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Comment by vivekd | Hacker News Reader

>There is no shortage of labor, but a shortage of people willing to work at the wages on offer for the job.

I wonder if this is a self fulfilling cycle. I mean if migrant labor and automation were unavailable would we close all the farms and starve to death because labour costs are too high? Or would we increase farm wages and pay the higher food prices if that's the outcome.

It seems to me that the low wages on offer for farm work are a result of so many farms utilizing migrant labour and driving down wages in that sector. And if that option was unavailable we would probably have higher wages in the sector and more people developing expertise in farm work. It would likely also solve the problem of struggling rural economies.

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Before agricultural mechanisation, people used to spend 40% or more of their income on food. (the farm workers weren't really any better off then; they mostly got paid in lodging and farm produce instead of in cash)

We have to account for other improvements like better fertilizers, pesticides and the green revolution which would lower food prices independent of automation and migrant labour.

Also, the amount we spend on food isn't a 1:1 comparison because compared to the 1920s etc we buy much more 'processed food' (e.g. pre-peeled potatoes), which saves labor in the kitchen but is more expensive.

We would import a lot more of our food from countries with cheaper wages, unless the government said, no, you have to pay Americans to farm your food - then we'd be spending ~10% of GDP on food instead of ~5%, and still be getting lower quality food (since you can't grow many things in the US, or if you can it's ridiculously cost prohibitive and still will be low quality).

Additionally, we'd be pinching the labor market further in whatever areas those people left to work on farms instead.

It's not like we have 18% unemployment.

> since you can't grow many things in the US

That is a rather strange claim. The US is represented all up and down this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_producing_coun...

Sure, if you ignore the context of the claim, it doesn't make sense. The context is a US without cheap farm labor. Most of that list depends on cheap labor. Corn & wheat depend on massive machines run by skilled labor, but most of the rest depend on cheap labor.

US Ag needs to figure out how to go from low productivity to high productivity regardless. The world is rapidly aging, the total fertility rate is declining globally (Mexico's fertility rate is below that of the US', for example, and even they are running out of farm hands), and it is unlikely we outsource production of the necessary produce to India and Africa (the youthful, developing parts of the world that remain).

Certainly, farmers will complain they no longer get a cheap labor discount, this is a common refrain in any industry where their labor costs are no longer discounted due to structural demographics. The desire to pay humans the least possible for their labor is universal. Automate or die, those are your choices. If there is a need for subsidies, cost of capital assistance, whatever, we can do that; capital is a fiction, labor is real.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/23/mexico-farmw... | https://archive.today/8rmWI

As long as the US stays very rich and <4% of total global population, we will not run out of cheap foreign labor unless the rest of the world becomes very rich or die off en masse.

I don't believe we can rely on the idea of wealth and a never ending supply of cheap foreign lump of labor from anywhere in the world (it has not gone well for Europe, for example, and Sweden is paying migrants ~$34k to return to their country of origin). A majority of the US population supports deporting the existing undocumented immigrants in country, and limiting further immigration (do they understand this would stoke domestic service inflation? probably not). The wealth is immaterial if the electorate ties your hands politically. Demographic systems and political populism are running head long into capitalism. This story is a symptom of that.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/trump-biden-americans-illeg...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...

(I am once again asking to think in systems)

This is not "running out of cheap labor".

This is tying your hands behind your back and not accepting it.

There's a difference.

The difference is the discussion, the outcome is what matters (imho). If something is technically possible, but impossible to achieve (for whatever reason), it is not truly possible.

There is, to my knowledge, no country that has solved its labor supply challenges with mass immigration in a sustainable manner. I am happy to be proven wrong if my understanding and model is inaccurate.

> There is, to my knowledge, no country that has solved its labor supply challenges with mass immigration in a sustainable manner.

Qatar's population has been happy with their system for a while.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Qatar+migrant+abuse

That's not Qatar citizens complaining.

> Corn & wheat depend on massive machines run by skilled labor, but most of the rest depend on cheap labor.

I’ma say most nutrition is highly-mechanized (even if it may not make up the entire grocery bill if you buy lots of produce).

Highly mechanized would also include carrots, potatoes, onions, beans/pulses, oats, the flavourless tomatoes that make up 98% of the market, peanuts, lettuce & spinach.

Plenty of fruits I’d say are semi-mechanized: apples, pears and most citrus can use a machine that violently shakes the tree onto a net to catch the falling fruit.

You're totally right about the root veg (and I assume peanuts counts as a root veg in this context).

I meant to say cereal instead of wheat which would have caught oats and barley and some specialty cereals. Beans/pulses generally use the same machinery as cereals.

Definitely didn't mean to include tomatoes, lettuce & spinach, though. I know those are partially mechanized, but don't they still include a large unskilled labor component? Or am I out of date?

Farming mostly depends on having the right weather, growing conditions, and soil, which the US has in abundance.

> (since you can't grow many things in the US, or if you can it's ridiculously cost prohibitive and still will be low quality)

That's certainly a statement. It's ludicrous but it technically counts as a statement.

If you want to see the rest of this , take a look at what's happening in Russia now. They've sacrificed a ton of their low skilled labor, and cut off a lot of their migrant labor supply because of the terrorist attacks.

Wages are increasing, but the country is just about maxed in in productivity and looks to be at serious risk of collapsing.

Also, they're in serious trouble because even before the war they were not reproducing fast enough to replenish the labor supply, and immigration was supposed to account for that.

And, in general, the answer to your question is that more immigrant labor actually creates more and higher value jobs than are replaced by immigrant labor. Not just the services they need and want in exchange, but also the comparative advantage of non immigrant labor being able to focus on more valuable tasks.

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