• Blurry Bits@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    Been farming most my life - and f*ck those guys, let them fail.

    Industrial ag was always built on the premise of a slave labor force, and cannot sustain without it.

    These men, poison their land, strip their topsoils, blame everything else when crops fail and are first in line for some big-daddy socialism, whist decrying anything progressive or sustainable as hippy commie shit.

  • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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    5 days ago

    Maybe offer better compensation if you can’t find workers. No one wants to bust their ass all day for a shit wage. Unless they’re desperate.

  • MrSulu@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    “You reap what you sow” originates from farming wisdom. Just putting that out there.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      It’s weird to think the agricultural workers, who can’t vote and don’t have legal status and are often living on subsistence wages, deserve to be snatched off the street and fed into a concentration camp system in order to deprive a few agricultural wholesalers of their profit margins.

      I don’t see that as reaping what you sow at all. Fascism does not fall heaviest on the fascists.

      • MrSulu@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        Supporters of facism and their narcissism. Specifically, they use their privilige to moan about their own challenges, seemingly without much thought for those taken into concentration camps. They will only ever understand what hurts them.

  • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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    7 days ago

    I wouldn’t mind being a crop worker…provided I get at least minimum wage, breaks, healthcare, and reasonable quotas that ensure my wellbeing.

    crickets

    • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I’ve done a lot of seasonal field scale farm work, mostly in Europe - it can be extremely hard work. Couldn’t do it now, you have to be pretty fit.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        Which probably means that it would have to pay significantly above minimum wage. But, farmers were getting that labour for below minimum wage because they had the luck to be able to use workers who had no other options.

        • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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          6 days ago

          Wasn’t joking. Still, I would much prefer a living wage, like what we see from old-timey videos, where a single person can support a household and feel happy about their fiscals.

      • healthetank@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        Something like 80% of the prices you pay at a grocery store go to middle men. Farmer is only about 11%, IIRC.

        • huppakee@feddit.nl
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          7 days ago

          Might be even less depending on your produce, also keep in mind that farmers don’t have the same costs every year nor the same yields. A bad year can totally finish them in a bad economy.

          • hark@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            If only the parasitic middlemen were willing to reduce their ridiculous profit margins…

            • Tja@programming.dev
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              6 days ago

              Nowadays you can circumvent middlemen in a lot of cases (if you live in the center of a big metropolis probably not, but the you -need the middlemen). Farmers market, bulk orders or weekly markets are all decent options.

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          7 days ago

          So Walmart strategy, the government should subsidize my company so I can pocket the profit!

  • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    You mean that the job isn’t worth what you pay to do. They always pretend it isn’t the money. But of course its the money. If I’m going to work my ass off I expect better pay. Those immigrants were working their ass off for minimum wage and the farmers knew they were exploiting them.

    • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Literally everything in America is about how much money you have, but God forbid you ask an employer how much they’re going to pay you. Because at your job what really matters is FAMILY. It’s like, give me a fucking break.

    • GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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      6 days ago

      Any pretty much any physical job comes with copious risks to your body and health, yet these types of employers typically don’t pay for employee health plans nor do they pay enough for employees to comfortably afford their own. Why would anybody want to risk severing a finger, breaking a leg, getting bitten by a dangerous snake, a nail to the hand, etc if they don’t have to, especially knowing they can’t afford the treatment and it could lead to lifelong pain and disability?

        • Red_October@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          They mean that the workers are probably making less than Minimum Wage. There are exceptions to minimum wage for agricultural work. Minimum wage would have been an improvement.

          • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 days ago

            I think those exceptions are made (, in principle,) to to let farm workers get paid per unit. They pack a crate, they get $3. They can probably pack 10 crates an hour if they work their asses off.

            But I’m sure it is exploited egregiously.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    These red voting MAGA fucks were receiving grants to hire labor and they claim socialism is bad. I have zero sympathy for their problems and this is another classic FAFO situation.

    • Kickforce@lemmy.wtf
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      6 days ago

      Yes but if the farm work doesn’t get done you are looking at the next thing which will be the great American famine, which I expect somewhere this summer. If the US food production falters and importing food is made very expensive though tarriffs, Americans are not going to have enough food.

      It’s going to be like post revolutionary China in so many ways.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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        6 days ago

        AND ITS ALL BIDEN’S FAULT!

        /S, so you don’t think I’m one of those MAGA Nazis who actually, truly believe that.

        • Sidhean@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Its actually Obama’s fault, still. I really don’t get how, but he (Trump) said he(Obama)'d nuke Iran. The deep state strikes again now is the time for peace etc all caps

          /s :(

  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Well yeah. Turns out people who aren’t in fear of being deported won’t work for a fraction of minimum wage paid under the table.

    • blarghly@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I mean, it’s not so much the fear of deportation so much as the fact that lower wages go farther in Mexico. Most Mexicans who illegally immigrate do so simply because it makes economic sense. If the wages were so low that it didn’t make economic sense to them, then they would simply return to Mexico voluntarily.

      • TheodorAlforno@feddit.org
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        5 days ago

        Is it still Mexicans that come over or has it changed to people from even poorer countries like Venezuela or Honduras?

      • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        You kind of lose that economic advantage when you’re not living in Mexico anymore. Plus a lot of people that come here don’t have a life to go back to and likely sunk everything they had into getting here.

        • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          A lot of immigrants accept a low quality of life here so they can provide a better one back in their home country for their family.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      work for a fraction of minimum wage paid under the table.

      The real irony here is that a lot of immigrant workers were here on legitimate visas, in fact a huge portion of the “illegal” immigrants who the Trump administration has deported were here on legit visas that he wantonly revoked, and were therefore paying taxes on the shite wages they were being paid. Taxes that the U.S. is now no longer collecting. Anyone wanna take bets on the deficit increase under Trump?

  • WanderingThoughts@europe.pub
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    6 days ago

    They’ll start calling to use prison labor soon enough. Prisons are commercial facilities anyway and could use some cash. And there are more African American in prison proportionally so that’s a bonus for MAGA. Police will get their cut for putting more people in prison. That way the new racist slave labor gets established.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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      6 days ago

      That’s definitely the plan, and they’ll be using private, for-profit prison companies. One is a facility in Louisiana that has been closed twice due to abuse and torture of inmates, and has been reopened as an ICE facility they’ve been stashing the students arrested for pro-Palestinian protests there. The Columbia student who just got released was being held there.

      They are also building a 30,000 bed facility at Guantanamo Bay. The $250 million dollar contract has been awarded, and it’s underway. For context, the average maximum security prison hold 800-1200 people, with the largest in Angola, LA holding about 8400. So this new facility is nearly 4 times larger than the largest prison, which is already several times larger than average. Clearly, they intend to house MANY people there.

      It’s my belief that they will eventually take the position that if you can’t stay actively employed (due to AI, robotics, automation, discrimination, etc.) and require the help of the government to survive, then they will house and feed you in exchange for renting you out as slave labor. That way, they can say they solved the homeless problems, even though all they did was turn them into slaves.

      And the MAGA followers will go along with it, happy that the “parasites” are being forced to work. Besides, they’ve been hoping for slavery to return since 1865. The only legal slavery in America is prison labor, and like MAGA always does, they intend to exploit the shit out of that Amendment.

  • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Just buy a Musk-branded, doge- approved, exploding slave neck collar and perimeter fence kit. Keeps your child employees motivated, on-task, on-location.

  • pleasegoaway@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    This is part of the plan. Small farms will be run out of business and then bought for a low price and consolidated by mega farms.

    Big Agriculture wants this and lobbies for it to happen.

    • tauisgod@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      What a coincidence that the VP has a financial interest in independent farms going bankrupt.

          • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Snopes is appalling.

            So Vance owns a fraction of a company that owns a fraction of a company that allows fractional ownership of farmland. They can only sell to accredited investors so the headline is false but snopes don’t have the balls to admit it.

            I’m not saying he has no interest in making farmland cheap, but Tarrif insider knowledge is multiple times more profitable than trying to influence farmland prices through labor costs.

            • tauisgod@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              Something something Hilary Clinton and uranium. Funny how that was a big issue until it went through anyway and wasn’t. It’s almost as if these crooks aren’t serious

  • fodor@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    So … Pay the Americans more. That is why they are leaving, my farming friends. It really is that simple.

    • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Yup. I worked a terribly hazardous job that will work you to death at asphalt plants for a couple of years and absolutely only did it for six figure pay in California. Worst people I have ever worked around. Most were dumber than the rocks in aggregate but they always show up, are great at driving in circles, and gossiping far worse than a group of little girls.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    7 days ago

    What’s that? Southern states running on cheap labour can’t cope with the loss of that labour? Where have we heard that before?

    Fool me once and all that, but they actually voted for it this time round…

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      It’s not just Southerners who are the bad guys here. A huge amount of liberals are ecstatic to exploit cheap migrant labor as well.

      • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        There are people who literally shovel congealed fat out of sewers, that’s definitely a shit job.

        They get paid a ridiculous amount though.

    • Zexks@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      No this can only be spoken by those in profound ignorance or utter stupidity. There are bad jobs. Go look up sewage cleaner in India. No amount of money is worth that. There will always be shit jobs.

      • Donkter@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Kind of a bad argument. “Look up sewage cleaner in India” implies that there are sewage cleaners elsewhere with better jobs. Making the problem with being a sewage cleaner in India a bad condition.

        Ironically I agree with you. Some jobs are way better than others, making some jobs bad and some good. A garbage man will always be a worse job than an ice cream taste tester barring absurd caveats. it’s just funny to me that your argument explicitly implies a problem with job conditions.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Go look up sewage cleaner in India. No amount of money is worth that.

        That’s just untrue. There is definitely some amount of money worth it.

        • Liberal_Ghost@lemmy.zip
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          6 days ago

          For sure. If I got paid a million dollars a week I would do it for a couple weeks to then not have to work again the rest of my life lol. But seriously, there are lots of jobs that don’t pay what they should for how crappy the work is

  • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    They promised JJ 100,000 a year to hire illegals and whatever other farm subsidies AND his whole family is on Medicaid. Is he literally that bad at living off farming, rather than welfare, or is he also committing fraud?

    Why is a welfare queen (by the original definition) voting Republican

    • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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      6 days ago

      Around the 1990’s it became okay to be greedy in America, and okay to complain about what you don’t have. Empathy in the US has fallen off considerably over the years.

      As to how they’re on medicaid, farms almost always miraculously have a loss of a few hundred dollars each year, so farmers tend to qualify. When you’re used to quietly having healthcare paid for by the government, you can vote for the hate party until that changes. Every republican knows they’re not the problem, much as no raindrop blames itself for a flood.

      The phrase “The Surely Exception” applies here as it does to abortion, they were sure any cuts would not affect them. One benefit of the buffoonery of trump is they are not smart enough to protect their voters.