The coming farm labor problem...A rosy picture view?

might get more americans this year, once (if) the handouts end

 

People who are young enough to work in the fields will get it, get over it, and go back to work.

 

@ "many are dying"
How many?

The three biggest ag states (by value of crops) are the California, Iowa, and Nebraska.
Of those....California is on the 'leader board' for Rona deaths at 2700.
I'm actually fairly impressed with their response BTW.
I don't much like their governor, and we won't go into his dating habits or his government's $1,000,000,000,000.00 no-bid/no questions contract for PPE......but his team have done a credible job with the tools that they have.

Climate and the fact that Californians invented social distancing decades ago....help a lot.
Add 100 Covid deaths for Nebraska and 270 for Iowa and the total for these states is something like 3,300.
I rounded up because people always exaggerate with numbers anyway.

Over half of these deaths have ONE THING in common and it isn't ag related.

Me?
If I wanted to bend the covid curve and rail against the injustices of our labor system you need look no further than the facilities that we dump our elderly into.
In agriculture, more people probably die from falling out of pickup trucks or wrecking them after DRINKING Corona than they do from getting Corona.

Oh...and it's still SPRING.
Crop harvesting is pretty much an outdoor activity often conducted where it's drier, warmer, and sunnier than...say....a meat processing facility.

California has a weekly unemployment benefit of $450. Add $600 to that from the CARES act and you're over $4000 for the month which probably is enough to scrape by on even out on the left coast.
Nebraska and Iowa have $440 and $481 for unemployment respectfully... up to $591 w/dependents for Iowa.
You can probably math better than me.

Migrant worker cross border traffic is fairly non-typical lately and Mexico is dealing with their OWN pandemic issues.

Ag is going to face some pretty significant labor problems this year, but it's not going to come from migrant workers dropping in the fields from the Covids.