Valley hit by worker shortage plaguing rest of U.S.

[primavera]

62. Kind of depends upon what one considers reasonable, doesn't it?

I did some research into this topic for my job a while back and found that migrant workers in California get paid on average about $10/hr. Not great, but better than the minimum wage many Americans work for. Also significant is that labor is the single greatest cost in agriculture. The land and materials cost next to nothing, and, unlike Wall Street, farmers don't enjoy $50 million/year compensation packages. You want to kick the wage paid to farm workers up to a level sufficient to persuade the average American worker to live a nomadic life, moving from harvest to harvest, breaking their backs under the blazing sun, there will be an increase in food costs to consumers. And that might be a good thing, I'm not saying that we shouldn't do precisely that. But I think you're mistaken to believe that you could substantially increase the wages paid to farm workers without it causing ripples in consumer prices.