Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodfodrasz | Hacker News Reader

They could exist that way in the past, and they could feed the country, and even provide a surplus. What has changed in the laws of nature, that it is no longer viable, to produce food without importing slave workforce? I thought the USA had a civil war to end the kind of thinking you are representing.

Maybe the age of cheap food (a lot of which is thrown to the waste) ends, but it has never existed in many parts of the world.

View on HN

It is my understanding that the US farming sector has always relied on continued access to large amounts of underpaid or slave labour.

Not really. The current situation is tail wagging the dog scenario. Between the politics of water in the west and decades of the Feds ignoring migrant workers, farms are fully corporate.

When you buy a container of strawberries in the market today, you're contributing to a global supply chain where companies own farms all over the Western Hemisphere. Operating companies like that which are like little command economies is expensive, and you as consumer don't want to pay for the layers of administration and attorneys needed.

So the workers pay.

> I thought the USA had a civil war to end the kind of thinking you are representing

I think you're over-reading the phrase "How do you reach this conclusion?". The author didn't suggest that it was necessary, only that they were interested in seeing your reasoning. The world is a complicated place, so it can be reasonable to assume a default position that either thing is possible.

They were not competing with food from abroad at that time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com