Florida Farm Drama!

The headline was about how the price of produce could triple soon.

It's all the fault of the nefarious government!

Has the MSM finally noticed how the government chokes businesses?

Nope.

What the story was about is that starting this growing season the farmers are going to have to verify that their workers are all legally here.

Think about this for a second.

The increased costs can only mean one of two things.  Either the cost of verification is stupefyingly high or that they have been knowingly hiring illegal labor and will have to pay full wages, taxes and benefits now.

Which seems more likely to you?

Included in the segment is a farmer talking about how the foreign growers will be taking over the market if the immigration status verification law is allowed to stand.

I did a little research about this.

The issue about the verification is that the workers are migrant.  They show up, almost to the minute, at picking time.  While the farmer is doing their paperwork, his crops are beginning to rot.  By the time he's navigated the cumbersome system; most of his crop is gone.

It occurred to me immediately that the problem here is that we're ignoring another elephant in the room.  There are so many illegals in the country that we can no longer just assume that anyone showing up to work is here legally.  Fixing that problem means we won't need to force the farmer to check.

The wage issue is another big one.  Minimum wage is not the only price to that employee for an employer.  Matching on Social Security and Medicare, OSHA compliance and paying unemployment insurance are examples of mandated cost above and beyond wages.  Not to mention the overhead of figuring out things like withholding (small but cumulative).  Legal American labor does cost more.

What we are seeing, though, is the American farmer has already been priced out of the market by the importers.  If the local farms were the primary suppliers of this produce, they would be setting the price not responding to it.  The fact is that the market doesn't need the local supply to meet demand.  Sucks to be the farmer here.

I have a bit of a solution.  Make a farm exception to min-wage and tax laws.  Call farms essential to national defense and security (they are).  Farm WORKERS are required to get a cheap little ID card that says they waive the minimum wage and are willing to work at this lower rate anyway.  To get this cute little card you have to prove you're here legally.  This is nothing more than I had to do to get my driver's license renewed.   Now all Mr Farmer has to do is hang out a sign saying what he's paying and photocopy the card with his other hiring documents.  Everyone is happy!  We'll ignore my objections about how this bans anonymous labor for the nonce.

The real solution is to get serious about the border so that anyone wander up to the farm is assured to be legal to work here.