By Michael Woyton
Where’s Grannie? She’s out in the fields picking strawberries. Hope she took her oxygen canister with her.
On Tuesday, the United States agriculture secretary said the migrant farm workers who are being rounded up for deportation could be replaced by automation and Medicaid recipients who will be required to get a job under the recently passed GOPmaga budget bill.
At a news conference with Republican governors, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins said the administration “would rely on ‘automation, also some reform within the current governing structure,’ and pointed to ‘34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program‘ as potential workers,” The Guardian reported.
“There are plenty of workers in America,” she was quoted as saying.
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According to the agriculture department, more than half of farm workers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants and slightly less than 70 percent are foreign-born.
Agriculture and economics experts “have repeatedly warned that neither automation nor welfare reforms can realistically replace the migrant workforce that dominates American farming,” The Guardian said.
Rollins said that the president’s promise of having a 100 percent American workforce is a reality, even though the golf-in-chief told Fox News last week exemptions for undocumented farm workers were being considered.
The new Medicaid work requirements are set to take effect by the end of 2026 — after the midterms, of course — but according to 2022 data from the Census Bureau, many Medicaid recipients are already employed or are unable to work.
Then there’s the matter of automation.
The method of harvesting — hand versus mechanical — can significantly impact the quality and shelf life of fruits and vegetables, according to Agriculture.Institute.
There are, naturally, advantages and disadvantages to both methods.
Aside from the significant initial investment of machinery, one major disadvantage of mechanized harvesting is “damage to the produce, particularly delicate fruits and vegetables, leading to bruising and reduced quality.”
Additionally, machines can’t yet tell the difference between what is ripe and not ripe, which would result in a harvest that requires additional sorting.
There is also soil compaction and other environmental concerns that could impact the farm’s health.
It seems that, if both the technical and economic aspects of mechanical harvesting were feasible on a large-scale basis, farmers would already be using it.
And I feel the need to bring the fact that Rollins suggested that raising your own chickens in your backyard would be a good solution to rising egg prices.
Seriously, there are two things to remember about President Donald J. Felon and his braintrust administration: 1) They aren’t really very smart in their solutions to problems and 2) They make up for it with overwhelming cruelty.
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Is anyone else as disturbed as I am by the reality of ICE agents and the National Guard performing a practice maneuver in downtown Los Angeles?
Just what are they practicing for?
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Lead art: Screen grab from Forbes Breaking News via YouTube
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