Tomatoland
An interesting NPR interview of an author on the tasteless industrial tomato.
He also details labor abuses.
It is pretty disturbing, and if it doesn't convince you to grow your own, you're probably unusually resistant to disturbing news.
One things, though, is that the interview, while not on immigrant labor and farming, makes it pretty clear that the system depends on using, and abusing, immigrant farm workers. A partial solution to this sort of thing, although one nobody ever seems willing to consider, is ending the practice of importing agricultural labor. We didn't do that until World War Two, when we had to. Before that, we did it ourselves, with our own population.
We have plenty of Americans to do the job, and having seen many absolutely rotten jobs Americans will do, the thesis that you "can't get Americans" to do this job is a fraud on the public. What you can't do is to get them to work for substandard wages, in substandard conditions. And they shouldn't have to do that either.
Paying Americans humane wages to do a job in humane conditions would put a lot of Americans to work in an outdoor job and connect them with agriculture and the real world. It would raise the cost of food, but perhaps its unrealistically low priced to start with to some extent, on some items. Of course, we'd have to actually guard our borders from the import of food produced poorly by those paying the poor, poor wages, but so be it.
He also details labor abuses.
It is pretty disturbing, and if it doesn't convince you to grow your own, you're probably unusually resistant to disturbing news.
One things, though, is that the interview, while not on immigrant labor and farming, makes it pretty clear that the system depends on using, and abusing, immigrant farm workers. A partial solution to this sort of thing, although one nobody ever seems willing to consider, is ending the practice of importing agricultural labor. We didn't do that until World War Two, when we had to. Before that, we did it ourselves, with our own population.
We have plenty of Americans to do the job, and having seen many absolutely rotten jobs Americans will do, the thesis that you "can't get Americans" to do this job is a fraud on the public. What you can't do is to get them to work for substandard wages, in substandard conditions. And they shouldn't have to do that either.
Paying Americans humane wages to do a job in humane conditions would put a lot of Americans to work in an outdoor job and connect them with agriculture and the real world. It would raise the cost of food, but perhaps its unrealistically low priced to start with to some extent, on some items. Of course, we'd have to actually guard our borders from the import of food produced poorly by those paying the poor, poor wages, but so be it.
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