Comment by throwaway2037

> It is interesting that you immediately jumped to "illegal people".

USDA estimated 42% of farm hands is doing illegal work few years ago. Other sources estimated to 50-60%. That is a fuckton and has an incredibly significant impact on wage pressures. It was also brought up in the context of GOP policy "the party that hates them" which has focused heavily on illegals and caused quite the uproar. It's hard to not jump to it in that cotnext and also more than those "US H-2A via for temp farm hands" i believe.

>how many native-born Belgians are still performing low-skill manual labour on a farm?

It's mostly migrant work indeed same as in the meat industry I observed. They proudly had giant old black and white wall covering pics of locals doing the work decades ago but now among more than a hundred there were maybe 2 belgians on the factory floor at any given moment. That said here in belgium I suspect the amount of illegal work in agriculture is lower than in the US and places like Italy.

>Call me cynical, but I am not nostalgic for the "smaller independent farm". If farms want to be smaller and independent in the 21st century, they need to distinguish themselves with product (usually: organic or "free range"), branding, and value add (example: create a cheese brand that only uses your special organic cow's milk). If they cannot or will not, then they will need to sell their business to the mega agg corps.

Call me cynical as well but that doesn't help for the most part.

I follow some such farms that do exactly that. 2 examples from sweden I know jump trough hoops for those organic and "free range" labels. Hoops that are made specifically for the massive operations. So the giant poultry halls get to add some square meters of semi outside space, pull in a big proportional subsidy and aquire the free range label whilst the guy trying to differentiate himself has to add elaborate construction to his chicken tractors for his free roaming chickens to follow the spirit of the law made for the massive operation.

I personally know and helped a peppers/tomatoes and respective seed operation. All heirloom, mostly organic and they too almost had to close their books because they suddenly needed seed passports and a load more paperwork and the legislators apparently hadn't considered that this was something that was also done by corporations that count with numbers smaller than 1mil. That's not me being hyperbolic. They straight up confirmed they hadn't thought it possible that someone might run an operation without boatloads of employees or an upstart.

Also small is relative in the context i described. Many of these were still big expensive operations making investments costing hundreds of thousands, operating a lot of land. Just run by a normal family rather than a big coporate structure.

Mind you the meat company i worked for was also a family operation but the family all drove Brabuses that cost more than my house and had spare money to invest in retirement homes, etc....Puts it a bit in perspective.

> If they cannot or will not, then they will need to sell their business to the mega agg corps.

I do not wish to live in a corporatocracy nor do i fancy a form of capitalism where healthy competition is impossible since nobody can enter or maintain in certain vital sectors.