• Pistcow@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          I’m not sure there are many Americans that would do field work for $50/hr and on top of that, farmers would have to pay actual labor overhead and have a certain standard of work.

    • fireweed@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Have you ever worked in agriculture? I have. Very few Americans are physically capable of doing farm work, except maybe part-time.

      Meanwhile Americans have become so accustomed to heavily-subsidized food (subsidized through the government, unethical labor practices, and unsustainable land management) that we have no idea what the “actual” cost of food is. Many Americans would be literally unable (and most others would seriously struggle) to afford food grown on farms using environmentally sustainable methods and paying their employees a living wage. And I’m not convinced you could even find sufficient labor by offering a living wage: it is literally back-breaking work that exposes you to the elements, mostly occurs in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, and is SUPER monotonous (in the case of monoculture farms, which most are).