At least one cherry grower in the Mattawa area has already lost about 300 bins, each weighing between 350 and 400 pounds, said Erik Zavala, a horticulturist and director of field staff for Wenatchee-based Blue Bird Inc., which is a grower-owned cooperative of hundreds of family farms.
“People watch the news,” Zavala said, referring to masked federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining persons off the street. “It’s definitely having an impact.
“I don’t care about that stuff. I just know that this is affecting the growers directly whether they are Democrat or Republican or whatever. These growers will lose a lot of money and are risking losing their farms because of a lack of labor.”
There’s your fucking problem. You care about the fucking money, and not about the lives of those making it for you.
“I don’t care about that stuff. I just know that this is affecting the growers directly whether they are Democrat or Republican or whatever. These growers will lose a lot of money and are risking losing their farms because of a lack of labor.”
They FOR SURE cared about it when rural/farmers voted overwhelmingly for Republicans/Trump and knew what he was saying. This is 100% FAFO and now it’s all crocodile tears “don’t care if you are dem or republican” nonsense.
The default response to them should be “you should pick your farm up by the bootstraps and get the crops picked”. Or you know… Pay living wages to get citizen pickers? Either way, good luck without all the exploited labor.
Americans cannot afford to do these jobs.
That job won’t pay my mortgage, my bills, support my family, or provide health insurance for us.
And even if it did, jobs like that are seasonal so if by some miracle it did provide all I need, it wouldn’t do it year round and golly, would you look at that, my bills don’t take the growing season off.
At one point I knew someone from a small town in Northern California where most people in the town worked for an industry like this - picking, driving, processing the stuff that was grown (I don’t remember what the crop was). The only people who weren’t directly involved provided services to those who were, working government or retail jobs in the town.
When it wasn’t picking season, most of the town was on welfare.
Why don’t they find a MAGAt, they love cherry picking.
New gig economy app
This pleases me. Great news to start my Monday morning.
