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Food Chain Radio Show #1145
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Farm and Food Labor
Guest: Farmer Mike Madison Author, Fruitful Labor: The Ecology, Economy and Practice of a Family Farm
The industrialization of agriculture, has taken people off the land and put them into cities.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Who will provide labor for our farms?
Farms have become factories designed and built around the input of money, and the production inputs that money can buy. To make the most efficient use of money, farms must grow in size in order to capture economies of scale.
As a consequence, most of the farms that now feed us are very large farm businesses operated by very few farmers who spend a lot of money on production inputs.
One of the most difficult inputs for farmers to buy is the labor to do the work machines or chemicals can’t work. To date, most of that labor has come from across the border.
However, two significant trends are making that foreign labor more difficult to buy: First, the federal government is attempting to secure the nation’s southern border, making it much more difficult, and costly, for workers to come and go. Second, trade agreements have made it possible for many U.S. farmers to move south of the border to take advantage of that cheap labor.
Ask a U.S. farmer what their number one problem is today, and they will likely say, “Finding enough labor.”
As the input of labor is becoming ever more difficult to buy, we just have to ask…
Leave a comment below: Who will provide labor for our farms?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
