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Of course they’d do the jobs if immigrants weren’t driving down the floor. Look at European countries where agriculture is done by native born people.



https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/

That seems unlikely. Americans don't want to do these jobs. And this article suggests that, were wages to rise sufficiently to entice Americans, the economics would justify automation.

Besides, with the rate of progress in robotics, I doubt there will be much labor-intensive farm-work left to do in 10 years anyway.


I agree with your overall point, but not a great example: in NL we also import seasonal labour from Eastern European countries, for the exact same reason and with the exact same effect as you pointed out. Even when it's season all-year round (because we have greenhouses).


I didn’t say it’s true of all European countries. To my knowledge, France or Italy for example isn’t nearly as reliant on seasonal farm labor. The Netherlands has always been more in the neoliberal side of the line for Europe.




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