Jobs for Americans! Anybody interested?

[KissMy]

I guarantee Americans will do those jobs for $20/hr. It's just that people will not pay that much for good food & farmers can't afford to pay those kind of wages.

Well, actually if you look at this report by UC Davis on economics of growing organic leaf lettuce:

http://coststudies.ucdavis.edu/files/lettuceleaforganiccc09.pdf

The cost to harvest a box of 24 heads of lettuce is $2.15, or about 9 cents a head. That assumes $10/wage and 35% "payroll overhead." - according to the study.

Then you need to note that the cost of the box to pack the lettuce in is almost as much as the labor to fill it.

So, in turn farmers could pay harvesters $20 per hour, and consumer would pay less than a dime more per head of organic leaf lettuce.

Food is traded as a commodity. A farmer can't easily charge any more for for his crop because he paid his labor more. If the going rate for head of organic leaf lettuce is 10 cents a head, that's all he is going to get from the commodity exchange. A minimum wage rate has to be set for all farm labor to raise the price of lettuce.

Farmers & farm labor get screwed. The processor middle man & grocery stores are the ones who make the money. Take carrots for example. These carrots cost the store 6 cents a pound. These carrots are already freshly harvested, washed, polished, inspected, bagged & packed into shipping container FOB. Your store likely charges over a dollar a pound for them.

The system is rigged to benefit the big corporations, not small business or labor. Minimum wage is set below poverty in order to get most people on food-stamps. Walmart takes food-stamps but farmers roadside fresh food stand is not set up to take food-stamps. There are also many new regulations limiting direct farm sales to consumers. So farmers are forced to sell to the large food corporations who control over 61% of the market. These large corporations squeeze the farmer, workers & consumers to maximize their profit & buy power & influence in Washington.