Picking strawberries doesn't pay a living wage.

It never did.

If you want a living wage for American strawberry pickers - plan on spending $36/Qt for berries.

There's no free lunch AND there's no money in farming without suckling on the USDA teet. That's the reality of farming in this country.

It's a crime & a big joke to the takers controlling prices.

That's why there's not enough farmers, why they're selling the farm and why big produce & livestock conglomerates just keep getting bigger.

EVERY ONE OF US is subsidizing the high fructose corn syrup, Ethanol gasoline and Agro-industrial RoundUp poison bs FORCED on us. Europe doesn't want HF corn syrup...nor GMO corn - so this affects exports greatly. They KNOW it's all poison

King Corn

King Corn is a documentary film released in October 2007 that follows college friends Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis (directed by Aaron Woolf) as they move from Boston to Greene, Iowa to grow and farm an acre of corn.

The film shows how industrialization in corn has all but eliminated the image of the family farm, which is being replaced by larger industrial farms.

These two college kids show the whole USDA racket and game played growing corn.

Talk about getting cornholed...

u/#popcornclown

Or start using prison labor so we don’t have to change the dynamics and demographics of our country

AI and robotics can replace those foreign Ag workers.

AI-powered machines are increasingly used to harvest cotton. The cameras and electronic arms pluck the open cotton bolls without damaging the plant, at a 99% detection accuracy and at 10X the speed of manual labor.

AI-powered planting machines use cameras, GPS, and machine learning to automate seed placement, with optimal spacing and seed depth. It reduces seed waste and soil compaction. Wheat, Corn, Strawberries, Tomatoes, etc... can all be planted and harvested by machine with a LOT more efficiency and less cost than illegal immigrant labor.

Now for the best part. Illegal immigrant labor generally works on crops during daytime hours only, and is inefficient. AI machines can be used 24/7, day or night, and can be RENTED by the farmers and specially programmed to their fields. You get the machines started at 8:00pm... and by 6:00am overnight your fields are all planted. Now the next farmer can use the planter on HIS fields. Same with the harvest, or fertilizing crops.

For fruit trees, watch as AI drones replace illegal immigrant pickers with ladders.

You won't be able to replace ALL farm labor, but replacing 50% of it with much greater efficiency is a good start. Also, AI machines don't relieve themselves in the field on top of the crops they are picking... so the outbreaks of diarrhea due to contaminated lettuce or spinach are in the past.

I've been saying this since... Well forever.

When you need to feed your family, you're going to take the job.

What you won't do is go do hard labor for below a living wage, nor should you.

That's what hiring illegals does-it slopes the pay scale and makes it nearly impossible for any American to take that job.

That’s right! Even VP Vance quoted Union activist Caesar Chavez who opposed hiring foreign nationals as seasonal workers. But the big bucks isn’t in beef!

We need to get foreign nationals on worker visas replaced, and the cartels out of the U.S. setting up illegal cannabis farms in sanctuary states! This is billions of dollars in revenue. I am confident that the palms are greased of our local public servants! Money could go all the way up to the Congress Reps sponsoring this bill as well! You want to give some cartel family citizenship & a legal foothold in the U.S.?

I had to create an account just so I could reply to this. .

Here is what really bothers me the most about it. The current administration lowered the minimum wages for farm labor, There is never going to be any sort of "living wage" for American farm workers if our own administration is making hiring foreigners over Americans even more likely.

Unless laws are passed that forces farms to pay living wages, then there is ALWAYS going to be a problem with foreign workers.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/border-immigration/2026/03/23/trump-administration-acknowledges-it-needs-immigrant-farmworkers-as-it-moves-to-cut-their-pay

https://stateline.org/2025/11/24/farm-workers-sue-over-trumps-low-wages-for-foreign-guest-workers/

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/10/02/2025-19365/adverse-effect-wage-rate-methodology-for-the-temporary-employment-of-h-2a-nonimmigrants-in-non-range

You want government assistance? Go pick lettuce.

Yes, especially for teens! We would do anything for a job!

Or if a decent wage encourages mechanical harvesting, that has been done since the steam engine.

Europeans spend a higher percent of their income on food than we do. They tend to value the quality of their produce, meats, breads, etc. Their farms are smaller and closer to their market. There is / was a metzgerei and bakerei in every village.

We have liberals who demand slave-level wages because of course we have to use illegals to pick our crops and clean our toilets?!? We have people who go to e.g. Walmart to save a nickel no matter how far they have to drive to get there.

Ag workers deserve a decent earning. Buy local!

It is a SCAM by the big producers, to hire illegals when there are programs for legal labor.

So if we have to pay, what the produce is worth?? God Bless us and those who feed us.