By: Bill Gore

Bill Gore — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:49:36 +0000

Driving through the central valley it has often occurred to me that the corporate mega-ag that dominates this once-fertile area is an essentially un-economic blight that self-perpetuates its own twisted status quo at the expense of everyone: consumers, workers, owners and, yes, the landscape and the soil. Consumers are fed bio-engineered ‘food’ that is grown in a toxic stew of heavy fertilizer, chemicals and totally dead soil. Want to know why central valley corporate farms will pay $70k for a truckload of bee hives to pollinate? Because bees (and humans) cannot survive in the dead poisoned moonscape.

Workers keep the status quo going working in blazing sun in one of the most poisoned environments on Earth. Note that the central valley, even in areas where the water hasn’t been cut off to be allowed to flow out to sea to support a 2 inch fish (unbelievable) is truly a plantation economy with super high endemic unemployment and poverty.

Owners, whther they are shareholders or families,are hooked on the cash flows generated by these zombie farms.

Having said all this, unionization is just going to further entrench this messed up situation. It will create a class of well paid, hereditary union ‘leaders’ who will make sure that the poor working minions stay on the farm. It will incentivize mechanization by the owners, culminating in the near future in robotic farms. It will force the further consolidation and corporatization of farming, exactly the opposite of what farming needs: smaller, more decentralized, more ‘economic’ in the balanced scorecard sense of the word operations. None of this will benefit the people who presently work so hard for so little on these farms.

These workers need to become OWNERS/operators. This will give them control of their destiny.

Comments on: Labor-backed bill may force union on farm workers

By: Bill Gore