The typical farm labor family earns around $10,000 a year.
Estimates of the number of farmworkers employed in the United States vary. According to Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy for the United Fresh Produce Association, a produce industry trade group, it’s about 1.5 million to 2 million.
And the pay? Between $10 and $12 an hour, generally. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. But, because there isn’t year-round work, according to Salvador, “these families are earning $10,000 a year.”
link to article is found in bold text.
I suppose some, like
@Terps and
@Ripped Farmer want to punish people for being poor. $10,000 a year is well below poverty scale. From what I've seen, the poor in this country work much harder than the average wage earner. Up those wages to the median wages in this country, say, $35,000 and improve working conditions, throw in health care benefits and a pension for 20 years of service. You'll see people taking those jobs.
Nobody should work full time for less than a living wage.
Regarding cost:
A wage increase will mostly affect fruits and vegetables, because commodity crops — corn, soy, wheat, cotton, and others — are highly mechanized, so most of the work is done by machines. With produce, about a quarter of every dollar we spend at the supermarket goes to the farmer. A third of that quarter — about 8 cents of your produce dollar — goes to the farmworker.
8 cents goes to the worker picking produce. If workers were paid triple the current yearly wage, we'd pay 16 cents more than we currently do. At 50k per year per family, we'd pay 32 cents more for every dollar we currently pay. Produce is only a fraction of the total amount spent of food -- about $6,000 total amount for the average family, We aren't talking about a financial disaster to the nation if farm workers were paid a living wage. Yes, Americans would take those jobs.
Ripper would starve people to the point of taking what he'd offer. Republicans are just that way.
