California case is the first confirmed bird flu infection in a US child https://t.co/efwDXY7s4r
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 23, 2024
Health officials on Friday confirmed bird flu in a California child — the first reported case in a U.S. minor.
The child had mild symptoms, was treated with antiviral medication and is recovering, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in announcing the test results. State officials have said the child attends day care and lives in Alameda County, which includes Oakland and surrounding communities, but released no other details.
The infection brings the reported number of U.S. bird flu cases this year to 55, including 29 in California, the CDC said. Most were farmworkers who tested positive with mild symptoms…
Bird flu found in sample of California raw milk.https://t.co/GsHLhRLDuZ
— NEWS SHARING (@BrandonLeopold3) November 25, 2024
From the NYTimes, “What a Crackdown on Immigration Could Mean for Cheap Milk” [gift link]:
Four-thirty in the morning felt numbingly cold in southern Idaho when it was Rosa’s turn to usher the cows into the milking parlor. Striding through the dairy farm’s open lots, she tried to balance speed with caution. April showers and the hooves of roughly 2,000 cows had transformed whole sections of the lots into a slippery goo of dirt, dung and urine. The muck stuck to her rubber boots; it was treacherous. On at least one occasion, she had fallen in it…
Close to the milking parlor, things got tricky. The goo was thicker here, where hundreds of cows passed every hour, and Rosa needed the animals to squeeze together inside a holding area. She stepped in closer to smack haunches, then darted back before the cows turned in response. She was small, and they were huge. Their backs came up to her shoulders — each of them weighed at least 1,000 pounds. There are a lot of ways to get hurt on a dairy farm, and being crushed by cows is one of them. The animals are languid and gentle, but they startle easily. In a panic, they can move fast.
Rosa’s boss, a man named Peter, allowed me to follow her around the dairy because he believes that more people need to understand how economically precarious America’s production of milk has become. The problem, as Peter sees it, is that the price of everything in America has gone up except the price of milk. In the 1980s, a tractor cost him roughly $60,000, the federal minimum wage was $3.35 and his first hundred pounds of Class III milk — the kind used in making yogurt and cheese — sold to a processing plant for $12.24. Since then, many of his expenses have doubled or tripled. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter says, his costs soared, and they still haven’t come down. Fuel-tank fittings that cost him about $2,000 in 2014 now run $13,000. Mechanics who once charged $60 an hour now charge $95.
Yet the farm value of milk has been dropping since the 1970s, if you adjust for inflation. For consumers picking up a gallon at the supermarket, this is a blessing. It’s the reason long-term inflation for store-bought milk is roughly half that of other foods in America. But for Peter, it’s a tragedy. When we talked this past spring, the selling price for a hundred pounds of Class III milk hovered around $15.50 — roughly $3 above where it was 40 years ago and a 55 percent drop in real value.
Week to week the farm value of milk can jump up and down drastically, but it also has long-term trends, Andrew Novakovic, an expert on dairy economics at Cornell University, explained. Over the past five years it has swung between $11.66 and $25.46, but the overall trend is down. Every time it dips below $18, Peter runs his dairy at a loss…
Over the years, Peter and his family have found ways to manage the declining value of milk. They’ve built fences out of recycled oil pipes, used brewers waste for cow feed, rented fields to grow their own alfalfa. They hedge the price of milk in futures markets and purchase revenue insurance. But the biggest cost that they can control is the cost of labor. And the productivity of his dairy — and of almost every successful dairy in America — now depends overwhelmingly on immigrants…
Peter himself does not actually know Rosa’s immigration status. He estimates that more than 90 percent of his employees were born in Mexico, but the documents that these men and women presented when they were hired appeared legitimate. Under current law, Peter is not required to do much more than glance at them. Like the rest of the dozen dairy owners I spoke with in Idaho, he preferred not to question employees too closely about their immigration status. A Social Security number written on a hiring form was enough.
What Peter does know, however, is that without foreign-born workers, his dairy could not stay afloat. Americans are understandably reluctant to perform dirty, dangerous and demanding work — what economists call 3-D jobs — as long as they have better alternatives. Unemployment in southern Idaho has averaged 3.4 percent for a decade; wages for entry-level workers on Peter’s farm are competitive with those for cashiers at fast-food franchises. He can’t pay much more, he insists, and still break even…
When I mentioned to Pete Wiersma, the president of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association and no relation to Peter, that I’d read a study predicting that the price of milk would nearly double if foreign-born workers were removed from the industry, he shook his head.
“I don’t think there would be milk,” Wiersma said. “I just don’t think we could get it done.”…
Ohio Mom
That means cheese — my favorite food, next to coffee — is going to go up in cost too.
And butter, and yogurt and sour cream. And cottage cheese, that I don’t care about, don’t like it at all.
Mathguy
I wonder who all those dairy farmers voted for? FAFO.
GSV Sleeper Service
The Idaho dairymen’s association is probably the largest group of socialists in Idaho but they’ll deny it to their graves.
Steve LaBonne
@GSV Sleeper Service: Socialism is when the government helps blah people.
satby
Lots of milk haters in John’s post of a night or so ago, but milk or milk components is used in manufacturing other foods besides cheese and yogurt too. I drink it every day, but I normally buy about to outdate milk (that people think means expired) at half off anyway. Food waste prevention apps like Flash Food or Too Good to Go are going to get really popular soon.
Also, bird flu is already affecting egg prices.
Suzanne
Whelp, I’ve been cutting back significantly on dairy. Spawn the Youngest is the only one in the house who drinks milk, and her pediatrician has been advising that we cut it back anyway.
I love cheese, but I shouldn’t eat it too much anyway.
Another Scott
As if raw milk from other lots is fine…
Heat pasteurization of cow’s milk is necessary for rendering this important nutrient source safe for humans—particularly infants.
[ head-desk, head-desk, head-desk ]
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ryan
@Ohio Mom: Don’t we have a big underground stockpile of that in Missouri or somewhere in the Midwest?
Steve LaBonne
So Trump should resign because milk and eggs are getting more expensive, no?Geminid
@Mathguy: A quick check led me to a 2022 survey by the National Dairy Producers Association that found dairy farmers voted 70% Republican, 30% Democratic in 2020.
NotMax
Mix the raw milk with bleach first, don’tcha know.
//
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Socialism for me but not for thee!
Ah, I remember the good ole days when cities touted things like their water systems as monuments to prosperity and hygiene. Back then, city leaders knew that towns were more likely to attract investors if they didn’t have pesky public health issues like cholera.
In today’s GOP Hellscape, (R) call that Socialism.
Steve LaBonne
@Geminid: I hope they enjoy what they voted for.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ryan:
https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese
Jay
@Ryan:
Yes, but it Gubermint Cheeze, so contaminated with Commie Cooties.
Rachel Bakes
Son LOVES milk. He’s finally branching out to juice too and sometimes water. Anyway, bought 2 half gallons today and the store brand in SW CT was $4.29/each. That’s about $1.50 more than a week ago.
Jay
https://globalnews.ca/news/10887418/update-bc-teen-h5n1-avian-flu/
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
NotMax
Working up to making a chocolate-chocolate chip sour cream cake.
So far brought 4 eggs from the fridge to get to room temp and managed to heft the stand mixer from its storage spot over to the counter. That sucker is heavy. In all honesty cannot recall the last time I used it.
The more I get up there in years the more I find baby steps in food prep (do a little, then sit down and rest) a better method than tackling everything in one go.
Nukular Biskits
Evenin’, y’all.
I used to drink a lot of milk when I was younger, switched to skim when I got older. It just kinda lost its appeal for me.
Now, I use oat milk in both my cereal and my cafe mochas. Supposedly more environmentally friendly.
tobie
@NotMax: Don’t forget to throw in some ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for good measure!
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
You’d best be making enough to share!
Nukular Biskits
Oh, crap!
Just remembered today (?) was the deadline for pet photos for the calendar!!!!!!!
Parfigliano
DEMs should introduce a bill to strengthen the law on the employer as far as their responsibility/duty to check that the people they hire are legal to work in the USA. See how many GOPer congress members get behind that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT: I fucking hate Youtube and whatever automated system it uses to moderate comments. It feels like I can’t properly express my arguments and points but my right-wing opponents can. If I simply mention trigger words like “abortion”, the comment gets deleted, so I have to constantly water my writing to half-assedly get my point across. I can’t write like I can here
Soprano2
@satby: I paid $3.97/doz last weekend. That’s expensive for here.
YY_Sima Qian
Honestly, on the domestic front where the Biden Administration has done a lot of good things, the CDC & its lackadaisical response to both the latter stages of COVID-19 pandemic & the bird flu epidemic in the bovine populations, have been major disappointments.
Jay
@Parfigliano:
Not gonna happen, most DEMs wouldn’t vote for it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
How do you know?
Harrison Wesley
@YY_Sima Qian: I think USDA handles animal cases.
frosty
I missed the Milk-Haters-Club thread last night but here goes: I gave up milk when I went Railpassing through Europe in my 20s and didn’t know how safe it would be. I haven’t missed it. Lately I’ve cut back on cheese, trying to reduce saturated fat intake. If it gets harder to find or more expensive, it’s not going to affect me much.
However, from the article it seems like the people doing that 3D job should get paid a lot more, and milk at the store should have gone up with inflation. Somebody’s getting rich but it’s not the workers or the dairy farmers.
ETA Ms F uses oat milk for all her cooking
laura
If children don’t die (along with olds) it will be a miracle.
My Auntie Margie, my Mom’s youngest sister, had polio and died of post-polio complications. You can bet your last dollar our family has received or been willing to receive every available vaccination since jump street.
Fun fact, while 24 month old auntie had polio, there was a notice stapled to the family house warning of the infection. They were quarantined in a manner that we were not subject to during Covid.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Just shine that light on it, I’m sure that takes care of it.
WaterGirl
@Nukular Biskits: Tomorrow! Not today.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Cali tried it, it garnered all of 8 sponsors. Didn’t even make it to a vote.
Nukular Biskits
@WaterGirl:
My days are so messed up! Just emailed you!
JanieM
@laura:
That system was in effect into the 1950s in the small Ohio town where I grew up. I don’t remember what the list of illnesses was where it applied, but I had scarlet fever, mumps, chickenpox, measles (“nine day measles”), and rubella (“three-day measles”) over the course of my childhood, and some of my siblings had some or all of those as well, and we had several periods of quarantine. A notice was tacked to the doors of our house and only my dad (“the breadwinner”) could leave the house.
Doctors made house calls….
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Jay, do you have a reference for that? I have a friend who has repeatedly asked me why Dems don’t do this yadda yadda [insert basic anti-immigrant blather, even though he’s an immigrant himself, sigh]. Perhaps he might have his eyes opened a little by this.
Kayla Rudbek
And it will send up the price of medication as well, because a lot of it uses lactose as a filler ingredient (including asthma inhalers even)
Bobby Thomson
Good thing there’s no historical precedent for sending intellectual opponents of the regime to the country to do farm work
YY_Sima Qian
@Harrison Wesley: CDC still handles the animal to human & human to human transmission. The data has been poor, because surveillance effort has been lacking.
Now consider if the COVID-19 pandemic, or some new one, breaks out in the U.S.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Simplest counterpoint, is E-Verify, an easy, online Federal means for Employers to check an employee’s legal status.
Only 18 States require the use of E-Verify for employers.
Undocumented workers are the backbone of the US Economy.
Ruckus
@laura:
I was born before the polio vaccine arrived. I went to school with a girl that had polio, knew 3 or 4 of my friends whose moms had polio and had iron lungs in their front rooms, couldn’t get them into any other part of the house, and one of my neighbors who is my age had it and has one useful leg and one that is about 4-5 inches shorter and has zero muscle left. She lives in a wheelchair. I wonder if most everyone my age or older knows or knows of someone that had polio.
@frosty:
I am very lactose intolerant so I use oat milk as well. Tastes good, doesn’t spoil near as fast. OTOH I can have a bit of cheese without any issue.
Leto
@frosty: I think about the fact that there’s essentially raw milk vending machines all throughout Italy, the UK too, and never once had this level of… freak out? Don’t know the difference between the regulatory states of each nation. At this point, doesn’t really matter.
XeckyGilchrist
Whaaaaaaat raw milk? But it’s so HEALTHFUL! And only $48/gallon!
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Sadly, it’s a case of “reading the room”.
Year 1 of the Spanish Flu saw shut downs, quarantines, masks, etc.
Year 2 saw anti mask regulations, anti shut down regulations, anti quarantine regulations, etc. Of course Year 2 killed many more Americans than Year 1.
When BC repealed some of the mandates, T and I were at a small park in Burquitlam, where there were 40 people, from Utes to Middle Aged, surrounding the basketball court, waiting for noon when the regs were loosened, at noon, they rushed the court to play B-ball.
I was working retail at the time. In the beginning, based on employees, (half staff compared to normal), area, air quality, (CO2 levels) we were limited to 120 customers at one time. Line up’s out the door, my area was limited to 5. When they loosened the restrictions, (no increase in area, no lowering of CO2 levels), 240 customers at a time, max 10 in my area, which could barely hold ten.
No filter boxes, no increase in outside ventilation, no mask requirement, no social distancing.
When they pulled all the regs, 870 customers at a time and 186 Covid cases amongst the employees. Way worse that the first year of Covid. No requirement to stay home if you were sick.
Dontcha know, Covid is over, only 1/24 has it in BC right now.
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus: One of my fathers friends had had childhood polio and had no use of his legs. He got around on crutches and did small engine repair out of his garage. I was born in 1958, so my parents must have been giddy that there was a vaccine available.
Eta: My parents were in their 40’s when I, the only spawn, was born, So they had no doubt seen a lot of polio in their lives.
lowtechcyclist
We go through about 3 half-gallon jugs of skim milk per week. My wife puts an ounce or so of skim in each cup of coffee, but the rest is our 17 year old son. We can afford to pay more for milk, thank goodness.
Still, I’m tempted to see if I can order a reserve supply of shelf-stable milk, just in case a time comes when it can’t be had at any price.
p.a.
Sorry Anne, it’s not for multiple reasons. It’s because of the election of Donald tRump and Republicans.
Play the game.
Gretchen
@laura: To hear anti-vaxers tell it, they were locked in their houses for months during lockdown. But you could leave whenever you wanted and grocery stores never closed? I went back and forth with one until the worst that she could think of was that her bowling league was cancelled for a few weeks. Tyranny!
Jerry
Purely out of curiosity, how income much does the dairy farmer like Peter make per year? Not being judgey, just really want to know.
Gretchen
@JanieM: That seems like a flaw in the quarantine system. People can’t leave their house, but the doctor moves from sick people’s house to sick people’s house…Although the doctor had probably had all those diseases already. I remember Dr. Start coming to my house when I was sick in the 1950’s. My parents hated it when specialization started to happen and they had to go to more than one doctor. I was surprised to learn that ENT’s don’t even all do ears, nose, and throats any more. My kid’s friend just does T, and referred to his partner for an E problem.
Anyway
There are many ways that companies can skirt E-Verify. Using contracting companies and passing the buck, for example. Shell companies exist for a reason.
YY_Sima Qian
@Jay: Loosening was inevitable, but the CDC ‘s messaging leaned on the side of “back to normal ASAP” rather than emphasizing how dangerous opening was going to be for the vulnerable population.
Nukular Biskits
@YY_Sima Qian:
Money rules, sadly.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Right, my friend’s perennial argument is “why doesn’t CA, MA, etc manate e-verify use, with criminal penalties for employing undocumented workers? Why don’t the Dems put forward a bill to do that?”
To which my response is: “because Dems recognize the importance of undocumented workers to their state economies, that the damage would be colossal if they did that, duh!” It would be helpful if some Dems someplace had tried to put forward such a bill, and nobody, not even Republicans, had come forward to support it.
Tony G
@Mathguy: Small business owners generally voted for Trump. Small business owners hire and exploit a lot of undocumented immigrants. Assholes.
Jay
@Jerry:
Between $23K and $38K a year,
Jerry
Wow. That’s what you call a labor of love, right there
oldgold
The pork and poultry industry across the Midwest is the same as the Dairy industry in Idaho.
Recent immigrants with questionable legal status perform almost all of the labor in raising and processing the pork and poultry. This labor force and their kin constitute about half of my County’s population.
Last week the estimable Joni Ernst was in town to calm the nervous natives – ”Don’t worry, Trump is not coming for your workers.”
We’ll see.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
The CDC’s like many others message was, “we are fed up with Health Care workers being threatened, Hospitals being threatened, etc” “fuck you, you are on your own.”
First year, I wore a mask, followed the guidelines where I could, quarantined when I got horribly sick, so others would not get sick and die.
By the second year, I wore a mask, followed the guidelines when I could, set up air filtration in my area, so I would not get sick and die, could care less if “you” get sick and die.
Outside of the Apt. and outdoors with social distancing, I always wear a “good” mask.
Mrscoachb
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Nukular Biskits:
you have until sometime tomorrow, not sure exact cut off, but you can still make it. I am in the same boat…need to get my photos submitted tomorrow morning!!!!
Tony G
@Jay: When the undocumented immigrants are rounded up they’ll be stashed in the concentration camps. Maybe they’ll never be deported. They’ll be sold as slave labor to farms and other small businesses, in return for Totally Legal political donations. Slavery.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: I wore N95 masks with full filtration until fall 2022. Then I switched to a P100 respirator with an “exhale valve”, b/c by then there were no mask mandates, so any masking was “for me”, not “for all of us”. Clearly most people around me couldn’t be bothered to protect themselves, so I didn’t see the point of inconveniencing myself to protect them.
And yeah, like you all the measures I take are for me, to protect myself, stay healthy, avoid long COVID. I want my family to stay safe and healthy, and my friends. But the rest? If they can’t be bothered to take the smallest of steps to protect themselves, I can’t be bothered to do anything to help them.
Jay
@Tony G:
They won’t be deported, none of their countries will take other than the Doctors, Med Staff, skilled workers back, or anybody else.
And of course, it will be the Dolt47 admin, who won’t have a clue how to do it legally.
While slaves are cheap labour, they are bad labour.
Your indentured servitude Doctor’s healthcare provision should be epic.
“Srry, missed your T4 brain cancer, so sad, oh well.”
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll call 911 when they fall down, that’s about it.
karen gail
@Jerry: I don’t know how much a small dairy farmer makes, but what I do know is that most of the small dairy farmers where I lived in Wisconsin gave up and switched to corn/soybean production since as cousin said it was even more of a losing proposition than it had been. A great deal depends on size of operation, age of cows, price of feed, price of fuel, price of machinery; when I was growing up most of the local farmers had small operation and good size family so they didn’t need to hire outside workers.
In area just west of Milwaukee there were lots of small dairies and small cheese factories; but cost of milking parlors kept going up along with number of factory dairies taking over small farms. I know in Wisconsin the driver of milk truck is supposed to test for bacteria count before taking on load of milk; depends who is buying the milk on what are acceptable levels of bacteria and antibiotics. The milk is then supposed to be tested again before it is unloaded.
We tend to forget that US became a big milk using nation after the national dairy council pushed the drinking of milk, claiming that it gave people the calcium needed for healthy bones.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: I wonder if powdered milk will be a thing again.
(Of course, it never really went away.)
My dad bought that stuff for us when we were little. Oh how I hated it. :-(
Best wishes,
Scott.
Martin
This is what I’ve been saying in other places:
Class III milk is used mainly for cheese. The avg retail cost for cheddar cheese is right now about $5.75/lb (cheddar seems like one of the cheaper cheeses, from my experience). So from a $575 retail price, the farmer keeps about 3%. That feels low to me. I know there’s a lot of work done to process that cheese, but that still feels low given that the dairy doesn’t have a ton of automation opportunities, and the opportunities it does have require scale which pushes out small farmers due to the cost, and the resulting consolidation of the industry is why dairy is more burdened with antibiotics, why flu has bigger impacts, why we rely on feed crops which compound the various bad impacts and so on (consider farms small enough to allow grazing as compared to the US water extraction -> feed crop -> truck -> feed lot, etc. cycle which is polluting, etc. The biggest water draw off the Colorado in CA is for feed crops for the states dairy/egg/chicken/beef industries. Take those away and the CO river water problem vanishes in CA.)
So I suspect farmers can only compete at scale. 2000 cows is a big farm. Average dairy herd size in CA is 2300, and we are both the largest dairy state by a mile, and have the most industrial scale dairy, so if anything our average herd size should be the highest and 2000 is right up there.
My sense is that because the farmers are on the downwind side of a commodity market and the manufacturers and retailers are upwind of it, the farmers have no pricing power, and the mfgs and grocers are where the inflation comes from – and that’s increasingly profits. (Note, you can see where the inflation spike happened on that chart, but you need to know where to look – Kroger wasn’t struggling for profits through that period, and just eyeballing the Class III milk prices for the last 5 years, you can’t see that spike at all. Peter didn’t make shit when prices went up.)
Snarki, child of Loki
Okay, so milk shortage will really mess up your morning cereal, plus yogurt and cheese.
But if they wipe out ice-cream production? Time to impeach TFG, followed by a summary scragging. Them’s the rules.
RevRick
@Rachel Bakes: SW CT is where I grew up. Yesterday, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some broccoli/raisin/onion salad. $8.05/pound. As I headed to the checkout, I recalled paying $15 in New Haven for a week’s worth of groceries when my wife and I were newlyweds in 1972.
Steve in the ATL
I know you’re all dying to hear an Australian song about a milk truck driver. Here’s You I Am with “Mr. Milk”!
ETA: link ok? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s_fQQKubBIk&pp=ygUQTXIgbWlsayB5aXUgaSBhbQ%3D%3D
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: YouAmI.
Which I’d never heard of before.
Catchy. :-)
Thanks!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Martin
@karen gail: My understanding was that as automatic milking equipment has advanced the investment in that equipment is high enough you can only do it at scale and still turn a profit given commodity prices. The big farms simply undercut the small ones and force them out.
You have similar dynamics with egg production, chicken production, pork, etc.
I’ve seen a lot written about how CA farmers are pretty good at marketing and finding markets for their products. A lot of the raw milk movement here has been pushed out from dairy operators that instead of selling into the supply chain for $1.20/gal for class I milk (I think we pay about $4.50 a gal retail) they can sell whole milk directly to consumers for $10/gal – 8x more. So they don’t need to sell a lot to balance the books.
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott: sorry—had my first glass of wine in over a month and clearly I am totes wasted! It is a great song, though.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Steve LaBonne: One of the first initiatives of the New Deal was to address the chronic depression of the agricultural sector. Following the boom of the WW1 years, agriculture was plagued with a glut throughout the 20s which led to decreasing farm income and increasing bankruptcies. Besides the immediate fire of the collapsing banking system, FDR saw aiding the farm sector as one way to help boost the overall economy. It’s why they came up with price supports and production quotas as a way to solve the problems that held farmers in a vise grip of overproduction. But when FDR assumed the Presidency in 1932, agriculture was still a huge sector of the economy, employing millions. By the time Eisenhower assumed office, agriculture had shifted to larger farms and industrial methods requiring huge inputs of capital. Farmers became partners with local bankers, seed and chemical companies, and farm equipment manufacturers. A decent sized farm nowadays may take several million dollars a year to operate. That’s on the order of magnitude of car dealerships and multiple franchises of fast food restaurants. Most farmers would see themselves as business owners. They have a love/hate relationship with the federal government.
Juju
@NotMax: I’m not a fan of stand mixers. I have a Breville hand mixer that is one of the best mixers I’ve ever used. It’s small but powerful and it has a storage thing that clicks to the mixer itself, that stores the dough hooks, beaters and whisk attachment. It takes up about a 10”x3 1/2” inch space. I have never been disappointed in any Breville appliance I have purchased.
Martin
@RevRick: Broccoli and raisins are pretty high labor crops, and also crops that the state has been occasionally paying to not grow due to water shortages. That’s particularly true for winter broccoli which is grown in the imperial valley and takes water from the CO river, vs the rest of the year when it’s grown mostly in the Salinas valley has has different water sources.
I know raisin farmland is down about 75% from its peak about 20 years ago. That’s mostly due to difficulty getting workers. It’s as labor intensive as wine grapes and there’s a LOT more money in the latter. Most farmers switched to almonds which are also worth more and require less labor relative to crop value.
I’m always a bit mystified that we look at crops like those and complain about prices (not you, but Dr Oz did) and not recognize that pretty close to 100% of those crops come from one place, and we can look a little more closely what kind of issues are driving costs in that one place. It’s not like there’s a broad competitive market that is hard to unpack.
That said, broccoli earns farmers about $0.75/lb and raisins about $1/lb. Guessing onions are under $0.50/lb. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to get from $1/lb to the farmer to $8.05/lb at check out.
Juju
@Nukular Biskits: I’ve thought of trying oat milk but I’m not sure which type to use. Sweetened, unsweetened, and some have vanilla, which to me is bleh. What kind do you use, or would recommend?
karen gail
@Martin: Yes, not just the cost of milk machinery but the upkeep. I know that one of the farmers that stayed in operation near where I lived had to increase size of herd just to become competitive.
Ex’s uncle stopped milking when a country club/golf course bought land down the road. He had made good money with small herd and sold to organic place; but once the golf course got going the chemical drift meant that his milk started testing positive for chemicals.
Kayla Rudbek
@Juju: not Nukular Biskits, but I drink non-dairy milk because of allergies. I look for at least 20% calcium RDA on the label because I’m substituting it for dairy milk (25-30% seems to be a standard fortification value). I go with unsweetened because of my diabetes (and to be able to use it in cooking). I don’t object to vanilla flavored for my cereal, hot chocolate, desserts, pancakes or waffles, but I prefer plain for other cooking, and it’s easier to just buy one carton or bottle of plain and use it for everything.
Personally, I prefer nut milk over oat milk, but any type of nondairy milk is better than eating dry cereal with a spoon for breakfast.
jonas
@Parfigliano: Theoretically, they already do. And many states require E-verify and all that. The problem is that the workers all have fake SSNs and IDs. So you ask them to show their papers and they do, how much time do you invest in verifying all of them? Especially if you have an operation that employs dozens or hundreds of seasonal workers? Yeah, it’s a cop-out to a certain extent, but also not an easy problem to fix. If E-verify used a biometric id, like fingerprints or something, to confirm the user of a particular SSN was actually that individual, then we’d get somewhere, but until then we have this vast system of don’t ask, don’t tell underpinning our entire agricultural system.
Jay
@jonas:
It’s not just Ag, it’s Construction, Service, Medical, Mfg, etc.
And only 18 of 51 States require E Verify.
jonas
@Jay: Yep. And the biggest employers of undocumented labor are often other (usually more established) immigrant-owned small businesses — think nail spas, restaurants, dry cleaners, hotel cleaning, landscaping operations, etc. All people likely to vote Trump (I recall seeing the Epoch Times lying around the lobby of a Holiday Inn where I was staying last year) and very likely to be completely boned if he follows through with even some of his deportation scheme.
Like most of Trump’s schemes, though, such as the border wall, this one will probably also devolve into a complete shitshow as he tries to carry out “mass deportations” while also orchestrating millions of various exemptions and carveouts for favored businesses and states that have sufficiently groveled before him or given him or his family some kind of kickback to be spared ICE raids.
Citizen Alan
@MagdaInBlack: can you imagine if the MAGAs of today had been around when the polio vaccine was introduced? Half of them would spread insane rumors about the safety of the vaccine and the other half would say they had a constitutional right to get polio and then cough on everyone they could.
hitchhiker
He’ll never be held to account in any way, no matter what happens. Nothing he says or does is in good faith — it’s all a ridiculous, self-serving, disgusting farce. Deportations, camps, bird flu, price of eggs, farms going under? Whatever.
I’ve just accepted that there will never, ever be a reckoning for him. For all kinds of innocent people, there will be some version of fucked, and then someone who is not him will be blamed. At some point we’ll open the news and learn that he died, but until that day comes I have not the smallest interest in watching this shitshow. News organizations are gamely reporting, I’m sure, but they can’t do it without participating in the farce.
I’m going to keep breathing. I’m keeping track of people in my life who were taken in by this nonsense — or who just enjoyed the chaos — and acting accordingly when it comes to them. They mostly haven’t realized that they cut me out of their lives, but that’s what’s happened. For now, I guess, they’re happy. They won. The prize won’t be what they imagined.
Martin
@jonas: And here in CA, the farmer isn’t usually the employer. It’s mostly contract work out here, so the contractor is responsible for checking the papers, absolving the farmer of liability. And it’s pretty trivial to jump between contractors as needed. These are quite lightweight structures and serve fairly small geographic areas – part of a valley, etc. Some of that is just the nature of the business. CA has a LOT of very low overhead industries which allow them to disappear into the wind and reappear somewhere else 2 days later under a different name. Word of mouth holds the system together. Some of that is realities of keeping costs low, and some is techniques for avoiding ICE or minimizing the impact of them.
There’s a LOT of plausible deniability in the structure of the system.
Martin
@Jay: CA has pretty big constraints on how e-verify can be used. You can’t use it before a job offer is made. If the verify comes back negative, you have to notify the individual. You can’t use it on existing employees. You can’t use it on non-employees (contractors). $10K fine per offense.
Cities and counties can’t require employers use e-verify, but the state and feds can. We used it at the university according to the constraints above. Pretty much everyone needed a background check as well, so e-verify was a bit redundant in that regard.
NotMax
@Martin
Who’s youngsters are going to sit hour after hour on those tiny stools milking almonds as they come down the production line?
//
NotMax
Oh my stars and garters. #88:
Who’s = Whose
emjayay
@RevRick: $15 in 1972 is equal to $115 in 2024. So today that would be $230 a month per person for food, which is less than I spend.
villiageidiocy
Deleted. Sorry not relevant.