[swelz]

I think a larger issue is that food/resource prices may be too low.

Obviously, the farmers need to charge for the food/resource, but if they aren't able to turn a profit when properly hiring and paying staff/contractors to work for them, that's an issue. We don't know if the $100MM would cover the new cost or not.

I believe there is an issue where we've (the US) relied on such low-cost labor for farms far too long and we do not know how to balance out our supply chain with properly paid labor.

[ngold]

These are the tough questions that are going to have to be answered until another robotic cotton gin is invented.

[linuxftw]

Yes, the food market is heavily distorted. If giant ag businesses that employ immigrants can't make a profit, it means there's too many farms in operation. Farms will close, food prices will rise, and the market will stabilize.

A huge positive to this, smaller family-run farms that don't hire immigrant labor would actually be able to compete with the larger industrial farms. We might even be able to reduce total miles food travels farm to table because it's simply not profitable to ship produce cross-country when local farmers can produce at a competitive price.

[salawat]

I'm not sure even that would overcome the hyperoptimization capital trap advantage big industrial farms enjoy.

I'm still pretty shallow in my understanding of the Ag industry, but the last research I'd done showed that process optimization gaps driven by capital access disparity, and an increasing encroachment of vertically integrating distribution businesses were the major drivers of small farms out of the market.

The wage hits through access to capital to pay workers will also hit smaller operations harder in the sense the smaller you are the fewer people feel safe investing in you.

It'd be nice if it would sort itself in favor of the little guy, but I'm just not seeing it.

[linuxftw]

> It'd be nice if it would sort itself in favor of the little guy, but I'm just not seeing it.

Smaller farms already exist, despite the unfavorable business conditions. If we're talking something like corn or soy beans, we're talking about massive direct subsidies as well. But if we're talking about thing such as berries or apples, there are lots of successful smaller, local producers.

Imagine how much more successful those smaller farms would be. And, it might re-invigorate complementary local businesses, such as small tractor dealerships, fertilizer, what have you.