
Farmworkers face coronavirus risk: ‘You can’t pick strawberries over Zoom’ - turtlegrids
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-01/california-farmworkers-coronavirus
======
wscott
Sorry, I am going to be the insensitive sleazeball here.

The point of staying at home is not that if you get this disease you are going
to die. The issue is that if we ALL get it then a larger proportion of people
are going to die because we don't have enough hospitals.

We had to choose some people as being important enough that they are allowed
to be out and about and use some of that valuable limited healthcare resources
while the rest of us try really hard not to get sick and risk going to the
hospital. If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who
got the disease early.

Farm labor has always gotten the short end of the stick and this is an added
burden. I would vote to give them extra income during this period if that was
being considered. But the fact is that they are part of the food chain in this
country and so are considered "essential" people to continue doing their jobs.

~~~
groby_b
"during this period"?

They're as essential to our survival even if we're not in a pandemic. It's
maybe time we recognized that and stopped exploiting labor just because it's
unskilled. If we paid them by the value they actually create.

I'd really urge you to reconsider your stance, and be there to help them
advocate for fair pay even when this is over.

~~~
lotsofpulp
How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?

~~~
missedthecue
Things like "fair pay" and "living wage" are political talking points.

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or
economics, but morality. Its advocates refuse to come to terms with the fact
that wages are market price–determined by supply and demand, the same as the
price of oil, steel, corn, or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the
practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for
a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the
amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be
legislated away.

~~~
thatcat
Lol, the price of corn, or even oil, coal, and steel are constantly adjusted
by gov policies. You've proven the opposite of your point - market price is
political and can be controlled when it is politically favorable.

~~~
missedthecue
You've missed the point of my comment. I never said that the government can't
manipulate markets through price floors, ceilings, or subsidies.

I said the market system is _amoral_. We can't will it to do what we want. You
can't force a job to suddenly create $20/hr of economic value by placing a
mandatory $20/hr price on it. Basic mathematics doesn't allow that.

~~~
thatcat
The market and it's values are a manifestation of the people participating in
the market and therefore the any morality or values a market has would simply
be a reflection of the values and morality of those people.

------
zenpaul
Planet Money did a good podcast on this topic recently. I learned that it's
hard to follow CDC guidelines when you're sleeping 20 in a garage and there's
only enough water to shower every few days.

[https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821593542/episode-984-food-
an...](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821593542/episode-984-food-and-
farmworkers)

~~~
abeppu
It's kinda crazy that we can produce all these water-intensive crops in the
central valley, and producers are draining aquifers for basically the cost of
drilling and pumping ... but workers can't afford to shower regularly or wash
their hands often. Somehow I don't think the farms that own the wells and the
workers are paying at comparable rates.

------
simonsarris
I would think out of every job in a supply chain field workers would be some
of the best protected by default. Not (often) working in air-recircuculated
environments, many already wear face masks and gloves, less crowded than
warehouses, working in the sun and often more humid environments.

The big issues I think would be sick pay (mentioned), or migrating workers who
travel very far, including across borders.

~~~
dfsegoat
I don't see a single mask or glove in the pics in this article (which
documents a day in the life of a picker):

[https://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-
strawberry-p...](https://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-strawberry-
pick-20130503-dto-htmlstory.html)

~~~
macspoofing
I think one major challenge right now is that nobody can get masks and gloves.
Frontline health workers can barely (if even that) manage with the supply at
hand. I think this is the major reason for 'flattening the curve', i.e. to
make sure our supply chain ramps up to provide necessities like masks, gloves,
ventilators, disinfectants etc.

In a hypothetical world where there are no shortages of these items (+
publically and easily available test kits), the economy wouldn't need to have
halted to a near stop, and we could weather the pandemic much easier.
Hopefully, we can learn from this.

------
mensetmanusman
Remember, flattening the curve doesn’t necessarily mean that fewer people in
total get sick, the area under the curve might be the same, esp. if it becomes
like the common cold in terms of evading our immune system.

We are just trying to buy time to ramp up production of materials that can
reduce the burden on the medical system.

~~~
earthshot
The case fatality rate changes quite dramatically when hospitals are
overloaded. Additionally, the fatality rate of _other_ causes increases when
hospitals are overloaded.

Flatting the curve saves lives even if the total number of infected people
remains the same.

~~~
mensetmanusman
The issue I see now is that some areas are locking down when there is no curve
to be flattened. This is likely causing more harm than not, because hospitals
are sitting empty waiting for when people will inevitably get sick.

~~~
bluGill
With the 14 day incubation period there is no way to know if they are locked
down needleessly or not.

------
ng12
I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential
workers? Our food supply and delivery chain is what allows others to stay at
home.

~~~
BrentOzar
> I'm not sure about strawberries but aren't farmworkers in general essential
> workers?

Yes, but that doesn't mean they're immune from the coronavirus risk. The whole
point is that they face the coronavirus risk because they're continuing to
work.

~~~
ng12
But some people are going to have to be exposed. Farmworker's exposure helps
us flatten the curve.

~~~
groby_b
That... I'm sorry, but that's just an utterly uninformed take.

Nobody "has" to be exposed, protective gear would work just fine. And no,
exposing farmworkers doesn't help to flatten the curve. The curve would be
equally flat if they weren't exposed.

What you just said is "Somebody has to die, let's kill the farmworkers so
we're safe". You might want to rethink.

What we need to do is stop exploiting them. They're not at high risk because
they need to be, they're at high risk because we're not paying them well.
Because we withhold even the options for basic hygiene for them. Because we
value profit over human life.

~~~
ng12
I'm not saying we shouldn't take all precautions we can. I'm saying it's
necessary work and some exposure needs to happen.

~~~
groby_b
No, some exposure does not need to happen.

You could bring in the harvest just fine without exposure. We're choosing not
to, because it'd cost precious money, and that's the god we'd like to worship.

With the exact same kind of logic you use, one could also argue that it's not
necessary work. Some starving just needs to happen. No? Not good logic? Then
explain to me why your life matters more than farm worker lives?

~~~
ng12
Zero exposure for someone working on a farm is utterly unrealistic.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
_Zero_ exposure is probably unrealistic for everyone, but it's not unrealistic
to give farm workers disposable masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, and washing
stations, put effort into keeping them six feet apart as they work, and
provide sufficient paid leave so they don't feel pressure to keep working even
if they believe they're sick. I think that's really what we're talking about
here.

~~~
therealdrag0
"As they work" is not the problem. Many of them are migrant worker who will
reside in temporary housing akin to a bunk-house/dorm. They will be very
exposed to the many people they are living with.

------
jelliclesfarm
I have been farming for 8 years and asking for Meaningful Ag automation for 5.
Applied twice to YC.

Simply put there is no $$ to replace manual labour. All Agtech is a sham. They
are pimps for data collected from farms and fields that get fed to Wall Street
and input and pesticide and tractor companies that use it to sell more stuff
to farmers.

It doesn’t save farmers money. It doesn’t bring them meaningful Agtech or
being Agbots and Farmbot to replace farm labour. The only agtech worth
investing is Agtech that harvests data. That’s why probably all the Agtech and
Agbot startups have investments from Ag input companies. It’s a dirty little
secret that anyone can find out with a little bit of digging around...

Agtech has betrayed Ag.

------
irrational
Off-topic, but how did zoom become the Kleenex of video-conferencing apps?
I’ve been doing a lot of video-conferencing, but haven’t used zoom. Is it the
best one, or is there some other explanation?

~~~
Karunamon
Better performance and UI than the others. I work in an environment where I
use just about every major video conferencing tool available when working with
customers.

We use Zoom internally, some customers are on Webex, still others use
Hangouts.

Webex has been having difficulties ever since the mass exodus to work-from-
home. Audio quality especially has been inconsistent over the last few weeks.
Hangouts is pretty good from a quality standpoint, but I (and others,
apparently) find their UI confusing.

I've never been asked yet to use Jitsi or any of the other also-rans.

~~~
ben7799
Interesting. I've been using Webex, Zoom, and Slack calls.

Webex has been having some issues but has done better the last few days.

Zoom has been OK, but with some audio cutouts yesterday.

The one Hangout I was on the video and audio quality was horrible.

Teams seemed to use tons of video bandwidth, looked good, sounded good, but
seemed to use excessive network bandwidth. It's video quality actually seemed
excessive for a lot of use cases.

------
jelliclesfarm
Look at those photos. Those citrus trees are canopied trees. You can let an
Agbot roam in that orchard. It won’t even pick up signals. There is no systems
approach. If you can’t harvest data, no Agbots. I understand the importance of
data with tech. But if the end result is data, then it is the product. It
doesn’t enable Ag.

------
Mikeb85
You can't pick strawberries over zoom, but it's pretty easy to distance
yourself from others on a farm. And let's face it, if you have the physical
fortitude for farm work, you aren't at risk from coronavirus.

~~~
munk-a
> you aren't at risk from coronavirus

We don't have sufficient information to determine this definitively - some of
the folks that have "recovered" have had serious respiratory complications.

Also, just because the farm worker is alright is their mother fine too? What
about the rest of their family? Are they going to be treated in a wonderful
modern hospital or is a doctor going to send them home to be cared for by
their family?

If they don't have insurance any medical costs they take own will come
completely out of their own pocket.

~~~
Mikeb85
There's nearly a million cases worldwide. There's enough data. The death rate
between 19 and 39 years of age is 0.2%. The death rate from 40-49% is 0.4%.

And that's the death rate only taking into account _confirmed cases_ (by
contrast, seasonal flu death rates are used by estimating total infections). I
know in Canada lots of people with _all_ the symptoms aren't getting tested.
Also, the more testing is done in various countries, the lower the death rate.

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-
se...](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-
demographics/)

------
mythrwy
Well, not yet. Joystick and a little remote device (or something) and maybe
one day we will do stuff like this without fully solving machine learning
vision type problems.

Please be quiet kids! I'm picking strawberries. Actually, Bobby, come over
here. Do you want to play a game while I take a nap?

