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mastodon - Link to source

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.

reshared this

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

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.

wweek.com/news/2016/06/29/brea…

Pic of a pint basket of strawberries on a kitchen counter.

Breaking From Custom, One Small Oregon Farm Pays Strawberry Pickers by the Hour

Unlike a lot of fruits and even other berries, strawberries must be handpicked, which makes labor one of the biggest costs of doing business for farmers. Javier Lara, 43, is throwing a wrench into the uneasy accord between growers and labor.
Willamette Week
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

We even have a real-life experiment that proves paying farm workers a fair wage can be done. And prices went up so little, PEOPLE DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE.

In 2005, tomato pickers in FL struck a deal with Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, KFC, & others) to guarantee higher wages.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalitio…


other organization in Immokalee, United States

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)

Indigenous Commie reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

The deal?

Yum! Brands would only by from farms that had signed on to a fair food program with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. They'd pay extra for those tomatoes, and the extra $ would be passed through directly to tomato pickers as a raise.

This deal nearly doubled tomato pickers' wages.

And guess how much this big, ground-shaking deal raised the price of tomatoes?

ONE PENNY PER POUND.

That's it.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

CIW has been incredibly successful at showing exactly how we can afford to pay farm workers a fair wage.

And certain Florida farm & food interests really, really haven't liked that. It's legitimately fueled MAGA as a political force in Florida.

Surely it's a total coincidence that Trump's first large-scale immigrant detention facility is in Florida. In easy commuting distance of the tomato fields around Immokalee

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

Farms usually blame "large corporations" for not paying them properly, so they're "forced" to pay poor wages.

That's why CIW made these bargains directly with the large corps. To stop farms from passing the buck and playing "Aw shucks, I'd love to pay fair wages but I can't afford to."

And you know what? It took time to get the big food corps to the table. But most of them ultimately signed on. In the end, they were a lot more amenable to proper farm wages than most of the farms.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

Anyway. When you see people hyperventilating that "B-b-but paying farm workers more would make food unaffordable!" please correct them up for me.

They might mean well? They might be trying to make a point about how much we owe the humble farm worker?

But that kind of talk is exactly how you get people believing "Gosh shucks golly. I guess we just need slavery to live."

Cut it out already.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah Taber

Ever heard someone say "We SHOULD pay farm workers more! But then oranges will cost $3 each?"

Here's the debunk in video format- with additional info that didn't make it into the thread.

Send to anyone who'd find it useful!

youtube.com/watch?v=mfHUnK81nv…

Thumbnail for the video. Left 2/3 is "DOES paying farm workers more, raise food costs?" in black print on light teal background. Right 1/3 is the creator looking into camera with an "I am very curious" face.

Debunking Myths On Farmworker Pay

Source for farm worker "lbs per hour picked" stats:https://swfrec.ifas.ufl.edu/docs/pdf/economics/extension/econ_labor_pr.pdfFarm Finance 101!https://www.you...
YouTube
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Kevin Davy

In Britain, when I was younger, you could still work the fields for cash in hand. Do a few hours before school, a morning, a day here and there and it was a good way of earning beer money. To this day, I am still in awe of the speed of the full-time workers. I still suspect that the only thing that could move through a crop faster than them, would be a plague of locusts. I will never take agricultural workers for granted.
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Falling forward 🍉

We already have slavery. No one cares. Unfortunately.

Fast-food chains use Alabama prison inmates as slave labor ...

al.com/news/2023/12/fast-food-…
/1


Fast-food chains use Alabama prison inmates as slave labor, lawsuit alleges

The number of prisoners granted parole has plummeted, and prison officials force many of those inmates to work off site in a scheme that generates $450 million a year for the state, the lawsuit said.
Amy Yurkanin | ayurkanin@al.com (al)
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Sarah Taber

glitchsoc - Link to source

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊

Every time I see someone saying that basic human rights and reasonable pay would raise the price of food beyond affordability, I want to spit rivets.

Hon, an extra cent a pound isn't what's made your burger cost 2-3 times what it did twenty years ago, it's the fact that corporations will raise the price of their goods to the very limit of affordability and then keep ratcheting it, click-by-click, at every opportunity, while refusing to provide their workers a fraction of what they're worth.

More slave labour isn't going to make your food cheaper. Making sure that the ultracapitalists pay in spades for their inhumanity, now that might just do the trick.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Alexander The 1st

To add to this - the Chocolate industry has a similar reckoning worldwide with chocolate farming - but some companies, after being dragged on it, realized that maybe they could just, you know, take steps to ethically source their chocolate [ reeveconsulting.com/2024/02/14… ].

Any extra increase in wages would likely be offset by a decrease in P.R. and marketing to make people want to knowingly buy child labour-sourced chocolate.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

EinsPossum, Hass-Ära

People need to realise that farmers arent generally "the good guys" or "the humble small business" or whatever they project onto them from the books they read and movies they watch. Sure some might be, some might try to be fair to their employees.

Where i am from, farmer protests are *extremely* far-right and routinely use Nazi iconography (that is in Germany). And i've read similarly from other places. And they do inhumane exploitation.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Su_G

The Florida tomato heiress sounds like a nasty pasty; mean to fund the 6 Jan insurrection & entitled as all hell but surely we’re wrong to even think this:

“Surely it's a total coincidence that Trump's first large-scale immigrant detention facility is in Florida. In easy commuting distance of the tomato fields around Immokalee” 😐

[That was a comment dripping with sarcasm for those who don’t do irony or humour…]

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Karl Auerbach

I live in an agricultural county.

Almost every day I see people working hard in the fields.

And every time I think: Perhaps this generation of workers won't experience the full American Dream, but among their children and grandchildren will be our nation's future Curies and Mozarts, future Twains and Spielbergs - a child of one of those workers may find a cure for cancer.

I am more than happy to pay extra $$ so that these people have a better chance of growing into (and enriching) our American culture and life, just as my great grandparents and grandparents did.

I also support UBI, free healthcare, and free education for all who are here (not just citizens.)

Many of our religions - including Islam, Christianity, Judaism - all teach us to care for the foreigner and stranger.

(I would add that we need to pull back on our national worship of advanced university degrees and note that often those who work with their hands are as skilled as a scientist with a PhD.)

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Su_G

Thank you so much Sarah! 🙂 for another incredibly educational, fact- & story-filled read on modern agricultural practices and workers (& those who belittle them & treat them unfairly & now meanly 😐 )

Thanks too for the link to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW): so inspirational! Hard to pick a snippet to share, they’re active in so many areas:

“Starting in 1993 from a foundation of farmworker community organizing in Immokalee, Florida, the CIW is best known today for its Fair Food Program (FFP), launched in 2011. The FFP harnesses the purchasing power of over a dozen retail food brands, from Taco Bell to Walmart, to compel compliance with a human rights-based code of conduct on participating farms. The Program was born in the Florida tomato industry and has spread to ten US states and Chile, including expansion into the cut flower industry and multiple additional crops, and incipient expansion efforts in South Africa and Mexico through the support of the US Department of Labor.[1] A new channel for co-ops and smaller independent grocery stores to support the Program is expanding through the FFP Sponsor Program.

“The FFP also gave rise to the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model (WSR), which has been successfully replicated in the apparel industry in Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Accord (now the International Accord), in Lesotho through the Lesotho Agreements,[2] and in the dairy industry in the state of Vermont through the Milk with Dignity Program. The CIW provides technical assistance to organizations that are interested in adopting the WSR model through an umbrella organization, the WSR-Network.”

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalit…


other organization in Immokalee, United States

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Su_G

Ha ha ha! Very good point: “Not to be flippant but evolution did see to it that we're really good at getting food off of trees & bushes. We have a rather meaningful several-million-year head start over the robots here.” :-😁

Why don’t we value & celebrate these amazing skills (instead of bankers & financiers who you might say are doing badly, stuff that computers do better… nonAI-infested computers I mean… talking about actual maths & stuff like that here). 😐

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

rastilin

I mean, ultimately we need to pay for people's time. If the real actual cost of paying everyone properly doubles the costs of food, then we just need to get used to paying double.

Because the alternative is just saying our society can only work if we embrace "neo slavery". It's not reasonable to base society's food production on just not properly paying for people's time.

But yeah, after looking at the actual numbers, it wouldn't get close to doubling costs.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Justin Derrick

The same concept applied to fast food workers infuriates me as well...

"If fast food workers get $25/hour, a burger and fries will cost $30!"

Uh... Only if they make one burger an hour. Restaurant workers in Europe make substantially more, and meals are still affordable.

Nevermind the fact that they keep minimum wage painfully low, but keep jacking up the prices anyway.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Cait the Proud Trans Woman

Y'all...in the US and Canada, you need to read the thread i'm replying to. If you're interested in just outcomes...read this thread. If you consume food...read this thread.

Gonna blow your mind totally: we've been systematically lied to by Big Ag and farm owners. I know, imagine, a huge capitalist industry lying to its consumers? Unpossible, right?

But it's true. OP has receipts. Go learn why food is expensive, and wages for food growers and pickers are cheap (hint: follow the money).

Seriously. Best thread I've read here this *year*.

EDIT: mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/11…

Sarah Taber

2025-07-13 23:04:57

mastodon - Link to source

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.


This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Stacey Campbell

I live under the arrival and departure paths for half the private jets that fly in and out of Van Nuys, and no shocker, a lot of them are owned by Big Ag families and companies and are flying between Los Angeles and the Central or Imperial Valleys where they make their billions.

...in case people are wondering what their food budget is paying for.

(I'm guessing the passengers in those jets are pissed with Stephen Miller right now.)

txtav.com/en/journey/articles/…

#uspol


Business aircraft in agriculture

Essential for farmers: Business aircraft connect fields and feedlots, enabling efficient travel to remote facilities.
txtav.com
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Poloniousmonk

I say pay everybody a living wage and deal with any downstream effects afterward.

Honestly, I don't understand why this is a controversial position. America is the richest nation in the world. It's a fucking disgrace that we have poverty here.

Just pay every-fucking-body a living wage. Ensure they have housing. And health care. And food. And education for themselves and their children. And connectivity. We could do it for a tenth of what we pay for cops.

in reply to Sarah Taber

sharkey - Link to source

CyberFrog

people who say this shit have never worked on a farm, try picking lettuce or tomatos faster than an experienced worker... they'd have finished 5lb of food before you're done 1lb, and honestly you'd probably cut off a finger trying to keep up with them

besides that, the majority cost of many foods is processing and stuff like pre-washing/cutting/preparing, because that counts as a "value added good" they just have way higher profit margins based on nothing but convenience... paying the farm workers more wouldn't do much at all to food costs lol

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Maria Langer | 📝 🎬 ⚒️🛥️

@LabSpokane Here in WA, they pay cherry pickers based on how much they pick instead of an hourly rate.

Also, I recently heard some news stories about migrant pickers being afraid to come to work (because of ICE) and that with more notice, Americans could have filled the gap and picked.

Bull-fucking-shit.

I've been living and working among cherry orchards for 20 years and I have never seen an American pick cherries.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

mike805

"Banning slavery would spike the cost of cotton. Nobody would be able to afford clothing."

Most of the financial value added in a farm to store chain is well past the farm. Paying a bit more at the bottom of the value chain does not raise the price much.

This would also apply to the cobalt miners in Africa, for example. Treating them a bit more like human beings would not raise the price of an EV very much.

in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

William B Peckham

Robots are only an answer for certain kinds of crops. They work pretty well for apples and oranges and some varieties of cherries. They really suck at being able to tell which tomatoes are ripe and safe to pick and which they should ignore. Picking out the more delicate fruits and being able to tell which ones are at the exact stage for harvest is a uniquely human capability. Being able to quickly pick them without bruising them is also a very difficult thing for a machine to do and very easily learned by human beings. Actually doing the work is horrible and hard, but automating it is even harder.
in reply to Sarah Taber

mastodon - Link to source

Kevin Russell

Read the post up.

Poverty is arranged. Poverty is a fence drawn around people. Poverty is a construction made by wealthy folks.

Costco pays a significant amount more, for example, than its competitors. Those competitors and even unrelated corps have done everything in their power to ask, or force, Costco to lower wages, and they subverted them, and lost LOTS of money trying to undersell and ruin Costco.

Poverty is imposed. Poverty is a crime, the poor it's victims.

⇧