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  • There isn't a worker shortage, there's a compensation benefit shortage.

    You offer six figure, part-time contracts and the applications will come flooding in. Offer enough to get the number of applicants you want.

    • Farmers and field-hands never have been a rich bunch, most of them literally just get by.

      Field-hands have traditionally been undocumented workers willing to work for cheap with free room and board. They work dusk till dawn, have dinner with the farmer, and sleep in the farmers basement or unused shack. The farmer pays them under the table with cash, and they leave after harvest is done a few weeks later.

      Many parts of southern Germany still operate on cheap summer workers from Bulgaria.

      It's not a compensation issue, it's a lack of migrants issue due to the UK's new found sense of xenophobia.

  • Animal ag doesn't produce food, it consumes it.

    • Agreed, but the problem is butter is really nice. We want something as good, or better, that doesn't use so much land and water create so much CO2 (well CO2e).

      • We already have butter free of animal products that tastes and functions just the same. It's probably in your supermarket, no Bill Gates required. You don't use it because you don't particularly care about committing cruelty and violence to vulnerable individuals living in atrocity. I don't use it because it's still not good for you.

  • My dad's family used to have a dairy farm. There was one point in time, like 100 years ago, where they rivalled Wiseman's for distribution in Scotland. However my uncle took it over in the late 70s and gradually made bad decisions with regards to running it. I think it was ok for a while because the long standing managers were on top of everything but when they retired everything became more chaotic. My poor uncle probably should have gone into academia as opposed to business since he's neurodivergent* and not particularly practically minded but his brothers had left to start careers in other professions, so I think he felt the mantle had fallen to him.

    From what I can tell it was kind of inertia that completely killed the business. With supermarkets charging less and less for milk, the old way of operating a dairy farm as a regular business is not really viable. Successful farmers these days don't just do produce; they do open days and sell "country experiences" to punters who crave some kind of rural nostalgia. You pretty much have to be half farm and half events agency providing organised fun to school/office groups or families.

    *From what I understand, they didn't really have the vocabulary to recognise this in the 70s. Family thought he was bright but eccentric.

30 comments