Tag Archives: farmers

THE FALLACY – ” ILLEGALS ARE GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY “

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Studies over and over again offer empirical evidence that illegals and temporary workers are responsible for the lower wages of American farm workers and those in tech. Farmers who rely on illegals and temporary workers to do the dirty work are cheating Americans out of higher paying jobs. The contrary view is that Americans won’t do these backbreaking laborious jobs. How do they know? Have they done scientific studies to prove otherwise? Where are they.

We propose and put forward a challenge to those who deceive and constantly fabricate the truth.  Apple growers are the first to complain that Americans won’t pick apples, that the job is too hard for them.

From the Seattle Times:   At an orchard near Zillah in the Yakima Valley, a sign in Spanish reads, “pickers wanted.” A farm-labor shortage is leaving apples unpicked at the height of the harvest.

Growers mostly blame rising tensions around illegal immigration that have spooked migrant farm workers, the majority of whom are here illegally, while worker advocates say there’d be no shortage if growers were willing to pay workers more.

 “Truth be told, we’ve always had a labor shortage in this state; 75 percent of these workers aren’t authorized to be here,” said Dan Fazio, director of the Washington Farm Labor Association.

The crux of the matter is that farmers, apple, grape, nut or vegetable, who seek to hire labor for back-breaking work fail to understand the workings of the capitalistic system. Wages are set by the unconstrained demands of a free market; this means that they must operate according to our current system of laws. However, they don’t comply with them, therefore they are guilty of theft and federal and state labor laws.

Construction jobs are a good comparison. If a laborer with the minimal skill required to work in construction commands $25 per hour and is hired at that level, that then becomes the floor. If, then the grower has to compete in this market he must ante up $25 to meet the demand for a general laborer. If few people apply, then a higher starting rate has to be offered. Supply will eventually equal demand, but this is hard for the farmer to digest.

The farmer complains that their profits will suffer, workers will have to be laid off. Now that strikes us as an oxymoron. Businesses that face higher costs must adapt, if not, they have to face the consequences. The same should apply to farmers, instead of complaining perhaps they would be better off producing a different higher margin product. The apple grower is always touting that no one will buy apples at $4 or $5 a pound; have they tried it. The lettuce producer says that a market for $3 lettuce doesn’t exist – we disagree.  Of course less demand will persist,  but the farmer will find a way to eek out a profit. When temporary and illegal workers abound the end produc does not reflect market prices, but subsidized ones.

So when Trump says we will build a wall, this is good for wage growth in the farming community. Americans will apply for jobs in agriculture if the price to attract them to menial labor is high enough. Don’t fall for the farmer who is only out for his own good by hiring illegals while Americans with a desire to work lose the opportunity because the farmer will not pay what the market demands. Let their crops rot in the field, vine and tree. 

CRUZ WILL GIVE THE ETHANOL FARMERS THE GAS

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Ethanol subsidies are not to be touched. That is the old paradigm, but Ted Cruz says they must go.

ETHANOL SUBSIDIES – WELFARE TO THE WEALTHY

As the Iowa primaries begin to put the focus on the front runners, the question arises, who are the pandering politicians who will continue the ruse on America.  See below for the ethanol scam perpetuated by lying bought off politicians who don’t give a good God Damn about you. They are bought, time is now to out them. By the way Ted Cruz against ethanol subsidies.

The corn ethanol industry has received more than its fair share of subsidies over the past 30 years. Through federal tax credits, loan guarantees, grants and other subsidies, billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered on an industry that relentlessly seeks additional special interest carve-outs. A nearly identical tax credit to the one proposed by the president – the “Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit” – has been available to gasoline stations dispensing 85 percent ethanol.

It expired last year but has a history of being renewed in “tax extenders” packages. A federal Renewable Fuel Standard also mandates the use of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015. While the biofuels industry as a whole was intended to help achieve American energy independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and spur rural economic development, the corn ethanol industry has fallen short of achieving these goals while spurring numerous unintended consequences and long-term liabilities that have resulted in more harm than good.

So it was great news that the (otherwise terrible) 2014 farm bill (officially the Agricultural Act of 2014) prevents the mature corn ethanol industry from receiving subsidies to purchase pumps dispensing higher blends of corn ethanol.

Now for the bad news. Less than a month after signing the farm bill into law, the president proposed new subsidies for ethanol blender pumps in his FY 2015 budget proposal. The overall budget was released last Tuesday, with detailed back up documents following in the last few days. Buried on page 158 of the “Analytical Perspectives” document, released Monday, is up to $200 million in new advanced energy manufacturing tax credits for the “construction of infrastructure that contributes to networks of refueling stations that serve alternative fuels,” or in other words, more subsidies for corn ethanol blender pumps and other alternative fuel infrastructure projects. Such is the power of the corn ethanol lobby.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Mark down May 29 as the date when the last tether connecting ethanol subsidies to reality came unhitched, and the fuel made from corn and tax dollars achieved a kind of postmodern perfection. On the same day the Obama Administration conceded that the U.S. auto fleet cannot practically consume enough ethanol to fulfill Congress’s quotas, it announced a new program so motorists can consume more ethanol.

In other words, the point of the subsidy is the subsidy, and therefore the U.S. must subsidize ethanol because the U.S. already subsidizes ethanol. Once in place, such self-referential mandates appear to be eternal.

The 2007 energy bill’s renewable fuel standard requires certain annual volumes of ethanol to be bootlegged into the U.S. gasoline supply, but for years the mandate has crashed into the “blend wall.” Ethanol is corrosive, and gallons of conventional gas with concentrations of the stuff higher than 10% damage the engines and fuel systems of most of the cars and trucks on the road today.

The problem is that Americans aren’t guzzling enough gallons to achieve Congress’s mandates at E-10—that is, 10% ethanol, 90% gas. Either we need to drive more in less fuel-efficient cars, consuming more overall. Or the concentration of ethanol in a given gallon needs to rise, risking accidents, breakdowns and valve, pump, cylinder and injector replacements rarely covered by consumer warranties. For model years 2001 through 2011, no car makers allow blends above E-10, and a little fewer than half say it is safe to fill up with E-15 for the last two model years.

To avoid filling this ethanol junkyard but also to avoid displeasing the corn lobby, the Environmental Protection Agency simply refused to finalize the quotas for 2014 and 2015. So the EPA has finally admitted in a regulation that “due to constraints in the fuel market to accommodate increasing volumes of ethanol, along with limits on the availability of non-ethanol renewable fuels,” the volume targets “cannot be achieved.”

The EPA thus proposed quotas that are 3.75 billion gallons below the statutory minimums for 2014, 2015 and 2016. Renewable Fuels

ETHANOLICS TO IOWA

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Ethanol

Ethanol is a major market for Iowa corn – 47% of Iowa corn goes into ethanol production. Today, over 95% of all fuel sold in the U.S. is blended with 10% ethanol.

There are more choices for consumers to use more green fuel in their tank. One in ten vehicles sold in Iowa can fill up on E85, or midlevel blends like E30.  The EPA approved E15 (that’s 15% ethanol) for 2001 and newer cars, light-duty trucks, medium-duty passenger vehicles (SUVs), and all flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs) and that’s over 80% of all vehicles on the road today.

Retailers need to hear from drivers like you that you want to drive with higher blends of a home-grown fuel from E15 to E85. The time is now to fill up with home-grown fuels. Tell your retailer today! Print this card and leave with the manager or attendant at the counter. Do your part to support Iowa!

All eyes are will be focused on Iowa in 2016. Why? The first presidential caucus is in Iowa on February 1, 2016; currently Ben Carter holds a lead over Donald Trump. One may wonder why Iowa is so liberal. Ethanol? The good people of Iowa are drunk on ethanol.

From watchdog.org. So what’s the hold-up on subjecting ethanol subsidies to the Hammers of Justi… ah, ‘market forces’?  The largely Iowa-based ethanol lobby, of course.  Speaking purely dispassionately, ending ethanol subsidies would cause a certain amount of disruption in that state.  Speaking not quite as dispassionately… the vigorous defense of government subsidies is not precisely a conservative virtue.

Corn based ethanol increases the cost of food at the expense of subsidizing wealthy Iowa farmers. Where no politician dear to tread is the ethanol subsidy or now what is called the renewable fuel standard.  America’s Renewable Future, is planning a multi-million-dollar media blitz to promote candidates who support the fuel standard and attack those who don’t in the run-up to state’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. 

“They’re going to be in real trouble if they don’t, because we’re going to educate people on where the candidates stand,” said Eric Branstad, the son of Iowa’s governor and the director of the pro-ethanol campaign, billed as the industry’s most aggressive entry into presidential politics.

Effectively, the campaign to keep ethanol in gasoline continues. Iowa reaps billions of dollars a year because of it and their soul motive is to keep the status quo. This is at your expense and their gain.  “I think renewable fuels can be a big issue in the race,” said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. Shaw, who lost a Republican House primary in Iowa earlier this year, says about 10,000 households in the state are directly invested in or employed by the renewable fuels industry, and nearly 300,000 Iowans are “pretty much directly engaged in agriculture,” he said. “That’s a lot of voters.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/ethanol-fuels-iowa-109557#ixzz3pwEa4DmR

So in a nutshell America should understand why Iowa is as liberal a state as you can get; the corn farmers are hooked on government subsidies. Welfare to the rich is alive and well. It could be said another way, Iowan’s are eating your lunch.

ROBOTS PICKING MEXICAN JOBS

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Like weed creep, infestation by varmints intent on spreading disease eating organisms  across vast amounts of planted acreage have dessimated huge swaths of America’s farmland.  Pesticides, for instance Round Up, generically modified organisms and such, have saved farmers billions of dollars by increasing crop yield with an exponential savings in labor. But a new animal has arrived with the intention of doing farm work that has traditionally been done by imported and illegal labor.

Little notice has been given to the fledgling automation of the agriculture industry; although they have been mechanizing for many years, for instance tree shakers cause fruit, such as apples, peaches and plumbs, to drop into basket type devices where they are harvested, washed, quality controlled, boxed and marketed eliminating the need for manual labor. Strawberry farmers are now using video sensors attached to robots to pick the ripe berry without human interventions. Whole fields are picked in a matter of hours that once took days. Planting seeds by machines has replaced the human hand,

The heady days of Cezar Chavez’s army of Mexican grape pickers is over.  As labor demands have increased, farmers have explored new ways of doing things by eliminating what has been previously done by hand. Automation is now doing jobs what were once handled by the immigrant farm hand. Emerging across the landscape robots are now picking the pockets of farm labor while at the same time picking fruits and vegetables as well.

This does not bode well for those with less skills as we enter a new era in food production. This microcosm manifests the new paradigm where high tech will bring forth a revolution in all aspects of human endeavor. Automation has gained traction faster than a speeding bullet, evolving quickly by replacing mundane tasks done by the less skilled. This is a sign of the times where the unemployable will rot in the fields of despair.  Look for more revolutions to come as the machine replaces manual labor at a frantic pace.