AG Schnozz wrote:
>>> We are highly mechanized here in Iowa. We have to. There isn't
>>> the population base to do it any differently.
>>>
>> Chicken <==> Egg
>>
>
> So you want to move here?
Nope. I'm not sure I've ever been any closer to Iowa than the height of
a plane. I've been to other Midwestern States. Some wonderful people,
but I grew up with mountain and ocean and can't imagine being happy
someplace with neither.
Back in the old days, when Safeway had quite a few small divisions in
the Western and upper Midwest, they would train ans season specialists
in thigs like HR, PR, merchandising, etc. by starting them out in the
smallest divisions and letting them work their way up. When the
non-union discounters had driven A&P and Kroger out of Omaha, we tried
to stick it out, but couldn't. When we gave up and left, the highly
regarded HR manager was offered a transfer to a larger division.
Although from the NW, he had found his home there, on a ranchette
running with kids, pigs, chickens, a couple of horses, dogs.... No way
he was leaving. Different places for different people.
> The agribusiness is a very lean machine and the people load is seasonal.
>
> I work about five miles from what is now, I believe, the world's largest
> chicken-egg production facility.
I wasn't really referring to the egg business, but the old question of
which comes first.
The historical population before mechanization and consolidation was
much higher than now, as all you folks living among abandoned and dying
towns know. Mechanization and chemical assistance reduced the number of
people needed. With no jobs, a great many of them moved away or died off
and weren't replaced.
It was, in fact, the reluctance of people born and raised in the
agricultural parts of the Midwest to leave that was a major cause of the
death of unionized retailers in the area. Too many relatively well
educated and competent people with good work ethic were willing to work
at a less than living wage in order to stay where they wanted to live.
The labor shortage for any big ramp up in production/acreage is a direct
result of prior changes. Should long term economic and ecological
changes mandate a change to more labor intensive methods, as, for
example, if the doomsayers are right, oil production plummets and prices
skyrocket, agricultural commodity prices will go up enough to support
the wages needed to attract new workers.
Short term, labor supply is probably fairly inelastic, but long term
quite elastic.
Moose
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