after seeing another couple of blog posts about how illegals are so much better than (now) indigenous people at harvesting corn. Searches always work better if one knows the jargon, no?

Growing fresh sweet market corn

This sounds more like what the farmer in the NYT article was growing instead of grain corn. There is a sample budget included. Made me wonder if I should consider growing corn here on my wee bit of land but I think I prefer the black walnut trees even if they grow much, much slower.

Despite any fishy odor coming

artappraiser — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:17:03 +0000

In reply to Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All

Despite any fishy odor coming from the article (I myself didn't like that Johnson did not follow up with more examples or flesh the "Kafka" thing out too much,) it sure did spark an interesting little discussion so far, and one pleasantly free of the agitprop I expected. Thanks all.

Meta on that (warning, warning) :

on the lack of the fleshiness of the article, I was thinking on that recently. I suspect as times get tougher for newspapers, more and more we probably should get used to not expecting anything remotely near Pulitzer quality from the salaried reporters, day in, day out, especially on non-popular topics. They probably have a choice of putting a few hours in on an assignment or topic or just not covering it at all. Many have probably have resigned themselves to this being the foreseeable future: plopping a quick take on a story out there so that all the amateurs working for free on the internet will write on and develop the topic. I did get that impression reading this the other day, "Pulitzer Winners Go Behind the Scenes of Their Stories, Reaching for the high-hanging fruit," in Columbia Journalism Review where the one reporter is quoted at the end:

Her advice for getting the chance to take on a story this big? “Don’t ask for three years up front,” she said with a laugh.

As I think about this I see a

Oxy Mora — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:23:11 +0000

In reply to I wonder what the break-even

As I think about this I see a lot of factors at work, my idea being raised beds, cart transportation down the rows. Really important is how the arrangement itself increases the yield. For example, insect control, drip watering, less spoilage, better quality. And local distribution. A lot of super market vegetables and fruit are simply tasteless and not ripened properly. Good produce is worth more, I think. I'm thinking of setting this up for wheel chair bound vets and others.

I wondered the same thing

EmmaZahn — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:21:14 +0000

In reply to I wonder what the break-even

I wondered the same thing after reading the article yesterday so I did some googling. Did not find a quick, easy answer but did find some interesting information. Commercial corn is grown at > 20,000 plants per acre yielding 1-2 ears per plant netting to ~150 bushels and corn futures are currently ~$5-6 per bushel. An acre is not very big but even thinking about harvesting that much by hand makes me tired. :D

A few of the interesting links I found:

Corn field math

UGA Cooperative Extension Service

Wessel's Living History Farm

Thanks for posting, Artsy.

Oxy Mora — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:17:11 +0000

In reply to Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All

Thanks for posting, Artsy. Pretty interesting stuff.

I was commenting to Donal the other day that I had thought of designing a lifted bed arrangement where pickers rolled down on a cart type thing in between the rows. I saw an article about this some time ago.

A neighbor nearby just got a new tractor and is a great handy guy and a superb gardner--also has some great family recipes from old German stock. I have about a hundred ideas a day on stuff like this, but maybe this one just materialized.

Some smaller farmers share

Verified Atheist — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:46:31 +0000

In reply to I wonder what the break-even

Some smaller farmers share harvesters (my grandfather did), although that doesn't help with the diesel fuel part of the equation. My grandfather also always hired locally, albeit it was usually only one or two people. My grandparents' farm was low cost, low profit, but it worked for them, and they died debt-free.

I wonder what the break-even

Donal — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:41:54 +0000

In reply to That looks like a lovely farm

I wonder what the break-even acreage is for picking by machine rather than hand? For one thing, harvesters are expensive; for another, diesel fuel is getting more and more expensive.

That looks like a lovely farm

EmmaZahn — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:37:32 +0000

In reply to Polyface farms seems to make

That looks like a lovely farm but it is not really comparable to the one in the NYT article. For one thing, they are primarily farming animals, not grain nor vegetables. Anyway, they do seem to use some pretty fancy equipment.

Polyface farms seems to make

Verified Atheist — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:00:25 +0000

In reply to There is something fishy

Polyface farms seems to make it work, even without fancy equipment.