“impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
At the time, SoCal Berry Growers challenged the move, accusing United Farm Workers of misconduct. But in August, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board ruled that the election “was not conducted improperly” and the move to unionize was upheld.
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“SoCal management is now saying it will shut down, in what we believe is a clear violation of the law to avoid their legal and moral obligations to the workers who pick the strawberries,” UFW Vice President Roman Pinal said in a statement to the Ventura County Star. “The UFW is familiar with these tactics and will utilize all legal options to defend our members' rights.”
So what you are saying is that we need to BOYCOTT DRISCOLL?
Their worker rights and safety violations record is abysmal. They were publicly exposed during COVID and the public largely forgot. 📢Let’s be reminded again!
Driscoll’s have almost every berry on lock in the US for nationwide grocery chains. their IP on the berry industry is nestle levels shitty. all their berries taste horrible with all the chemicals in and on them
It's true that farms are being hit hard by the consequences of this administration's actions. And berry farms, along with the rest of the specialty crops businesses, are probably not getting much of the billions in federal handouts directed towards field crops. So maybe these Ventura farms really are making a loss.
However it's also true that Driscoll farms just dumped its CEO two months ago and is facing class action suits related to its pesticide and marketing practices, a seperate class action for wage theft, and possible state fines for all of the above.
It's not a coincidence that this particular company's subsidiaries, in a crop sector and county that has had very little UFW presence suddenly had multiple farms unionising. Whether the unions are the cause or a symptom of the underlying economic problems facing this company is something for the courts to figure out.
These people are extremely annoying. They won't come back later and say they were wrong, infact they'll even cheer the "bad business" leaving, there can be no nuance. I saw this constantly around the billionaire tax too, as if there are no costs with those people leaving the state indefinitely.
Tradeoffs to everything folks, it's simply to easy for a business to pickup and leave to another state with less regulations!
Except most people don't go through with their threats to move. NYC found out most actually enjoy living in NYC and don't actually move to Florida and Texas
I suppose you would support a theoretical global wealth tax?
That is to say, I think you’re letting the morbidly rich cry and whine and dictate too much. Just because they complain and fuss like newborns doesn’t change the underlying economics, and that extreme wealth divides are extraordinarily unstable. Plus, america can block the movement of quite a bit of money out of the country. It’s very hard to escape the US government. Simply put, in my opinion, you just aren’t thinking big enough.
Lol they can't just leave the US we have exit taxes and again most billionaires actually said they don't really care about the tax it won't impact them enough to bother.
> Except most people don't go through with their threats to move. NYC found out most actually enjoy living in NYC and don't actually move to Florida and Texas
Here's the thing about NYC: There's a lot of blood to suck.
If Zohran Mamdani were elected to mayor of Seattle, we'd be talking about what a terrible mayor he was/is, because his socialist counterpart, katie wilson, there is making life INCREDIBLY difficult for business and business IS leaving. In fact, real estate is under pressure because people are trying to sell their houses and leave FAST. Businesses and billionaires have moved.
New York City has a massive center of gravity that will take a lot more screwups by the left for people to leave. Since Mamdani has become mayor, we've seen a surge of homeless encampments in NYC in places like west 34th street to west 46th street and east 23rd. It seems like the east coast leftists want to bring in the homeless encampments that the west coast leftists created.
Give it enough time and NYC will become a hell hole like portland/seattle/oakland.
It always cracks me up when people call Portland and Seattle hell holes. I worked with a guy who was telling me all about his trip to Portland when he was a teenager. We lived in Arizona and his trip had been almost ten years ago. He loved it! Went on and on about how beautiful the city was. He then followed that up with how much of a shame it was that it was so shitty now. He hasn't been in ten years, but is certain Portland is a complete trash site now.
Hard to pack up your land and leave. If this business can’t make it on that plot of land, CA needs to LV tax it if it just sits fallow until another farmer can come up with a business plan that doesn’t require starvation wages.
I was obviously opening the conversation to the larger theme at hand.
In this case it's not clear from the article if they're opening up somewhere else, or just shuttering the business there altogether. Is that any better? What will happen to strawberry prices next year?
It’s also not just labor, fuel, and water but also the cost of staying compliant with new regulations can be hundreds per acre. People should be paid fair wages and we should keep our produce safe, but when you’re getting 10 cents on the dollar for sale price and every input is up it’s hard to continue.
I work in the industry, with different crops, but everyone is hurting unless they are wealthy by other means. Everyone’s scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to hang on until there is a “good year”.
Where are we hearing about what the owners are taking out? Is it a venture capital company? What’s on their balance sheet? Yes, when expenses go up, you change, but is labor cost the villain? See how the hourly wage is mentioned as the villain?
Amazing how chambers of commerce, tax associations and business have convinced a wide swath of the populace that a liveable wage is the crux of all the woes specifically in the US but also worldwide. All the while CEO pay has increased inexplicably. Board members get paid in stock and fees of 10k+ for a few meetings per year (and I’m lowballing here). But god forbid the people doing the most menial of labor have enough to house and feed themselves.
Fuel and fertilizer costs are temporary, a Union isn't.
It could also be that the Driscoll strawberries that show up in Safeway are absolute crap. A seemingly impossible mix of unripe, spoiled, and moldy in the same package. If they were better, people might buy more and they could charge more. I look at them every week, but only see a carton worth buying every couple of months.
So the increasing costs of inputs has nothing to do with it? Just labor? You just ignore everything else because you want to make this about agriculture workers alone?
Apparently you don't understand the difference between a stock value and a flow value. This isn't even econ 101, it's a high school level misunderstanding.
Yes. The owners close down, the bank buys their property. They buy it back and continue operations next growing season; but avoid the pesky union by being a different company.
I think there are two in the 80s I could find that essentially had that exact thing happen. Meat packing plant with a 2 year turnaround and a bakery with a 1 year one
It seems pretty routine if not common. Banks take possession of properties all of the time and whether the bank sells it to a new grower or not they’d still have obligations to the union if the business is deemed a successor.
Generally the workers hired at the old plant are at least somewhat composed of the old group
Not always… banks take possession of properties and hold them, sometimes for years before reselling them
I guess I don’t know what you are looking for. I have no dog in this race, but I at least could find a couple by a cursory search. You made it sound like it was impossible but there’s at least some documented evidence out there. There were others, those were just a couple I found
• What happened: In June 2022, workers at an Augusta, Maine Chipotle filed a petition for a union election. Just before a scheduled NLRB hearing, Chipotle announced it was permanently closing the store, citing understaffing and management shortages.
• Outcome: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled the closure was illegal retaliation. In March 2023, Chipotle agreed to a $240,000 settlement to compensate former employees and promised not to discriminate or close stores based on union support.
DNAinfo and Gothamist (New York City — 2017)
• What happened: Billionaire owner Joe Ricketts shut down the local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist in November 2017—leaving 115 journalists and staff unemployed—just one week after editorial employees voted 25-2 to unionize with the Writers Guild of America East.
• Outcome: Ricketts publicly cited economic challenges in local media, though critics and union organizers labeled it a direct retaliatory strike against unionization. Because it was a total closure of the media entity rather than a selective branch closure, it largely fell within legal employer exemptions, though a shutdown severance agreement was later negotiated.
Starbucks (Selected Store Closures — 2022)
• What happened: During a nationwide wave of union organizing, Starbucks closed several high-profile unionized or organizing stores (such as locations in Ithaca, New York and Seattle), publicly citing safety concerns, staffing issues, or facility problems.
• Outcome: The NLRB sided with workers in multiple cases, finding that certain closures constituted illegal anti-union retaliation and ordering impacted stores to reopen.
Historical Context & Legal Precedent
• The Darlington Precedent: The legal benchmark stems largely from the U.S. Supreme Court case Textile Workers Union v. Darlington Manufacturing Co. (1965), which established that an employer has the absolute right to shut down their entire enterprise for any reason (including anti-union animus), but cannot close just a part of a business to chill union activity at remaining facilities.
Prior to 1965:
Darlington Manufacturing Co. (Darlington, South Carolina – 1956)
• The Closure: This is the most famous pre-1965 instance and the specific case that went to the Supreme Court. The mill was part of a larger textile conglomerate, Deering Milliken & Co., run by Roger Milliken. When the Textile Workers Union of America won a representation election by just six votes, Milliken immediately called a board meeting, liquidated the corporation, and permanently closed the plant, putting 550 people out of work.
• The Anti-Union Ripple Effect: Textile manufacturers across the American South famously printed bumper stickers that read "Remember Darlington" to warn workers at other mills that voting for a union would result in their workplaces being permanently closed down. The subsequent legal battle lasted nearly a decade before culminating in the 1965 ruling.
The General Strike Evictions (Horse Creek Valley, South Carolina – 1934)
• The Closure: During the massive 1934 Textile Workers Strike, cotton mill workers in South Carolina walked out to force their employers to comply with federal labor codes.
• The Retaliation: When federal mediators urged the workers to return to work, the mill owners retaliated by permanently locking the gates, refusing to let the striking workers back into the mills, and evicting them and their families from company-owned housing to break the union's presence entirely.
The "Yellow Dog" Factory Liquidations (Pre-1930s Industrial Era)
• The Tactic: Before the Wagner Act of 1935 legalized unions, a common practice among smaller manufacturing plants, garment shops, and cigar factories was to temporarily dissolve the business when employees went on strike or attempted to organize.
• The Loophole: Owners would fire the entire workforce, change the corporate name, or wait out the workers' savings until they could hire an entirely new, non-union workforce bound by "yellow-dog contracts" (agreements promising never to join a union). Because corporate transparency laws were weak, shifting operations or shutting down to restart under a new name was highly effective.
The Homestead Steel Strike Closures (Homestead, Pennsylvania – 1892)
• The Closure: While technically a lockout rather than a permanent business dissolution, Andrew Carnegie and his partner Henry Clay Frick used a total facility shutdown at Carnegie Steel to dismantle the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.
• The Resolution: Frick shut down the entire mill, built a massive fence around the property, hired 300 armed Pinkerton detectives to guard it, and declared the company would never recognize the union again. The mill was only reopened once the union was completely broken and replaced by non-union labor.
None of those—except for vague nameless companies in the undated Yellow Dog scenario—are even close to the idiocy you described.
And why did you need Google? Isn’t it in Zinn’s A People’s History like you originally said? Just pull out your dog-eared annotated copy and tell me what company has shut down, had a bank buy their property and hold it for them, and then a year or two later come back and opened the exact same business in the same location with the same property…
The People's History of the United States, which I began my comment with, is a history textbook filled with examples.
So ya know skip by the source provided. Fon't bother googling and then act like I'm the crazy/stupid one.
All of mankind's history is literally in your hand. If a claim shocks you, you can learn how priviledged your worldview is in private next time, instead of being shocked, shocked! Capitalists work together to try and enslave the rest of us even when it is gasp illegal!
the capitol class. owners. I've worked several businesses that will literally close down a manufacturing plant, pack up all the tools and move to a new location if they hear the word "union" muttered enough times. And to be clear, the owners of this company have multiple locations and multiple businesses in this space and they think it's the cheaper option to pull up and relocate. they aren't going to have "zero profit", they'll have a temporary capitol expenditure and they'll move on.
I have mixed feelings about this. If the farms ar not making money, and even so the workers push to increase pay, and the farms have no ability to set the price due to competition with importers, I don't see how this doesn't just crush the farms; essentially finishing a job that was already half way done. I mean, I'm all for people making more money, but this just means that we are utilizing non-unized workers making pennies a day in some third world country instead of our workers doing the work, so I am not 100% sure I see this as an ethical/morals issue, we are just moving the moral harm out of site... What am I missing?
This is indeed a problem you get with adversarial union vs company relations.
For a bit more of a balanced approach you could look at germany where unions often participate in high level company decisions, where they still fight for their workers, but they also try to find a path for the company to remain profitable so it keeps existing.
America could do a lot worse than emulating Germany's approach to labor regs, it wouldn't even require particularly sweeping changes, though for some reason it doesn't get brought up too often as a model.
Presumably they're thinking of VW, which is kind of getting its lunch eaten (though labor costs aren't a huge fraction of their vehicle costs), especially in EVs by asian competition
German tools manufacturing used to be a big draw too and that has since moved to China and now places like SEA and India are attempting to gain marketshare too. There are few ways that European economies remain competitive on the world stage these days.
Last I checked, Germans weren't starving in the streets. They seem to be doing fine. Competing until the last worker dies of exhaustion doesn't seem like a worthwhile goal.
Germans are actively destroying their own economy by blowing up nuclear power plants and making themselves slaves to Russian oil & gas. They're moving their manufacturing to China because the country has become so uncompetitive. I don't want to emulate anything about Germany (or Europe as a whole).
Unions work with producers on this all the time, unions don't want places to go out of business or become non competitive. Show the union that financial info and they will negotiate to keep the business running. No, this is almost certainly a case of closing down to prevent "union contagion" where unionization spreads, giving up a profitable business because workers were organized enough to demand a bigger share of profits. Very common, Starbucks famously closed like every coffee shop that unionized.
That’s where tariffs actually become useful and proper to use. Tariff the imported strawberries so they are the same price or more than U.S. strawberries.
I feel like that is a fine line though, because then it risks just incentivizing inefficient business practices. It seems like it would have to be a more broad market analysis on labor practices and scale or something. I don't know that there is an easy way to approach this, and I feel like tariffs are a sledge hammer, where we need a finishing hammer.
Well the finishing hammer is properly negotiated trade agreements. We had a few of them work pretty well for economic growth, but someone shit all over them before Natalie could fasten a nappy.
Tariffs should be used only to protect industries that require massive capital investment, as if they close down prices of imported goods would instantly go up.
Agriculture sectors like strawberries farming that require almost no investments should never be protected by tariffs.
if your business can only survive by exploiting slave level workers, then you shouldn't be a business (one also notes that the owner's yacht is doing just fine).
Study the fuck out of economics and design policies extremely carefully. Even then you'll only get "almost everyone" and cannot possibly get "everyone".
A yacht doesn’t move the needle on overall profitability
Additionally people can be salty as they want but most of the world importing things from SE asia africa etc is relying on slave labor wages to get something cheaply. You included
OK thats fine, then we should end imports from countries that utilize slave level workers. My point isn't that it is OK to do this. It is that we are just moving where it happens to some place less visible, and in doing so we are just getting rid of those jobs here. =\ One without the other is just ineffective.
For the most part farms not making money is a result of policy choices. Subsidies, tariffs, and crop insurance (insurance not being a subsidy but looks a lot like a subsidy with how regulated and even directly government-funded it can be.) Labor cost is a factor, sure, but Trump deliberately raised all the costs across the board without improving the subsidy situation and everyone suddenly suprise pikachu that this happens.
>100% sure I see this as an ethical/morals issue, we are just moving the moral harm out of site... What am I missing?
I see this type of logic constantly getting thrown around. But none of it makes sense when it comes to farming.
Driscoll does not have a "not making money" problem. If you want to grow strawberries in Africa and ship them to the USA, go ahead. It will never be cheaper than growing them in the USA even if the workers asked for a 300% raise. And will cost 11x more due to transportation and refrigeration costs, even if the labour was free.
Grown in Mexico is a different story since it is closer. But even with the cost of transportation, refrigeration and duties, it almost works out the same. For a farm the deciding factor is the water, climate and the soil and proximity to market.
Look man, I buy strawberries for a living...truckloads and truckloads. Two things here. This artical isn't about Driscoll, the multinational, it is about the local grower in CA that grows for them. To your statement about prices, I buy strawberries from freaking Greece and Egypt for less than I can get grade As from the local folks. Every once in a while there is a weird year where there is a glut in the states or the fresh market was weak or something, so the frozen market prices come down, but you are talking out your ass about strawberry pricing.
To be frank, I just don't know. I have vendors up in PA that bring in the Egyptian strawberries for me, and a new one down in New Jersy that is bringing them into Houston for me from the EU, and when I compare them to the Californian strawberries they get beat out by a good 8% or so, landed. If I go for the harder baking strawberries that come out of central Mexico or Baja California, they might get down a bit closer, but when I'm looking at contract rates, I get a better deal coming in from the East Coast =\ It is as mind boggling to me as you, I spend a lot of time looking at these numbers LOL. The ones that get me the most are the ones from Greece. Like...I know they are in the EU with some tight labour laws, I don't know how they are doing it. The Egyptian ones are obviously just low wages and low production costs, which goes back to my original point, where we are just importing the result of other people's slavery jobs =\
A lot of the European/overseas producers are nationalized. It’s the same reason tomato paste from Ukraine or Spain is cheaper than from CA on the east coast. Those countries see it as a make work project and subsidize them.
It’s a real challenge as a west coast producer to compete on the east coast against nationalized international producers.
You bet! I'm not a big long form guy anymore, but I feel like there is a lot of depth that could be had in these discussions that just sort of gets drowned out by memes and bots. Appreciate that you took the time to read =)
This was interesting. If you add in that the original basis for the agricultural industry in California was cheap land and cheap labor and cheap water, then this is an industry that has has been actually feeding on itself to maintain numbers. Which can we support? The international market or industrialize our agriculture?
A good business owner meets competition head-on. But that's nearly impossible with US agriculture because of all the pesticides & foreign labor. So the farms losing revenue is something they brought on themselves. As such, farm owners are 100% responsible for that lost & dying revenue.
Crops can be grown hydroponically & safe from toxins. It requires heavy investment at the start, but pays off majorly for as long as that system is maintained. SoCal Berry Growers could've implemented this system to gain a top position over all competition easily. They also could've organized to change the laws regarding imports of edible crops. There's always things that can be done. These US businesses dying out never properly cared for their workers, constantly chose cheap foreign labor over Americans with healthcare bills, continue to lie about Americans not wanting to work, blast our foods with poison & align themselves with the Republican Party. The truest solution to the problem you posit is for the workers to organize & build a competing company with pesticide-free food. Or just a competing company. There's far too many horrible idiots in this world only organizing for better pay (like US nurses) & never organizing for better conditions for all.
Sure, I agree. I think every billionaire is a policy failure on display =\ The artical isn't about the Driscoll family though, it is about one of their larger growers.
My primary question would be if this is one of the more arid regions of california, The west is running out of water. If they leave, even if it negatively impacts the economy it might be a win
Workers aren’t going to get fair pay unless they can collectively bargain. It’s no accident that the decline of the union is also coincident with the ever decreasing share of profits.
I think it says a lot about your perspective that you are willing to condemn unions as a “cartel“ rather than acknowledge the nuance of the situation, including unions being instrumental and protecting employees against employer abuses. Abuse that are particularly common in this particular kind of work.
Because we currently have unregulated corporate exploitation with no offset for the people actually working. But you don't seem to ever complain about that, just when actual workers get paid.
Your reply has an interesting combination of confidence and ignorance.
A cartel can be either an economic or drug cartel. Clearly we aren’t talking about a drug cartel, so you must be referencing an economic cartel. The definition of which is:
“
A formal or informal agreement among competing commercial or industrial enterprises to restrict output, fix prices, and allocate market shares to achieve monopoly-style profits
.”
That doesn’t describe a union at all. So when you say:
“
Unions are by definition a cartel.”
You either don’t know the definition of ‘cartel’ or you are intentionally misleading us, which would be stupid since we all have access to the internet and therefore a dictionary. In conclusion, you don’t know what cartels means.
However none of that matters. What matters is your SECOND major error. You say “
They extract economic rents from the marketplace that ultimately come out of the consumers pocket.” Of course this assumes corporate profits are untouchable which is again, an insane mistake to make. So absurd a mistake that I cannot even be kind and assume it came from your ignorance. I have to assume you know this is wrong.
My last assumption is that you aren’t in corporate leadership because your writing is too crude. Therefore it seems like you are a corporate bootlicker which has to be the most spineless thing I’ve seen in a while. It has truly been disappointing reading your misguided comments. I hope you get better
It is widely understood that unions are a type of cartel in economics. They're a counter to employers having too much market power, so they're not viewed as an entirely negative thing. But they control the flow of labor in the market, which is cartel behavior, which is what /u/y0da1927 is saying.
Under U.S. law—specifically the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914—the law explicitly establishes that "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce"
The term drug cartel is derivative of an economic cartel. It's not two things, it's a subtype of the same thing.
Then you give me some definition of a cartel that perfectly describes a union as a formal agreement amongst competing commercial interests to fix prices.
Corporate profits are over the medium term untouchable as capital will flow to where is gets rewarded. Any decrease in profits is temporary until businesses made uncompetitive by higher labor costs fail or prices increase such that adequate ROI is achieved.
If you want to throw around lazy insults that seems reflective of your cognitive ability. Ad hominum is the how idiots argue.
The problem here is that most of the productivity gains over the past 20 years have come from capital investments and business process improvement, not labor.
Back in the 70s, labor's share contribution to productivity growth was roughly quadruple what it is today. If labor were still contributing as much to productivity growth as they were fifty years ago, they would be seeing more returns.
Edit: Guys, the downvotes here are silly. This is well-studied. Labor's contribution to productivity growth is dropping. It has been dropping for decades. This is something that we have to grapple with, not ignore.
Or just a cost to everyone. Unions have their place, but can enshrine bad business practices. The ILA is a great example of this where they rabidly fight automation in ports on the east coast which creates a direct pass through cost on every good that goes through these ports to protect unnecessary jobs.
The automative union (UAW) also has had some objectively shitty decisions, not counting the direct corruption either. Two tiers, forced ICE engines for more labor, etc.
Sure - water goes from 20 to 88 per acre, labor goes from 13 to 25 and the company pulls the pin. Companies will eat all the other cost increases but not a chance their paying workers, or supplying better working conditions or benefits in lieu of payment…
Unions only ever really work when there’s some sort of arbitrary political requirement for them to be used for projects, which in turn is only really possible to enforce on public projects.
A lot of Driscoll's high margin export business dried up in non grower regions. They would have been fine had they not gone all in on China during the 2010's, only for most of the market to get subsumed by domestic/regional growers.
They are doing the classic retreat cost cutting retreat to places like Mexico and Austrailia, but the product just isn't the same and they'll be dead in a few years.
There’s a great article about the entirely predictable China Driscoll snafu here:
https://www.wsj.com/business/driscolls-berry-farms-china-competition-b0b49f04
As someone who has started growing hydroponics at home, more people should look into growing their own fruits and vegetables. It’s way easier than people think and using a large rain barrel is great for drier weather. You can get started with less than 20 at the hardware store.
I have about 80 square feet of indoor hydroponics grow area, I grow peppers, tomatos, microgreens, lettuce, pot, and green beans. I get maybe a couple pounds of fruit/veg from my plants and a few ounces of pot every now and then. I pay around an extra $190/month in electricity. It all sounds good until you factor in a couple thousand watts of lighting...
I see nowhere near that much in savings. Now. I do grow seedlings out for the outdoor garden, and greenhouse, so that is useful as well, but the biggest value is just the food quality. As long as I have electricity I can grow fresh veg. When everyone was talking about cyclosporia, we were eating rabbit bacon and microgreen sandwhiches on homemade bread. Overall, it is not a money saving endeavor (even though it totally started out that way), but it does provide me with very high quality produce, protein, and whatnot, all year round. I could totally just eat rice with the beans I grow in the summers, and come out waay further ahead though, financially.
I mean, I assume it is warmer there than at 6300 ft in the Rockies ;) You could probably do a lot of this outdoors so long as the weather is stable enough, in which case I suggest going with living soil and lots of compost, and then just learning to pressure can and dehydrate for the winters. Then you don't need the electricity. The indoor setup here started because my growing season here is so sporadic and short. We might swing between 70s and snow every other week for a few months, so knowing when to seed, and keeping them alive is rough, so I start everything indoors where I can and then that just evolved into, "Well I have lights here...I might as well just leave them on and have greens in the winter.
The plants would be a battery of sorts. Grow them during the day while the sun shines and the grid is less stressed and then burn them for warmth some time the sun is down. Or feed 'em to the meat bunnies.
Carnivore diet is still hip and cool, right? Guys?
The only thing that I have ever been net positive on gardening is potatoes because I just throw old potatoes in the ground and sometimes get more new potatoes without doing anything, and even then it's only just barely worth the cost of my labor.
If you assume $5/pound for organic strawberries they would have to harvest 480 pounds per year. Commercial yield for strawberries is 68,000 pounds per acre or 1.6 pound per sqft so breakeven is about 307 sqft or roughly 4x the space they have. I'd say there is no chance they are anywhere near breaking even and that's not even including labor and nutrients.
I got introduced to the hydroponics for less than $100, although I have expanded since then but all I am still under $1200.
The light was the most expensive and I am sure there are better cheaper ones than the $50 I spent Spiderfarmer Light
Then just a simple home depot 27 gallon tote, some net cups, and coco choir (coconut husks). You will be shocked on how little fertilizer you need. I bought a 12.5 lb masterblend fertilizer combo for around $30 and I still have some left over. I think it's around 45 grams per 7 gallons of water.
Here's a picture of my original lettuce, they look super leggy because we had been chopping the tops off of them for a while before I grabbed a picture.
I was inspired to try it during covid times from this video Hoocho Kratky. My first hydroponics setup
TBH it's actually incredibly cheap to go the hydroponics route. Simple clothe bags and a bucket can produce really good results.
You bet! This is all for indoors, but I also have a small urban farm where we grow our veg and fruit. I've tried hydro, I've tried 'living soil', but I actually run most things as a semi-hydroponic setup, where I have an inert substrate sitting on a bottom wicking base. For the substrate I use a 70/30 mix of coco coir/perlite.
IMO bottom wicking is the way to go for almost everything. I use bottom wicking when growing my sprouts in the seed trays, all the way up to tomatos 3-5 ft tall in 5g cloth bags. I like the AC Infinity circle ones, and just buy a shitload of cotton wicking string. You fill the basin, set the pot on top and just refill the basin as needed, the plant wicks up what it wants. I've seen some pretty complex setups with tubing and full hydro, but this just feels so much lower maintenance than having to change reservoirs and keep things ultra clean.
I generally use something like General Hydroponics or Crop Salts for my nutrients, and just mix a few gallons at a time. After a while, the PH and EC monitoring become quick and easy, and I use a bit of a botulinum bug to keep things clean, called Hydroguard.
For the light, I use a mish mash of all sorts of grow lights, all LED full spectrum. Most people I've noted seem to use PPFD or micromols or whatever, to measure their light, but then you have to figure out how long your lights are on. I use and app that calculates something called DLI, daily light interval, that sort of precalculates it based on your on/off time of your lights.
Sorry thats a bunch of random stuff on an economics forum, and just the random things that I could think of about each piece of the setup. It is a real rabbit hole! (which I raise as well!) Anyway, let me know if you have any specific questions =)
You are spot on when using wicking beds. We have two soil based ones in the backyard but I ran into a problem with the 10mm plastic liner starting to leak. Also the roaches have been a problem but using diatomaceous earth seems to get rid of them. I got one of my neighbors into the wicking beds but they went the smart way buying older used ~275 gallon totes that they cut in half. It does incredibly well, I was blown away when I saw theirs this year.
I am interested in trying the wicking process using some basic cloth bags as you mentioned. What do you use for the basin to hold the water / nutrients?
Hah that sounds like an awesome idea using an IBC tote! I've thought about using them for some sort of aquaculture, but never thought about using them as a sort of in-bed wicking system!
Edit: Forgot to answer your question! I use the generic bases from Amazon that are like the Spider Farmer or AC Infinity wicking bases, they are cheaper. And I use general hydroponics, or crop salts for the nutrients =)
When I made the leap to start I wasn’t as worried about the electricity since we have solar panels. Our current electricity plan is free from 9pm to 7:00am so that might be an option for you also. I have a 4x4 tent that I use so no where close to your 80 feet but I want to move into a wall mounted nft system next. We have taller ceilings so the space is just wasted on pictures:)
Hah I actually built an artificially lowered ceiling in the area where I'm growing, for easier humidity and temperature control. I hope to have a solar panel and electricity situation similar to yours some day! Holy cow that sounds fantastic!
Woof thats a pretty tight budget. You'd almost have to go with something like flourescents and lettuce seeds in a few makeshift trays sitting on a little plastic platform in a bowl, with a wick up into the dirt of each pot. I don't think you could buy retail for that budget, you'd have to get the flourescents on craigslist or at a garage sale. Plant pots you can find behind the local plant store in the dumpster, they throw out a lot of these. You can makeshift some wicking bases cutting these up. Dirt, so...this is where we blow the budget. You can't just get coco coir super cheap or perlite, you'll probably spend at least $20 on just the substrait, and then another 40 on the nutrients. If you go living soil, then you can go dig some soil out the yard, and maybe give it a bit of some garage sale miracle grow. Again on $20, your wicks will likely need to be fabric strips from old cloths, or some old shoelaces or something. Get seeds on sale right now at the garden center, since they are off season.
that would get you going for winter greens, and give you something to start seeds with for the spring, and then you'd want to get them outdoors asap after they got a couple inches, because flourescents don't provide enough light for very much, and your plants will all etiolate and tip over and die.
It won't work for everyone, but for our family, this was a great usage of extra power from the solar panels we couldn't store during the day. We have batteries but were just topping them off, and with the hydroponics the utilization is is much better (and has tastier results).
I am in the US Rockies. I run about 3000 watts right bow for my space. I have a sodium light that I break out when it gets tooooo cold but mostly that one stays in storage.
You aren't wrong someone threw some near the LA river on a walking path and they kept growing until whoever owns the house behind it had the area cut back.
I might do that. I swear I have not had one good tasting tomato since I lived in Ohio and got them from a farm. The crap in grocery stores aren’t tomatoes.
I live in the PNW where like you in Ohio, we have shorter days in summer compared to California. I grow a good crop of cherry tomatoes in summer, but I cannot grow the big beefsteak tomatoes I use to grow when living in CA because of the shorter summer months.
The cherry tomatoes I grow ripen before summers end and are really sweet.
Similar thing in my small part of New England. I can’t get bigger variety to do well. Blend of blossom end rot for the paste types and cracks on the slicer types. Small cherry types go well early to October. Yellow pear types have done well later, I gain some reliable novelty until Halloween.
I’m selecting off a “wild cherry” tomato variety. One plant that has lasted the longer than any before it this year. Hoping I can get a more cold hardy variety saved.
Here's a pic of my Black Krim tomatos the other day. This is my first time doing tomatos and I didn't have the nutrient set correctly so they were flowering but not producing. Hopefully soon.
We tried growing herbs but just the electric alone for a small table top one was more than buying them at the grocery store. Seems like you need to go bigger to get your moneys worth but not sure.
This is where I got started. It's incredibly easy to get started for very little money. Try lettuce first since it's stupid easy and grows very fast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5SmKmrO3zU
>The impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
This captures the full structural collapse engineered by corporate Ag, political lobbying, and deregulatory greed.
Corporate Ag lobbies spend millions supporting administrations and policies that threaten to deport their own labor force. They spent decades relying on a vulnerable, underpaid workforce with zero legal leverage, only to act shocked when anti immigrant policies choke off their labor pool and force local workers to take these grueling jobs.
They lobbied to strip back FDA food safety enforcement and gut inspection budgets to save a buck. But when lax safety leads to massive recalls and tanked consumer confidence, executives don't cut their own payouts, they squeeze working conditions to protect their profit margins.
The second those workers stand up and unionize to demand basic living standards and safety, corporate leadership opts to burn it down. They’d rather shut down six farms and fire over 500 workers than negotiate a fair contract or accept lower profit margins.
They run straight to conservative media outlets to claim "regulations and greedy unions ruined agriculture," completely hiding the fact that their own anti worker, deregulatory lobbying destroyed their own business model.
You can’t lobby for a government that destroys your workforce, deregulate the safety rules that protect your product, and then pretend to be the victim when the whole house of cards collapses under the weight of your own greed.
The impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
Water costs have quadrupled. Labor has doubled. None of their berries are organic anyway. I would never buy them. Can’t be washed of all those pesticides. Read the article.
This article specifically highlights that comparative study between pesticide residues in organic and non-organic produce is currently problematic. It suggests that more should be done, not that their findings should be seen as conclusive.
Did you read the article, or did you just read the title and relevant bit of the abstract?
The reason is that organic produce allows for pesticides as long as they are organic pesticides. Which means that newer artificial ones, which are sometimes better aren't used instead. So then they use more of the weaker (typically shorter lasting) organic pesticides instead. However, what they break down into is another overlooked factor.
But this can also get a little absurd. Because organic in this context generally, but does not exclusively mean nothijg synthetic (made in a lab). But some non synthetic stuff is not allowed and some synthetic is allowed. And sometimes they same thing can be allowed or not depending on the origin of the product (auxins, a plant growth hormone), or how it's used (copper sulfate).
It could be little to none, or a lot more of allowed pesticides. There's no requirement of no pesticides, just ones that can still be used and still be considered organic. It's not the same pesticides, but it could also be ones that are potentially worse for you.
yeah, here in CA we have enough small farmers and farmers markets that I never buy from the chains anymore. Currently I only buy from the local guy about a mile away. Best Strawberries I've ever had, and I love supporting the small guy.
This article is such a joke. They point to labor costs and water costs and then quote (with no context) the industry spokesperson referring to those costs as "red tape".
Water costs aren't red tape. Water costs are what it costs to get excess water to your dry ass farm. These fields aren't on a river and don't have water rights, so they have to pay to have it brought in. The cost increased, but that just means *the subsidies that were in place are now lower*. They still get subsidized water, they just pay closer to *market* prices for it. Nobody requires them to use the water supplier they use, they can truck it in or drill a well, but that's more expensive.
And the labor costs they quote are above CA's ag minimum wage, so it's not "red tape" it's that their workers either have more productive, higher-paying jobs, or there are fewer of them supplied (which is probably the case given ICE crackdowns and their particular hatred of California).
The "red tape" claim makes it sound like it's some regulation, not the market.
The impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
There aren’t that many places you can grow strawberries, so I’m not sure why they don’t just increase the cost of the product and pass it along to the consumer who will have to pay it if they want strawberries?
they say in the article “farmers are price takers, not price makers” and that they have immense pressure on prices to match, as buyers are just importing from places with lower cost/fewer regulations
I don’t know how it is now, and never knew about strawberries but my family had a fruit tree farm in California and sometimes he had to sell his fruit cheaply to other countries because of not meeting requirements.
His fruit might not be the right size, shape, color so USA buyers wouldn’t buy it and he would sell to break even basically.
He assumed bigger farmers could have more pull, I guess that’s not the case.
They sure use a whole lot of words to describe what the problem is and what went wrong when they could've summed it all up in one word; TARRIFFS!
Be sure to thank a Republican for Driscolls closing, don't worry if you miss your chance, there are a lot more businesses to be closing soon for the same reason, and you can thank em' for those too.
If anything tariffs might have helped them because they would have impacted the imported berrys they’re competing against while not effecting them at all.
Not hard to imagine tariffs playing a role in the price of, say, fertilizer. But yeah, no idea why the guy above me just decided tariffs were the whole reason.
It's actually deeper than that. Driscolls has cornered the market on GMO patents to grow berries year round across a multitude of climates and geographies. They've pushed down all the risk and liability to the growers and one of Driscolls key indicators is yield and QA/QC acceptance from customers.
Since yields have been getting crushed because of climate change, poor soil, increase in costs etc, growers have been taking on more and more risk, such as overusing pesticides.
As a result. The grower takes the punishment from the market and Driscolls gets away scott free and will continue to rake in the dough with their IP and limited risk business model.
Here's a great video on the topic. https://youtu.be/nyG-np0S0ZQ?is=r-XRlr8dKg6k7_vV
The TLDR is that Driscoll's is effectively Nestle. They're fucking evil, greedy motherfuckers.
There is a lot of equipment and inputs into agriculture, some of components of that equipment, the equipment itself, and other inputs are imported and subject to tariffs.
The Iran war drove up fuel prices. Labor shortages are happening because the seasonal immigrant labor force are being harassed and deported, so they’re not around.
Water prices being up aren’t a shock because, these crops are being grown in an arena of the country that relies on unsustainable amounts of irrigation.
Worse, they are being put in concentration camps, so they are deathly afraid of coming to the US to provide the cheap labor farmers have depended on for decades
Don't forget about fertilizer & packaging, both of which have been subject to tariffs. Also, the machinery to process the berries, which we don't make here any longer.
Land and water use regulations are state and local issues not federal. You can say climate change is contributing to drought but only a small amount the accumulated co2 emissions of industrialization across the entire planet can't be blamed on the Republican party.
How dare you bring logic to lefts new boogie man. CA is 100% run by 1 party and fuel costs are drastically higher than national average because of CA own policies.
Fertilizer and diesel costs have gone up, which were caused by the Trump administration. There’s no way to lower water costs due to climate change and a warming planet.
Trump policy has increased fuel costs. There are also still Biden effects. Canceling leases, increased royalties, and shutting off millions of acres to development.
Water cost increases are all pretty much state policy that Democrats 100% control.
Two dozen refinery closures over the last decade have for more impact than the feedstock fluctuating in the band it always fluctuates, but due to inflation, lower cost.
In 2008 oil was in the $140’s and gasoline was about the same as it is today.
A while back I read that there’s areas in the Central Valley of CA that pulled so much from the aquifer that it didn’t replenish, and it’s caused the ground to sink. IIRC, it’s multiple feet lower from where it started.
Factually inaccurate. Water in California is primarily handled by water districts or water departments at the local levels. While California is a “blue state,” the number of local governments that govern throughout the state are overwhelmingly red.
Didn't they have a huge shipment rejected from Canada as well for exceeding the pesticide toxicity? I read that in the news and immediately told my brother to stop buying that specific brand since he has a toddler.
Yeah that's what happens when their cheap labor is deported and nobody wants to harvest their crops. And then some idiot starts a war and raises fuel cost.
Explain to me how tarriffs are irrelevant if evweything they import, fertilizer for example, is more expensive.
Tariffs are irrelevant? Where do they get their fertilizer? Everything on their farm from irrigation to machinery is produced in the United Stated and is free from tariffs as well? How about the steel and lumber they need to build a new facility. Also tariff free?
If I used "just one word" for why expenses were high, I'd choose: INFLATION.
Sure, tariffs on some things (farm equipment for example) raised some prices, but deisel and fertilizer only went through the roof when we started with war with Iran, and farm workers had to unionize and demand fair pay because all of their expenses are going up, while limits on immigrant labor made workers scarce, so labor costs went up too.
Well they also went off on a tangent about regulations even though it’s clearly everything related to tariffs, immigration enforcement, and the war with Iran. But conservatives are so fixated on deregulation that they can’t help themselves. And this is coming from fucking Driscoll’s, a company for whom regulations were designed.
Tariffs cause counter tariffs which drive up cost to ship to other countries. Tariffs on materials needed to grow the produce drive up cost domestically.price of land and water may increase but no where near what tariffs are doing to the supply chain.
We are talking berry agriculture. The tarrifs may have had many impacts favorable and unfavorable, but they had little to no impact on California berry farming.
Increasing water prices (in case you have not heard California has had a water shortage for many years).
Land costs, go look at where these berries are growing. Spent several years in the Salinas valley, the drive along the monteray bay is berry heaven and some prime real-estate.
Lastly, in case you have not heard Trump has made it difficult to hire field workers. Labor cost have gone up.
Maybe go to r/news to spout silliness - this is an economic forum.
Driscolls is not closing. The article is about SoCal Berry Growers, a distributor of Driscolls. It specifically highlights labor costs (dictated by Californias minimum wage laws) and water costs as the main drivers .
Driscoll isn’t closing. Read. It’s a small farm that sells their strawberries to Driscoll. Driscoll is perfectly fine buying cheap strawberries from another country with no sanitary regulations.
Americans needs to have a real conversation about how "cheap" their groceries are. They are "subsidized" by illegal immigrants working for dollars in difficult jobs that Americans do not want to do.
California farmers are mostly red hats, btw, who voted for the present Inflation Administration.
I went to junior hi and high school in the Imperial Valley...I have been in the fields and seen how workers are treated. Most of these landowners would have been quite comfortable in the South in 1850.
The best counterfactual is what happens to the acreage after this grower exits: continued berry production under a new operator would show the land can still support the crop, while idling or switching crops would point toward persistent local constraints. I’d want water costs and allocation, yield per acre, contracted farmgate prices, and labor cost per unit to compare the main explanations. The timing after unionization is notable, but by itself doesn’t establish why the closure happened.
I will only buy strawberries from the Mexicans on the street corner or farmers market. All grocery store strawberries are either covered in white mold or are so unripe and sour they are inedible.
California’s strawberry industry is facing a deepening crisis as soaring water and labor costs collide with cheaper imports, squeezing domestic growers out of the market.
I grow my own in bus tubs. In fact, on my little quarter acre lot, I grow enough fruit to last the whole year. Probably the only thing I buy is bananas.
atlasdreams2187 | 19 hours ago
I love how one line hides the whole truth, almost like an after thought….the workers also unionized last July….poor workers just want to earn money…
littleoldlady71 | 19 hours ago
“impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
At the time, SoCal Berry Growers challenged the move, accusing United Farm Workers of misconduct. But in August, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board ruled that the election “was not conducted improperly” and the move to unionize was upheld.
Got a tip? Send us the scoop.
DO IT NOW
“SoCal management is now saying it will shut down, in what we believe is a clear violation of the law to avoid their legal and moral obligations to the workers who pick the strawberries,” UFW Vice President Roman Pinal said in a statement to the Ventura County Star. “The UFW is familiar with these tactics and will utilize all legal options to defend our members' rights.”
This is it, right there. Workers unite!
Ancient_Ad_9373 | 11 hours ago
So what you are saying is that we need to BOYCOTT DRISCOLL?
Their worker rights and safety violations record is abysmal. They were publicly exposed during COVID and the public largely forgot. 📢Let’s be reminded again!
Farmworkers Who Picked Driscoll’s Strawberries in Oxnard File Suit Alleging Stolen Wages
Pesticide Exposure and Lack of Safety Training & Ventura County lawsuit accuses Driscoll’s of ignoring pesticide laws
rok_ | 9 hours ago
Driscoll’s have almost every berry on lock in the US for nationwide grocery chains. their IP on the berry industry is nestle levels shitty. all their berries taste horrible with all the chemicals in and on them
pounded_rivet | 10 hours ago
They suck so bad, they treat the workers like crap and drive Maybachs.
Mute2120 | 10 hours ago
Driscoll is trash and their berries are trash.
ArthurBoreman | 10 hours ago
You can boycott whoever you want for whatever reason you want, that’s how markets work.
lemongrenade | 19 hours ago
Are you sure? Seems like raising costs on both fuel and labor could easily put a low margin business under.
river_tree_nut | 19 hours ago
That’s the thing we don’t know here. It used to be that a 10% ROI was solid.
Un-resigned | 15 hours ago
It's true that farms are being hit hard by the consequences of this administration's actions. And berry farms, along with the rest of the specialty crops businesses, are probably not getting much of the billions in federal handouts directed towards field crops. So maybe these Ventura farms really are making a loss.
However it's also true that Driscoll farms just dumped its CEO two months ago and is facing class action suits related to its pesticide and marketing practices, a seperate class action for wage theft, and possible state fines for all of the above.
It's not a coincidence that this particular company's subsidiaries, in a crop sector and county that has had very little UFW presence suddenly had multiple farms unionising. Whether the unions are the cause or a symptom of the underlying economic problems facing this company is something for the courts to figure out.
lemongrenade | 18 hours ago
Some light research is showing 2025 strawberry producer margins at 6%. So energy plus labor up with debt costing more easily could fuck it all up.
NoNDA-SDC | 17 hours ago
These people are extremely annoying. They won't come back later and say they were wrong, infact they'll even cheer the "bad business" leaving, there can be no nuance. I saw this constantly around the billionaire tax too, as if there are no costs with those people leaving the state indefinitely.
Tradeoffs to everything folks, it's simply to easy for a business to pickup and leave to another state with less regulations!
Visible_Device7187 | 17 hours ago
Except most people don't go through with their threats to move. NYC found out most actually enjoy living in NYC and don't actually move to Florida and Texas
NoNDA-SDC | 17 hours ago
Those laws were different.
Similar wealth taxes were attempted in Europe, people did leave and changes reverted.
Creative_Cow_1771 | 16 hours ago
I suppose you would support a theoretical global wealth tax?
That is to say, I think you’re letting the morbidly rich cry and whine and dictate too much. Just because they complain and fuss like newborns doesn’t change the underlying economics, and that extreme wealth divides are extraordinarily unstable. Plus, america can block the movement of quite a bit of money out of the country. It’s very hard to escape the US government. Simply put, in my opinion, you just aren’t thinking big enough.
NoNDA-SDC | 16 hours ago
Global tax, absolutely. National taxes to reduce movement as well would be great.
Visible_Device7187 | 16 hours ago
Lol they can't just leave the US we have exit taxes and again most billionaires actually said they don't really care about the tax it won't impact them enough to bother.
__Geg__ | 3 hours ago
Source on that?
Once difference is that In the US there are only a handful of places that the uber rich can truly flaunt their money.
usNEUX | 14 hours ago
$30B of the $100B original tax base targeted by the tax already did leave the state.
NoNDA-SDC | 7 hours ago
Downvoted for literally sharing a fact... I don't hang out in this sub much but wow, it's even less intelligent than some of the others!
AdmirableSelection81 | 15 hours ago
> Except most people don't go through with their threats to move. NYC found out most actually enjoy living in NYC and don't actually move to Florida and Texas
Here's the thing about NYC: There's a lot of blood to suck.
If Zohran Mamdani were elected to mayor of Seattle, we'd be talking about what a terrible mayor he was/is, because his socialist counterpart, katie wilson, there is making life INCREDIBLY difficult for business and business IS leaving. In fact, real estate is under pressure because people are trying to sell their houses and leave FAST. Businesses and billionaires have moved.
New York City has a massive center of gravity that will take a lot more screwups by the left for people to leave. Since Mamdani has become mayor, we've seen a surge of homeless encampments in NYC in places like west 34th street to west 46th street and east 23rd. It seems like the east coast leftists want to bring in the homeless encampments that the west coast leftists created.
Give it enough time and NYC will become a hell hole like portland/seattle/oakland.
Bobbith_The_Chosen | 15 hours ago
This is hilarious lmao. Portland and Seattle are not hell holes by any stretch of the imagination
JelmerMcGee | 15 hours ago
It always cracks me up when people call Portland and Seattle hell holes. I worked with a guy who was telling me all about his trip to Portland when he was a teenager. We lived in Arizona and his trip had been almost ten years ago. He loved it! Went on and on about how beautiful the city was. He then followed that up with how much of a shame it was that it was so shitty now. He hasn't been in ten years, but is certain Portland is a complete trash site now.
_BearHawk | 14 hours ago
Nevada is 0% income tax, why didn't billionaires in CA move already?
NoNDA-SDC | 14 hours ago
Obviously that's not incentive enough to leave our state... They're willing to pay some.
Something like a third of the wealth did leave the state too, in protest over the proposed law.
floodcontrol | 13 hours ago
What data are you referencing when you make that claim?
Dick_Lazer | 16 hours ago
> it's simply to easy for a business to pickup and leave to another state with less regulations!
In this case not really, not all states are great for growing strawberries.
NoNDA-SDC | 16 hours ago
In this case yes really, it's really happening...
harrumphstan | 17 hours ago
Hard to pack up your land and leave. If this business can’t make it on that plot of land, CA needs to LV tax it if it just sits fallow until another farmer can come up with a business plan that doesn’t require starvation wages.
NoNDA-SDC | 17 hours ago
They'll automate the workforce with greater intensity... At some point you will hit a wall, it's a fine line to walk.
Pay isn't really the problem either, it's the costly housing and insurance.
floodcontrol | 13 hours ago
God forbid workers be able to live in houses and go to the doctor.
NoNDA-SDC | 13 hours ago
That's the worst possible way to read what I wrote 🤡
Higher pay means property owners and insurance companies can raise prices even more, I don't want that!
Acceptable-Peace-69 | 14 hours ago
How you going to move a strawberry farm?
You might need a different line of reasoning.
NoNDA-SDC | 14 hours ago
I was obviously opening the conversation to the larger theme at hand.
In this case it's not clear from the article if they're opening up somewhere else, or just shuttering the business there altogether. Is that any better? What will happen to strawberry prices next year?
trysten-9001 | 14 hours ago
No idea about their specific financials, but they’re getting squeezed from both sides. Ag distributors keep giving lower bids while costs go up
ppooooooooopp | 16 hours ago
Thats what the story says 807 million in revenue on 815 million in costs — its not profitable, union just makes it worse I’m sure
wastedfuckery | 11 hours ago
It’s also not just labor, fuel, and water but also the cost of staying compliant with new regulations can be hundreds per acre. People should be paid fair wages and we should keep our produce safe, but when you’re getting 10 cents on the dollar for sale price and every input is up it’s hard to continue.
I work in the industry, with different crops, but everyone is hurting unless they are wealthy by other means. Everyone’s scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to hang on until there is a “good year”.
littleoldlady71 | 19 hours ago
Where are we hearing about what the owners are taking out? Is it a venture capital company? What’s on their balance sheet? Yes, when expenses go up, you change, but is labor cost the villain? See how the hourly wage is mentioned as the villain?
InternalMachine5503 | 18 hours ago
Amazing how chambers of commerce, tax associations and business have convinced a wide swath of the populace that a liveable wage is the crux of all the woes specifically in the US but also worldwide. All the while CEO pay has increased inexplicably. Board members get paid in stock and fees of 10k+ for a few meetings per year (and I’m lowballing here). But god forbid the people doing the most menial of labor have enough to house and feed themselves.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 18 hours ago
Did you read the article? Are you familiar with the increase in costs for water, labor, fertilizer, etc that is impacting agriculture in general?
ositola | 18 hours ago
Central CA Farmers voted red, the war did them no favors
InternalMachine5503 | 18 hours ago
You can own your farm or own the libs but not both.
lemongrenade | 18 hours ago
Understanding that a no retreat labor negotiation maybe fucked over workers and wasn’t a perfect approach doesn’t mean the farmers arnt shit bags.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 18 hours ago
No but the war didn’t quadruple the price of water either.
Ok-Apricot-2814 | 16 hours ago
Colorado River issues and repeated droughts in California along with water regulatory changes caused the price of water to increase
ositola | 18 hours ago
Driscoll farms is about 45 miles south of San jose, San jose has 71 data centers
Connect the dots
FlyingBishop | 23 minutes ago
What percentage of the water usage in California is datacenters relative to agriculture, do you think?
Adventurous-Roof488 | 18 hours ago
And what does that have to do with the war and republicans?
ositola | 17 hours ago
https://www.propublica.org/article/burgum-public-land-data-centers-investments
I'll leave you here to do your own thinking
jimgagnon | 16 hours ago
That doesn't account for inflation. Adjusting for inflation, $20.11 in 2007 is worth $32.68: less than triple. Bad, but not as bad as you make it.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 16 hours ago
I’m quoting the article.
jimgagnon | 16 hours ago
The article didn't say quadruple; you did.
littleoldlady71 | 18 hours ago
I did. I’m in Iowa.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 18 hours ago
Your comment makes it seem like you didn’t read it because your takeaway was that labor was made the primary villain.
TwoAmps | 17 hours ago
Sure, shutting down right after the workers unionize is pure coincidence. Riiiiight.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 17 hours ago
It may have been? Given all the other issues farmers are facing with costs, an additional increase in labor costs may have been too much to bear.
TwoAmps | 16 hours ago
Fuel and fertilizer costs are temporary, a Union isn't.
It could also be that the Driscoll strawberries that show up in Safeway are absolute crap. A seemingly impossible mix of unripe, spoiled, and moldy in the same package. If they were better, people might buy more and they could charge more. I look at them every week, but only see a carton worth buying every couple of months.
User-NetOfInter | 18 hours ago
Labors just the straw that broke their back.
littleoldlady71 | 17 hours ago
They were, because the article buried the lede
Adventurous-Roof488 | 17 hours ago
So the increasing costs of inputs has nothing to do with it? Just labor? You just ignore everything else because you want to make this about agriculture workers alone?
stareabyss | 17 hours ago
They didn't read the article lol
ZylieD | 17 hours ago
The Driscoll family is worth almost $4 billion.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 17 hours ago
And? What’s that have to do with increasing costs of growing strawberries and competing with lower priced imports?
ZylieD | 17 hours ago
Because they are blaming policies and efforts to raise hourly wages rather than corporate greed.
Adventurous-Roof488 | 17 hours ago
The article blames it on water fertilizer labor and lower priced imports. It’s a lot of things. Sorry if you missed that.
jimgagnon | 16 hours ago
and only mentions unionization efforts in passing. What the article claims as motivation may not be the actual reason why.
Eating_Astros_9677 | 15 hours ago
Apparently you don't understand the difference between a stock value and a flow value. This isn't even econ 101, it's a high school level misunderstanding.
lemongrenade | 18 hours ago
I mean they went bankrupt so sounds like they were out of runway
lemongrenade | 18 hours ago
And what happens when A militant trench line on union labor negotiations truly does make the business unprofitable? Well we are seeing it now.
ArthurBoreman | 14 hours ago
How does this work?
The owners are so greedy they prefer to go out of business and make $0?
And we’d rather have workers unemployed?
Ok-Exit-8801 | 13 hours ago
It says in the article that they were operating at a 8.1 million dollar loss
panamaspace | 7 hours ago
Right...
Mithryn | 13 hours ago
The People's History of the United States.
Yes. The owners close down, the bank buys their property. They buy it back and continue operations next growing season; but avoid the pesky union by being a different company.
It's happened throughout u.s. history.
uberallez | 11 hours ago
There's restaurants that do this in the Bay Area too.
ArthurBoreman | 10 hours ago
Which ones?
ArthurBoreman | 10 hours ago
When? Where has this happened?
What you’re describing is nonsense.
What workers would work there? The same ones that just unionized? So then they’ll just unionize again?
Why would the bank buy the property and hold it for a defunct company?
Again, this is just childish nonsense.
UnlawfulSoul | 9 hours ago
I think there are two in the 80s I could find that essentially had that exact thing happen. Meat packing plant with a 2 year turnaround and a bakery with a 1 year one
It seems pretty routine if not common. Banks take possession of properties all of the time and whether the bank sells it to a new grower or not they’d still have obligations to the union if the business is deemed a successor.
Generally the workers hired at the old plant are at least somewhat composed of the old group
ArthurBoreman | 9 hours ago
I’m not sure twice in 45 years is “routine if not common.”
Banks absolutely don’t “take possession of properties all the time,” they foreclose on their loans, which involves selling to someone else…
UnlawfulSoul | 9 hours ago
Not always… banks take possession of properties and hold them, sometimes for years before reselling them
I guess I don’t know what you are looking for. I have no dog in this race, but I at least could find a couple by a cursory search. You made it sound like it was impossible but there’s at least some documented evidence out there. There were others, those were just a couple I found
Mithryn | 10 hours ago
Huh. Someone who doesn't know history and publicly will announce it rather than reviewing it.
You go ahead and live in that priviledge bubble.
ArthurBoreman | 10 hours ago
If it’s so well-known—and you know so much—just tell me when it’s happened, shouldn’t be that hard…
Mithryn | 10 hours ago
From google and 5 seconds of effort:
• What happened: In June 2022, workers at an Augusta, Maine Chipotle filed a petition for a union election. Just before a scheduled NLRB hearing, Chipotle announced it was permanently closing the store, citing understaffing and management shortages. • Outcome: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled the closure was illegal retaliation. In March 2023, Chipotle agreed to a $240,000 settlement to compensate former employees and promised not to discriminate or close stores based on union support.
• What happened: Billionaire owner Joe Ricketts shut down the local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist in November 2017—leaving 115 journalists and staff unemployed—just one week after editorial employees voted 25-2 to unionize with the Writers Guild of America East. • Outcome: Ricketts publicly cited economic challenges in local media, though critics and union organizers labeled it a direct retaliatory strike against unionization. Because it was a total closure of the media entity rather than a selective branch closure, it largely fell within legal employer exemptions, though a shutdown severance agreement was later negotiated.
• What happened: During a nationwide wave of union organizing, Starbucks closed several high-profile unionized or organizing stores (such as locations in Ithaca, New York and Seattle), publicly citing safety concerns, staffing issues, or facility problems. • Outcome: The NLRB sided with workers in multiple cases, finding that certain closures constituted illegal anti-union retaliation and ordering impacted stores to reopen.
• The Darlington Precedent: The legal benchmark stems largely from the U.S. Supreme Court case Textile Workers Union v. Darlington Manufacturing Co. (1965), which established that an employer has the absolute right to shut down their entire enterprise for any reason (including anti-union animus), but cannot close just a part of a business to chill union activity at remaining facilities.
Prior to 1965:
Darlington Manufacturing Co. (Darlington, South Carolina – 1956)
• The Closure: This is the most famous pre-1965 instance and the specific case that went to the Supreme Court. The mill was part of a larger textile conglomerate, Deering Milliken & Co., run by Roger Milliken. When the Textile Workers Union of America won a representation election by just six votes, Milliken immediately called a board meeting, liquidated the corporation, and permanently closed the plant, putting 550 people out of work. • The Anti-Union Ripple Effect: Textile manufacturers across the American South famously printed bumper stickers that read "Remember Darlington" to warn workers at other mills that voting for a union would result in their workplaces being permanently closed down. The subsequent legal battle lasted nearly a decade before culminating in the 1965 ruling.
• The Closure: During the massive 1934 Textile Workers Strike, cotton mill workers in South Carolina walked out to force their employers to comply with federal labor codes. • The Retaliation: When federal mediators urged the workers to return to work, the mill owners retaliated by permanently locking the gates, refusing to let the striking workers back into the mills, and evicting them and their families from company-owned housing to break the union's presence entirely.
• The Tactic: Before the Wagner Act of 1935 legalized unions, a common practice among smaller manufacturing plants, garment shops, and cigar factories was to temporarily dissolve the business when employees went on strike or attempted to organize. • The Loophole: Owners would fire the entire workforce, change the corporate name, or wait out the workers' savings until they could hire an entirely new, non-union workforce bound by "yellow-dog contracts" (agreements promising never to join a union). Because corporate transparency laws were weak, shifting operations or shutting down to restart under a new name was highly effective.
• The Closure: While technically a lockout rather than a permanent business dissolution, Andrew Carnegie and his partner Henry Clay Frick used a total facility shutdown at Carnegie Steel to dismantle the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. • The Resolution: Frick shut down the entire mill, built a massive fence around the property, hired 300 armed Pinkerton detectives to guard it, and declared the company would never recognize the union again. The mill was only reopened once the union was completely broken and replaced by non-union labor.
ArthurBoreman | 9 hours ago
None of those—except for vague nameless companies in the undated Yellow Dog scenario—are even close to the idiocy you described.
And why did you need Google? Isn’t it in Zinn’s A People’s History like you originally said? Just pull out your dog-eared annotated copy and tell me what company has shut down, had a bank buy their property and hold it for them, and then a year or two later come back and opened the exact same business in the same location with the same property…
Mithryn | 9 hours ago
No. Go read a book. Or use google.
Mithryn | 10 hours ago
The People's History of the United States, which I began my comment with, is a history textbook filled with examples.
So ya know skip by the source provided. Fon't bother googling and then act like I'm the crazy/stupid one.
All of mankind's history is literally in your hand. If a claim shocks you, you can learn how priviledged your worldview is in private next time, instead of being shocked, shocked! Capitalists work together to try and enslave the rest of us even when it is gasp illegal!
whensheepattack | 13 hours ago
They don't want unionization to spread, so they cut off anything that grows a union.
ArthurBoreman | 10 hours ago
Who?
whensheepattack | 9 hours ago
the capitol class. owners. I've worked several businesses that will literally close down a manufacturing plant, pack up all the tools and move to a new location if they hear the word "union" muttered enough times. And to be clear, the owners of this company have multiple locations and multiple businesses in this space and they think it's the cheaper option to pull up and relocate. they aren't going to have "zero profit", they'll have a temporary capitol expenditure and they'll move on.
ArthurBoreman | 9 hours ago
Yes, you understand that’s different than what’s being described here, right?
whensheepattack | 6 hours ago
In what way is it different?
Momoselfie | 17 hours ago
Not allowed to close down? How does that work? What if they're losing money?
littleoldlady71 | 16 hours ago
Thank you kind Redditor!
JarJarsBallsackEyes | 9 hours ago
so a union made hundreds of people become unemployed.. and you’re celebrating that?
CannyGardener | 19 hours ago
I have mixed feelings about this. If the farms ar not making money, and even so the workers push to increase pay, and the farms have no ability to set the price due to competition with importers, I don't see how this doesn't just crush the farms; essentially finishing a job that was already half way done. I mean, I'm all for people making more money, but this just means that we are utilizing non-unized workers making pennies a day in some third world country instead of our workers doing the work, so I am not 100% sure I see this as an ethical/morals issue, we are just moving the moral harm out of site... What am I missing?
Dangerous-Sport-2347 | 19 hours ago
This is indeed a problem you get with adversarial union vs company relations.
For a bit more of a balanced approach you could look at germany where unions often participate in high level company decisions, where they still fight for their workers, but they also try to find a path for the company to remain profitable so it keeps existing.
ppooooooooopp | 16 hours ago
This is going extremely poorly in the german auto industry
cidvard | 19 hours ago
America could do a lot worse than emulating Germany's approach to labor regs, it wouldn't even require particularly sweeping changes, though for some reason it doesn't get brought up too often as a model.
pacman2081 | 18 hours ago
German companies are generally uncompetitive on the global market. I am not opposed to including workers in the corporate decision making process
nah-42 | 16 hours ago
How do you figure, since Germany is the third largest goods exporter in the world?
Not_FinancialAdvice | 15 hours ago
Presumably they're thinking of VW, which is kind of getting its lunch eaten (though labor costs aren't a huge fraction of their vehicle costs), especially in EVs by asian competition
TheWastelandWizard | 14 hours ago
German tools manufacturing used to be a big draw too and that has since moved to China and now places like SEA and India are attempting to gain marketshare too. There are few ways that European economies remain competitive on the world stage these days.
MayIServeYouWell | 8 hours ago
Last I checked, Germans weren't starving in the streets. They seem to be doing fine. Competing until the last worker dies of exhaustion doesn't seem like a worthwhile goal.
AdmirableSelection81 | 15 hours ago
Germans are actively destroying their own economy by blowing up nuclear power plants and making themselves slaves to Russian oil & gas. They're moving their manufacturing to China because the country has become so uncompetitive. I don't want to emulate anything about Germany (or Europe as a whole).
Asiriya | 13 hours ago
Funny, we say the same about your dumpster fire of a country
AdmirableSelection81 | 3 hours ago
German Software enineers make like 50k euros a year.
We have a convenience store chain where general managers can make $225k a year:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/z1w93z/hourly_and_salary_wages_for_bucees_convenience/
You people are poor (Europe is poor as a whole).
BookHooknNeedle | 19 hours ago
This is a good take. Most people don't understand how expensive farming is or how vulnerable it is to economic AND environmental factors.
Maybe it's corporate greed or maybe its a difficult business for everyone involved.
Iron-Fist | 19 hours ago
Unions work with producers on this all the time, unions don't want places to go out of business or become non competitive. Show the union that financial info and they will negotiate to keep the business running. No, this is almost certainly a case of closing down to prevent "union contagion" where unionization spreads, giving up a profitable business because workers were organized enough to demand a bigger share of profits. Very common, Starbucks famously closed like every coffee shop that unionized.
I_Love_To_Poop420 | 19 hours ago
That’s where tariffs actually become useful and proper to use. Tariff the imported strawberries so they are the same price or more than U.S. strawberries.
CannyGardener | 19 hours ago
I feel like that is a fine line though, because then it risks just incentivizing inefficient business practices. It seems like it would have to be a more broad market analysis on labor practices and scale or something. I don't know that there is an easy way to approach this, and I feel like tariffs are a sledge hammer, where we need a finishing hammer.
I_Love_To_Poop420 | 17 hours ago
Well the finishing hammer is properly negotiated trade agreements. We had a few of them work pretty well for economic growth, but someone shit all over them before Natalie could fasten a nappy.
CannyGardener | 17 hours ago
That makes sense.
m0n3ym4n | 34 minutes ago
What in this story is an “inefficient business practice” to you?
jimgagnon | 16 hours ago
"inefficient" is Republican speak for ensuring labor, environmental and safety considerations not required in third world countries.
loopernova | 11 hours ago
No
Ateist | 13 hours ago
Absolutely not!
Tariffs should be used only to protect industries that require massive capital investment, as if they close down prices of imported goods would instantly go up.
Agriculture sectors like strawberries farming that require almost no investments should never be protected by tariffs.
Sea-Ambition-451 | 19 hours ago
if your business can only survive by exploiting slave level workers, then you shouldn't be a business (one also notes that the owner's yacht is doing just fine).
dethswatch | 19 hours ago
that's right, but you're making a lot of assumptions. Could also be that the nonlabor cost increases vs their contracts made it nonviable too.
You cannot, and shouldn't, force a company to continue to provide jobs and products when the numbers aren't any good.
Sea-Ambition-451 | 19 hours ago
obviously.
and you shouldn't force slave labor
MastodonFarm | 19 hours ago
I’m sure all the workers you call slaves are much better off now that they have no jobs at all. They’re free!
Sea-Ambition-451 | 18 hours ago
Remember, they formed a union because the conditions were so terrible.
MastodonFarm | 18 hours ago
And how are the conditions now?
Thadlust | 18 hours ago
Even better! So much time off!!
dethswatch | 18 hours ago
I want everyone to have high-paying, easy, fulfilling jobs.
How can we make that happen?
Eating_Astros_9677 | 15 hours ago
Study the fuck out of economics and design policies extremely carefully. Even then you'll only get "almost everyone" and cannot possibly get "everyone".
dethswatch | 14 hours ago
My friend. If here was a way to make that happen, don't you feel it would have been figured out by now?
Mist_Rising | 12 hours ago
We don't know it hasn't, we just know it hasn't been deployed.
IM_PEAKING | 18 hours ago
Billionaire BBQ
dethswatch | 14 hours ago
Uh huh- and now we're all out of trees. Now what?
IM_PEAKING | 14 hours ago
How does eliminating billionaires rid the planet of trees?
Silverr_Duck | 16 hours ago
Consider expanding your vocabulary. Poor wages and slavery are not interchangeable concepts.
random-meme422 | 19 hours ago
A yacht doesn’t move the needle on overall profitability
Additionally people can be salty as they want but most of the world importing things from SE asia africa etc is relying on slave labor wages to get something cheaply. You included
Sea-Ambition-451 | 19 hours ago
slave labor is never ok
random-meme422 | 19 hours ago
The sky is blue
see we can both say obvious stuff that doesn’t at all matter
Sea-Ambition-451 | 19 hours ago
thanks for agreeing with me wholeheartedly
IM_PEAKING | 18 hours ago
Wtf do you mean it doesn’t matter? It absolutely fucking matters.
FatSteveWasted9 | 18 hours ago
Mega-virtue engage!
Available-Career-714 | 18 hours ago
People say this and then complain that our only options are mega corporations. Its a complicated issue.
CannyGardener | 19 hours ago
OK thats fine, then we should end imports from countries that utilize slave level workers. My point isn't that it is OK to do this. It is that we are just moving where it happens to some place less visible, and in doing so we are just getting rid of those jobs here. =\ One without the other is just ineffective.
Sea-Ambition-451 | 19 hours ago
> then we should end imports from countries that utilize slave level workers.
correct.
didymusIII | 19 hours ago
And inflation has never had electoral consequences!
pacman2081 | 18 hours ago
does it now 🤔
Sea-Ambition-451 | 18 hours ago
lol, wow. You should probably delete that.
Mist_Rising | 12 hours ago
Whooshing sounds sir, that's what you hear.
Sea-Ambition-451 | an hour ago
It's coming from you.
It's a very dumb point that a union asking for a fair wage at a strawberry farm, WILL DECIDE ELECTIONS. lmao.
pacman2081 | 19 hours ago
when are you going to stop buying stuff from China
CannyGardener | 19 hours ago
See! You see the issue too.
pacman2081 | 18 hours ago
we just had an election where cost of living was the top issue. Good luck
drakanx | 10 hours ago
so the solution is to import more cheap shit from China...
Imaginary-Fame | 18 hours ago
So shouldn’t be any pushback for this grower pulling out
Dedsnotdead | 18 hours ago
There’s no business, so, workers no longer being employed, presumably the market is in balance now?
Thadlust | 18 hours ago
Slave labor is when you agree to work for a sum of money and have the right to leave at will
A_Stickperson | 12 hours ago
The answer is that all employees need to be automatically unionized so that the decision to unionize can’t be punished or conflated with other issues.
mrlolloran | 2 hours ago
Cynicism. You are up against people who will tell you that without that shit job the foreign worker has no work and no way to feed themself at all.
Unfortunately they can occasionally be right about it, which is annoying. The world is weird place.
FlyingBishop | 17 minutes ago
For the most part farms not making money is a result of policy choices. Subsidies, tariffs, and crop insurance (insurance not being a subsidy but looks a lot like a subsidy with how regulated and even directly government-funded it can be.) Labor cost is a factor, sure, but Trump deliberately raised all the costs across the board without improving the subsidy situation and everyone suddenly suprise pikachu that this happens.
PrinnyFriend | 18 hours ago
>100% sure I see this as an ethical/morals issue, we are just moving the moral harm out of site... What am I missing?
I see this type of logic constantly getting thrown around. But none of it makes sense when it comes to farming.
Driscoll does not have a "not making money" problem. If you want to grow strawberries in Africa and ship them to the USA, go ahead. It will never be cheaper than growing them in the USA even if the workers asked for a 300% raise. And will cost 11x more due to transportation and refrigeration costs, even if the labour was free.
Grown in Mexico is a different story since it is closer. But even with the cost of transportation, refrigeration and duties, it almost works out the same. For a farm the deciding factor is the water, climate and the soil and proximity to market.
CannyGardener | 17 hours ago
Look man, I buy strawberries for a living...truckloads and truckloads. Two things here. This artical isn't about Driscoll, the multinational, it is about the local grower in CA that grows for them. To your statement about prices, I buy strawberries from freaking Greece and Egypt for less than I can get grade As from the local folks. Every once in a while there is a weird year where there is a glut in the states or the fresh market was weak or something, so the frozen market prices come down, but you are talking out your ass about strawberry pricing.
Terme_Tea845 | 17 hours ago
How is this possible given shipping costs, tariffs, and what I assume is high loss in transport?
CannyGardener | 17 hours ago
To be frank, I just don't know. I have vendors up in PA that bring in the Egyptian strawberries for me, and a new one down in New Jersy that is bringing them into Houston for me from the EU, and when I compare them to the Californian strawberries they get beat out by a good 8% or so, landed. If I go for the harder baking strawberries that come out of central Mexico or Baja California, they might get down a bit closer, but when I'm looking at contract rates, I get a better deal coming in from the East Coast =\ It is as mind boggling to me as you, I spend a lot of time looking at these numbers LOL. The ones that get me the most are the ones from Greece. Like...I know they are in the EU with some tight labour laws, I don't know how they are doing it. The Egyptian ones are obviously just low wages and low production costs, which goes back to my original point, where we are just importing the result of other people's slavery jobs =\
Smoovupinya | 17 hours ago
A lot of the European/overseas producers are nationalized. It’s the same reason tomato paste from Ukraine or Spain is cheaper than from CA on the east coast. Those countries see it as a make work project and subsidize them.
It’s a real challenge as a west coast producer to compete on the east coast against nationalized international producers.
Terme_Tea845 | 16 hours ago
Informative thanks!
CannyGardener | 16 hours ago
Hah ya, I suppose subsidizing industries would do that. That was not an angle I had thought of, but a very good point.
Terme_Tea845 | 16 hours ago
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
CannyGardener | 16 hours ago
You bet! I'm not a big long form guy anymore, but I feel like there is a lot of depth that could be had in these discussions that just sort of gets drowned out by memes and bots. Appreciate that you took the time to read =)
littleoldlady71 | 15 hours ago
This was interesting. If you add in that the original basis for the agricultural industry in California was cheap land and cheap labor and cheap water, then this is an industry that has has been actually feeding on itself to maintain numbers. Which can we support? The international market or industrialize our agriculture?
MillHall78 | 8 hours ago
A good business owner meets competition head-on. But that's nearly impossible with US agriculture because of all the pesticides & foreign labor. So the farms losing revenue is something they brought on themselves. As such, farm owners are 100% responsible for that lost & dying revenue.
Crops can be grown hydroponically & safe from toxins. It requires heavy investment at the start, but pays off majorly for as long as that system is maintained. SoCal Berry Growers could've implemented this system to gain a top position over all competition easily. They also could've organized to change the laws regarding imports of edible crops. There's always things that can be done. These US businesses dying out never properly cared for their workers, constantly chose cheap foreign labor over Americans with healthcare bills, continue to lie about Americans not wanting to work, blast our foods with poison & align themselves with the Republican Party. The truest solution to the problem you posit is for the workers to organize & build a competing company with pesticide-free food. Or just a competing company. There's far too many horrible idiots in this world only organizing for better pay (like US nurses) & never organizing for better conditions for all.
jadepig | 4 hours ago
Only thing you’re missing is 1T% strawberry tariffs
ZylieD | 17 hours ago
The Driscoll family is worth nearly $4 billion. That is a moral issue in my opinion.
CannyGardener | 17 hours ago
Sure, I agree. I think every billionaire is a policy failure on display =\ The artical isn't about the Driscoll family though, it is about one of their larger growers.
IceNein | 12 hours ago
I live in that city. The cost to produce $1 of strawberries last year was $1.01
zephalephadingong | 16 hours ago
My primary question would be if this is one of the more arid regions of california, The west is running out of water. If they leave, even if it negatively impacts the economy it might be a win
Chemical_Enthusiasm4 | 12 hours ago
Yup- not super arid but they have drained their aquifer so much that salt is intruding
dethswatch | 19 hours ago
Unionizing has a cost too.
Equivalent_Lunch_944 | 19 hours ago
Unions represent a market failure between labourers and the organization they represent, resulting in an intermediary; the union.
If conditions/profit sharing were better labourers wouldn’t need to unionize.
dethswatch | 19 hours ago
>If conditions/profit sharing were better labourers wouldn’t need to unionize.
I don't see it that way.
The workers can work elsewhere. They may also unionize if they like, and this can happen too.
y0da1927 | 19 hours ago
Unions are labor cartels.
Are you suggesting OPEC is the result of a market failure in the global oil market?
Automatic_Soil9814 | 18 hours ago
Workers aren’t going to get fair pay unless they can collectively bargain. It’s no accident that the decline of the union is also coincident with the ever decreasing share of profits.
I think it says a lot about your perspective that you are willing to condemn unions as a “cartel“ rather than acknowledge the nuance of the situation, including unions being instrumental and protecting employees against employer abuses. Abuse that are particularly common in this particular kind of work.
y0da1927 | 18 hours ago
Unions are by definition a cartel. The collision of market participants to increase prices and restrict supply.
They extract economic rents from the marketplace that ultimately come out of the consumers pocket.
bluntymctokems | 17 hours ago
Is that any worse than a corporation using market power to extract more from consumers? Also, the union are the consumers as well.
y0da1927 | 17 hours ago
Both are a problem. Why would we want either?
bluntymctokems | 16 hours ago
Because we currently have unregulated corporate exploitation with no offset for the people actually working. But you don't seem to ever complain about that, just when actual workers get paid.
y0da1927 | 15 hours ago
Who says I don't?
Automatic_Soil9814 | 17 hours ago
Your reply has an interesting combination of confidence and ignorance.
A cartel can be either an economic or drug cartel. Clearly we aren’t talking about a drug cartel, so you must be referencing an economic cartel. The definition of which is:
“ A formal or informal agreement among competing commercial or industrial enterprises to restrict output, fix prices, and allocate market shares to achieve monopoly-style profits .”
That doesn’t describe a union at all. So when you say:
“ Unions are by definition a cartel.”
You either don’t know the definition of ‘cartel’ or you are intentionally misleading us, which would be stupid since we all have access to the internet and therefore a dictionary. In conclusion, you don’t know what cartels means.
However none of that matters. What matters is your SECOND major error. You say “ They extract economic rents from the marketplace that ultimately come out of the consumers pocket.” Of course this assumes corporate profits are untouchable which is again, an insane mistake to make. So absurd a mistake that I cannot even be kind and assume it came from your ignorance. I have to assume you know this is wrong.
My last assumption is that you aren’t in corporate leadership because your writing is too crude. Therefore it seems like you are a corporate bootlicker which has to be the most spineless thing I’ve seen in a while. It has truly been disappointing reading your misguided comments. I hope you get better
Eating_Astros_9677 | 15 hours ago
It is widely understood that unions are a type of cartel in economics. They're a counter to employers having too much market power, so they're not viewed as an entirely negative thing. But they control the flow of labor in the market, which is cartel behavior, which is what /u/y0da1927 is saying.
Automatic_Soil9814 | 14 hours ago
Under U.S. law—specifically the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914—the law explicitly establishes that "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce"
Eating_Astros_9677 | 10 hours ago
That has nothing to do with economics. Congress is not economists.
y0da1927 | 16 hours ago
The term drug cartel is derivative of an economic cartel. It's not two things, it's a subtype of the same thing.
Then you give me some definition of a cartel that perfectly describes a union as a formal agreement amongst competing commercial interests to fix prices.
Corporate profits are over the medium term untouchable as capital will flow to where is gets rewarded. Any decrease in profits is temporary until businesses made uncompetitive by higher labor costs fail or prices increase such that adequate ROI is achieved.
If you want to throw around lazy insults that seems reflective of your cognitive ability. Ad hominum is the how idiots argue.
AdmirableSelection81 | 15 hours ago
> If conditions/profit sharing were better labourers wouldn’t need to unionize.
Here's the problem: there's no profit in this case, so increasing costs is destroying the business.
DarkExecutor | 2 hours ago
One of the reasons why union membership has declined over the past 30 years
DrewDown94 | 19 hours ago
A cost to the shareholders who provide nothing.
korinth86 | 19 hours ago
Labor creates most of the value and deserves a bigger cut in most cases imo.
Still capital is necessary to run a business. Shareholders may not create much value but their capital is still necessary.
pacman2081 | 19 hours ago
what do you think consumers will do ? keep paying higher and higher prices
korinth86 | 19 hours ago
Productivity gains have far outpaced wages generally speaking.
Depending on the inputs, wages dont necessarily mean prices rise at a similar rate.
Do you expect workers to continue doing work when they cant afford their life?
pacman2081 | 19 hours ago
Consumers won't keep paying higher and higher prices just because some worker expects a certain wage
mcsul | 17 hours ago
The problem here is that most of the productivity gains over the past 20 years have come from capital investments and business process improvement, not labor.
Back in the 70s, labor's share contribution to productivity growth was roughly quadruple what it is today. If labor were still contributing as much to productivity growth as they were fifty years ago, they would be seeing more returns.
Edit: Guys, the downvotes here are silly. This is well-studied. Labor's contribution to productivity growth is dropping. It has been dropping for decades. This is something that we have to grapple with, not ignore.
newengland1323 | 17 hours ago
Or just a cost to everyone. Unions have their place, but can enshrine bad business practices. The ILA is a great example of this where they rabidly fight automation in ports on the east coast which creates a direct pass through cost on every good that goes through these ports to protect unnecessary jobs.
Mist_Rising | 12 hours ago
The automative union (UAW) also has had some objectively shitty decisions, not counting the direct corruption either. Two tiers, forced ICE engines for more labor, etc.
dethswatch | 19 hours ago
You sure?
XB70_Valkyrie_Fan | 13 hours ago
A cost to total sum revenue
jonpolis | 19 hours ago
They provide the startup capital. You know, like the thing that gets the ball rolling. Do you think a factory just appears out of nowhere?
atlasdreams2187 | 19 hours ago
Sure - water goes from 20 to 88 per acre, labor goes from 13 to 25 and the company pulls the pin. Companies will eat all the other cost increases but not a chance their paying workers, or supplying better working conditions or benefits in lieu of payment…
dethswatch | 19 hours ago
There is no obligation to work for the company if the workers would prefer to work elsewhere.
user485928450 | 19 hours ago
That’s the crux of what the workers said
pacman2081 | 19 hours ago
companies will pass the cost to the consumer who will refuse to pay
DarkExecutor | 2 hours ago
The only way a company can respond if a union makes unreasonable demands is to shut down.
But I don't believe unionizing was the cause here, just the tariffs and war in Iran
quriousposes | 12 hours ago
it's been boycott driscolls for as long as i can remember bc of not treating their workers right
KoRnflak3s | 10 hours ago
Berried the lead
thedroopy1 | 3 hours ago
Well if they earned money they wouldn’t be poor workers now would they?
discosoc | 17 hours ago
Unions only ever really work when there’s some sort of arbitrary political requirement for them to be used for projects, which in turn is only really possible to enforce on public projects.
A2Zoo | 16 hours ago
If it’s still profitable with higher wages, then I guess someone will buy up the farm quickly, and keep it running.
I suggest you hold your breath, and see if you pass out before that happens.
BeemerCalm | 17 hours ago
And if the farmers aren’t making any money, they’re still supposed to pay “the poor workers” $100k+ a year?
Grow up 🤦♂️
PhysicalConsistency | 15 hours ago
A lot of Driscoll's high margin export business dried up in non grower regions. They would have been fine had they not gone all in on China during the 2010's, only for most of the market to get subsumed by domestic/regional growers.
They are doing the classic retreat cost cutting retreat to places like Mexico and Austrailia, but the product just isn't the same and they'll be dead in a few years.
pelko34 | 10 minutes ago
There’s a great article about the entirely predictable China Driscoll snafu here: https://www.wsj.com/business/driscolls-berry-farms-china-competition-b0b49f04
SharksLeafsFan | 17 hours ago
Maybe toxic fruits are not good for business
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/whistleblower-allege-driscoll-s-berries-9.7359158
[OP] CommieMartyr | 16 hours ago
Poisoning your largest market is never a good deal.
BoringOrange678 | 16 hours ago
Drug dealers have entered the chat.
Apachisme | 11 hours ago
Yay but at least you have a good time before you’re poisoned, with berries it’s a real bad, bad time. Shitty one could say.
BradBradley1 | 15 hours ago
Depends on your end goal
Wh3r3Th3WildThings | 19 hours ago
As someone who has started growing hydroponics at home, more people should look into growing their own fruits and vegetables. It’s way easier than people think and using a large rain barrel is great for drier weather. You can get started with less than 20 at the hardware store.
CannyGardener | 19 hours ago
I have about 80 square feet of indoor hydroponics grow area, I grow peppers, tomatos, microgreens, lettuce, pot, and green beans. I get maybe a couple pounds of fruit/veg from my plants and a few ounces of pot every now and then. I pay around an extra $190/month in electricity. It all sounds good until you factor in a couple thousand watts of lighting...
pacman2081 | 18 hours ago
that is $2400 extra. Ignoring the fact you get to control what fertilizers/pesticides, are you reaping anything close to that in savings ?
CannyGardener | 18 hours ago
This is exactly why I made the post.
I see nowhere near that much in savings. Now. I do grow seedlings out for the outdoor garden, and greenhouse, so that is useful as well, but the biggest value is just the food quality. As long as I have electricity I can grow fresh veg. When everyone was talking about cyclosporia, we were eating rabbit bacon and microgreen sandwhiches on homemade bread. Overall, it is not a money saving endeavor (even though it totally started out that way), but it does provide me with very high quality produce, protein, and whatnot, all year round. I could totally just eat rice with the beans I grow in the summers, and come out waay further ahead though, financially.
pacman2081 | 18 hours ago
living in coastal California, would I need anything close to that in electricity ?
CannyGardener | 18 hours ago
I mean, I assume it is warmer there than at 6300 ft in the Rockies ;) You could probably do a lot of this outdoors so long as the weather is stable enough, in which case I suggest going with living soil and lots of compost, and then just learning to pressure can and dehydrate for the winters. Then you don't need the electricity. The indoor setup here started because my growing season here is so sporadic and short. We might swing between 70s and snow every other week for a few months, so knowing when to seed, and keeping them alive is rough, so I start everything indoors where I can and then that just evolved into, "Well I have lights here...I might as well just leave them on and have greens in the winter.
Visible_Device7187 | 16 hours ago
Have you considered solar to offset the electric bill
CannyGardener | 16 hours ago
I have, and am working on rounding up enough cash to get it rolling. Its pretty sunny up here ;)
hurdygurty | 7 hours ago
The plants would be a battery of sorts. Grow them during the day while the sun shines and the grid is less stressed and then burn them for warmth some time the sun is down. Or feed 'em to the meat bunnies.
Carnivore diet is still hip and cool, right? Guys?
/Shittypost
way2lazy2care | 11 hours ago
The only thing that I have ever been net positive on gardening is potatoes because I just throw old potatoes in the ground and sometimes get more new potatoes without doing anything, and even then it's only just barely worth the cost of my labor.
Wise-Peanut9552 | 18 hours ago
If you assume $5/pound for organic strawberries they would have to harvest 480 pounds per year. Commercial yield for strawberries is 68,000 pounds per acre or 1.6 pound per sqft so breakeven is about 307 sqft or roughly 4x the space they have. I'd say there is no chance they are anywhere near breaking even and that's not even including labor and nutrients.
Wh3r3Th3WildThings | 17 hours ago
I got introduced to the hydroponics for less than $100, although I have expanded since then but all I am still under $1200.
The light was the most expensive and I am sure there are better cheaper ones than the $50 I spent
Spiderfarmer Light
Then just a simple home depot 27 gallon tote, some net cups, and coco choir (coconut husks). You will be shocked on how little fertilizer you need. I bought a 12.5 lb masterblend fertilizer combo for around $30 and I still have some left over. I think it's around 45 grams per 7 gallons of water.
Here's a picture of my original lettuce, they look super leggy because we had been chopping the tops off of them for a while before I grabbed a picture.
I was inspired to try it during covid times from this video Hoocho Kratky.
My first hydroponics setup
TBH it's actually incredibly cheap to go the hydroponics route. Simple clothe bags and a bucket can produce really good results.
me729 | 19 hours ago
User name definitely checks out. Any tips for anyone starting a garden?
CannyGardener | 18 hours ago
You bet! This is all for indoors, but I also have a small urban farm where we grow our veg and fruit. I've tried hydro, I've tried 'living soil', but I actually run most things as a semi-hydroponic setup, where I have an inert substrate sitting on a bottom wicking base. For the substrate I use a 70/30 mix of coco coir/perlite.
IMO bottom wicking is the way to go for almost everything. I use bottom wicking when growing my sprouts in the seed trays, all the way up to tomatos 3-5 ft tall in 5g cloth bags. I like the AC Infinity circle ones, and just buy a shitload of cotton wicking string. You fill the basin, set the pot on top and just refill the basin as needed, the plant wicks up what it wants. I've seen some pretty complex setups with tubing and full hydro, but this just feels so much lower maintenance than having to change reservoirs and keep things ultra clean.
I generally use something like General Hydroponics or Crop Salts for my nutrients, and just mix a few gallons at a time. After a while, the PH and EC monitoring become quick and easy, and I use a bit of a botulinum bug to keep things clean, called Hydroguard.
For the light, I use a mish mash of all sorts of grow lights, all LED full spectrum. Most people I've noted seem to use PPFD or micromols or whatever, to measure their light, but then you have to figure out how long your lights are on. I use and app that calculates something called DLI, daily light interval, that sort of precalculates it based on your on/off time of your lights.
Sorry thats a bunch of random stuff on an economics forum, and just the random things that I could think of about each piece of the setup. It is a real rabbit hole! (which I raise as well!) Anyway, let me know if you have any specific questions =)
AgentProvocateur4122 | 18 hours ago
Would you mind sharing photos of your setup?
CannyGardener | 18 hours ago
I'd rather not, it is a bit of a disaster zone, being a repurposed corner of my basement. ;)
AgentProvocateur4122 | 18 hours ago
No worries, thank you for sharing tips :)
Wh3r3Th3WildThings | 17 hours ago
You are spot on when using wicking beds. We have two soil based ones in the backyard but I ran into a problem with the 10mm plastic liner starting to leak. Also the roaches have been a problem but using diatomaceous earth seems to get rid of them. I got one of my neighbors into the wicking beds but they went the smart way buying older used ~275 gallon totes that they cut in half. It does incredibly well, I was blown away when I saw theirs this year.
I am interested in trying the wicking process using some basic cloth bags as you mentioned. What do you use for the basin to hold the water / nutrients?
CannyGardener | 17 hours ago
Hah that sounds like an awesome idea using an IBC tote! I've thought about using them for some sort of aquaculture, but never thought about using them as a sort of in-bed wicking system!
Edit: Forgot to answer your question! I use the generic bases from Amazon that are like the Spider Farmer or AC Infinity wicking bases, they are cheaper. And I use general hydroponics, or crop salts for the nutrients =)
Wh3r3Th3WildThings | 18 hours ago
When I made the leap to start I wasn’t as worried about the electricity since we have solar panels. Our current electricity plan is free from 9pm to 7:00am so that might be an option for you also. I have a 4x4 tent that I use so no where close to your 80 feet but I want to move into a wall mounted nft system next. We have taller ceilings so the space is just wasted on pictures:)
CannyGardener | 17 hours ago
Hah I actually built an artificially lowered ceiling in the area where I'm growing, for easier humidity and temperature control. I hope to have a solar panel and electricity situation similar to yours some day! Holy cow that sounds fantastic!
Fire_Woman | 16 hours ago
Less than 20? Care to share the list that gets a person started in this budget? Or a link?
CannyGardener | 16 hours ago
Woof thats a pretty tight budget. You'd almost have to go with something like flourescents and lettuce seeds in a few makeshift trays sitting on a little plastic platform in a bowl, with a wick up into the dirt of each pot. I don't think you could buy retail for that budget, you'd have to get the flourescents on craigslist or at a garage sale. Plant pots you can find behind the local plant store in the dumpster, they throw out a lot of these. You can makeshift some wicking bases cutting these up. Dirt, so...this is where we blow the budget. You can't just get coco coir super cheap or perlite, you'll probably spend at least $20 on just the substrait, and then another 40 on the nutrients. If you go living soil, then you can go dig some soil out the yard, and maybe give it a bit of some garage sale miracle grow. Again on $20, your wicks will likely need to be fabric strips from old cloths, or some old shoelaces or something. Get seeds on sale right now at the garden center, since they are off season.
that would get you going for winter greens, and give you something to start seeds with for the spring, and then you'd want to get them outdoors asap after they got a couple inches, because flourescents don't provide enough light for very much, and your plants will all etiolate and tip over and die.
jxf | 9 hours ago
It won't work for everyone, but for our family, this was a great usage of extra power from the solar panels we couldn't store during the day. We have batteries but were just topping them off, and with the hydroponics the utilization is is much better (and has tastier results).
snark42 | 16 hours ago
> I pay around an extra $190/month in electricity.
Where are you? The seems awfully expensive for modern LED lights, more like like old MH or HPS lights.
CannyGardener | 11 hours ago
I am in the US Rockies. I run about 3000 watts right bow for my space. I have a sodium light that I break out when it gets tooooo cold but mostly that one stays in storage.
TylerBlozak | 19 hours ago
Strawberries are basically a cheat code in regards to their ability to replicate and produce fruits. As long as you have ample supplies.
kgal1298 | 19 hours ago
You aren't wrong someone threw some near the LA river on a walking path and they kept growing until whoever owns the house behind it had the area cut back.
pacman2081 | 18 hours ago
I should try it in my backyard
Winter_Whole2080 | 19 hours ago
I might do that. I swear I have not had one good tasting tomato since I lived in Ohio and got them from a farm. The crap in grocery stores aren’t tomatoes.
RealisticForYou | 18 hours ago
I live in the PNW where like you in Ohio, we have shorter days in summer compared to California. I grow a good crop of cherry tomatoes in summer, but I cannot grow the big beefsteak tomatoes I use to grow when living in CA because of the shorter summer months.
The cherry tomatoes I grow ripen before summers end and are really sweet.
NorridAU | 17 hours ago
Similar thing in my small part of New England. I can’t get bigger variety to do well. Blend of blossom end rot for the paste types and cracks on the slicer types. Small cherry types go well early to October. Yellow pear types have done well later, I gain some reliable novelty until Halloween.
I’m selecting off a “wild cherry” tomato variety. One plant that has lasted the longer than any before it this year. Hoping I can get a more cold hardy variety saved.
Wh3r3Th3WildThings | 17 hours ago
Here's a pic of my Black Krim tomatos the other day. This is my first time doing tomatos and I didn't have the nutrient set correctly so they were flowering but not producing. Hopefully soon.
https://imagur.org/i/8EC3Iez4
Hefty-Revenue5547 | 19 hours ago
What is your cost per month?
We tried growing herbs but just the electric alone for a small table top one was more than buying them at the grocery store. Seems like you need to go bigger to get your moneys worth but not sure.
z2x2 | 17 hours ago
Rain barrel can be technically illegal depending on where you’re at.
GWS2004 | 19 hours ago
I'm doing this in 2027.
3rdLunch4thDinner | 14 hours ago
r/resolution
SevereRunOfFate | 18 hours ago
Anyone have any good links to getting something small started? I know I can YouTube it but just wondering if there's anything that has helped you guys
I'm in the PNW for what it's worth
Wh3r3Th3WildThings | 17 hours ago
This is where I got started. It's incredibly easy to get started for very little money. Try lettuce first since it's stupid easy and grows very fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5SmKmrO3zU
noodlesallaround | 16 hours ago
I want to do this. Any advice?
PeakQuirky84 | 12 hours ago
There’s also this:
>The impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
kittenpoptart | 4 hours ago
This captures the full structural collapse engineered by corporate Ag, political lobbying, and deregulatory greed.
Corporate Ag lobbies spend millions supporting administrations and policies that threaten to deport their own labor force. They spent decades relying on a vulnerable, underpaid workforce with zero legal leverage, only to act shocked when anti immigrant policies choke off their labor pool and force local workers to take these grueling jobs.
They lobbied to strip back FDA food safety enforcement and gut inspection budgets to save a buck. But when lax safety leads to massive recalls and tanked consumer confidence, executives don't cut their own payouts, they squeeze working conditions to protect their profit margins.
The second those workers stand up and unionize to demand basic living standards and safety, corporate leadership opts to burn it down. They’d rather shut down six farms and fire over 500 workers than negotiate a fair contract or accept lower profit margins.
They run straight to conservative media outlets to claim "regulations and greedy unions ruined agriculture," completely hiding the fact that their own anti worker, deregulatory lobbying destroyed their own business model.
You can’t lobby for a government that destroys your workforce, deregulate the safety rules that protect your product, and then pretend to be the victim when the whole house of cards collapses under the weight of your own greed.
HappyChandler | 9 hours ago
The nut graf is all the way at the bottom:
The impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
Adventurous-Ad6416 | 19 hours ago
Water costs have quadrupled. Labor has doubled. None of their berries are organic anyway. I would never buy them. Can’t be washed of all those pesticides. Read the article.
pacman2081 | 19 hours ago
some Driscoll strawberries were labelled organic
AnewTest | 19 hours ago
Falsely.
flloyd | 19 hours ago
Do you have evidence that they were violating federal law?
awesome-alpaca-ace | 14 hours ago
Even if they did, the FDA wouldn't do anything
-SleeperStimulant- | 12 hours ago
FDA has a website that documents the regular enforcement they do. You should check it out. You can even tip them off if you find something.
RealisticForYou | 18 hours ago
You don't know that!
FatSteveWasted9 | 18 hours ago
Organic doesn’t mean no or even less pesticides. It simply means they use organic pesticides.
Richandler | 16 hours ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4141693/
WodenoftheGays | 16 hours ago
This article specifically highlights that comparative study between pesticide residues in organic and non-organic produce is currently problematic. It suggests that more should be done, not that their findings should be seen as conclusive.
Did you read the article, or did you just read the title and relevant bit of the abstract?
FatSteveWasted9 | 13 hours ago
You proved me right. Interesting debate tactic
IAmWeary | 17 hours ago
And they seem to prioritize looks over flavor. Strawberries purchased at a farmers market are so much better.
awesome-alpaca-ace | 14 hours ago
I quit eating strawberries because they made my mouth feel weird. Like they were filled with chemicals
uncoolcentral | 19 hours ago
I don’t buy Driscoll’s because of their horrible human rights abuses.
A_90s_Reference | 19 hours ago
Besides the point but organic usually means extra pesticides
SevereRunOfFate | 18 hours ago
Source? Genuinely asking
Adventurous-Roof488 | 18 hours ago
Organic pesticides tend to break down faster or be less potent so require more frequent application.
ilikedota5 | 18 hours ago
The reason is that organic produce allows for pesticides as long as they are organic pesticides. Which means that newer artificial ones, which are sometimes better aren't used instead. So then they use more of the weaker (typically shorter lasting) organic pesticides instead. However, what they break down into is another overlooked factor.
(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2889831
https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/BP/BP-69-W.pdf
https://ext.vt.edu/content/pubs_ext_vt_edu/en/ENTO/ento-663-organic-and-synthetic-pesticides-whats-the-difference.html)
But this can also get a little absurd. Because organic in this context generally, but does not exclusively mean nothijg synthetic (made in a lab). But some non synthetic stuff is not allowed and some synthetic is allowed. And sometimes they same thing can be allowed or not depending on the origin of the product (auxins, a plant growth hormone), or how it's used (copper sulfate).
nigirizushi | 18 hours ago
It could be little to none, or a lot more of allowed pesticides. There's no requirement of no pesticides, just ones that can still be used and still be considered organic. It's not the same pesticides, but it could also be ones that are potentially worse for you.
Richandler | 16 hours ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4141693/
[OP] CommieMartyr | 19 hours ago
Ouch.
Bosa_McKittle | 13 hours ago
yeah, here in CA we have enough small farmers and farmers markets that I never buy from the chains anymore. Currently I only buy from the local guy about a mile away. Best Strawberries I've ever had, and I love supporting the small guy.
IPredictAReddit | 4 hours ago
This article is such a joke. They point to labor costs and water costs and then quote (with no context) the industry spokesperson referring to those costs as "red tape".
Water costs aren't red tape. Water costs are what it costs to get excess water to your dry ass farm. These fields aren't on a river and don't have water rights, so they have to pay to have it brought in. The cost increased, but that just means *the subsidies that were in place are now lower*. They still get subsidized water, they just pay closer to *market* prices for it. Nobody requires them to use the water supplier they use, they can truck it in or drill a well, but that's more expensive.
And the labor costs they quote are above CA's ag minimum wage, so it's not "red tape" it's that their workers either have more productive, higher-paying jobs, or there are fewer of them supplied (which is probably the case given ICE crackdowns and their particular hatred of California).
The "red tape" claim makes it sound like it's some regulation, not the market.
badfeetbertha | 25 minutes ago
The impending closure and layoff of more than 500 workers come just months after the workers of SoCal Berry Growers voted to unionize. In July, employees unionized under United Farm Workers of America
auntieup | 43 seconds ago
There it is.
Nobody shuts down operations on their top selling product for any reason other than spite. I hope the state takes action.
MCRN10379558 | 6 hours ago
There aren’t that many places you can grow strawberries, so I’m not sure why they don’t just increase the cost of the product and pass it along to the consumer who will have to pay it if they want strawberries?
sarahbee2005 | 5 hours ago
they say in the article “farmers are price takers, not price makers” and that they have immense pressure on prices to match, as buyers are just importing from places with lower cost/fewer regulations
PeanutButterApricotS | 2 hours ago
I don’t know how it is now, and never knew about strawberries but my family had a fruit tree farm in California and sometimes he had to sell his fruit cheaply to other countries because of not meeting requirements.
His fruit might not be the right size, shape, color so USA buyers wouldn’t buy it and he would sell to break even basically.
He assumed bigger farmers could have more pull, I guess that’s not the case.
Caleb-Wendt69 | 31 minutes ago
But I thought the free market was the perfect economic system
jacksonr76 | 18 hours ago
They sure use a whole lot of words to describe what the problem is and what went wrong when they could've summed it all up in one word; TARRIFFS!
Be sure to thank a Republican for Driscolls closing, don't worry if you miss your chance, there are a lot more businesses to be closing soon for the same reason, and you can thank em' for those too.
Siderophores | 17 hours ago
Water quadrupled in price
madalienmonk | 16 hours ago
And labor costs nearly doubled
BeemerCalm | 17 hours ago
Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.
RYouNotEntertained | 17 hours ago
Actually the article goes out of its way to describe the confluence of many factors that has caused a price collapse over the last decade.
alsinaal | 17 hours ago
And not 1 was tariffs.
Swagastan | 13 hours ago
If anything tariffs might have helped them because they would have impacted the imported berrys they’re competing against while not effecting them at all.
RYouNotEntertained | 17 hours ago
Not hard to imagine tariffs playing a role in the price of, say, fertilizer. But yeah, no idea why the guy above me just decided tariffs were the whole reason.
CaesarLinguini | 16 hours ago
Because Trump bad!
BradBradley1 | 15 hours ago
Well, I mean, yeah
bigblueboyqt | 13 hours ago
Well the votes are in...
CaesarLinguini | 11 hours ago
I dont disagree, but it was cloudy where I live today, and i guarantee there are people that blame Trump for the sun not shining.
bigblueboyqt | 10 hours ago
well...
Suztv_CG | 16 hours ago
None of what you’re saying is true.
🙄
Suztv_CG | 16 hours ago
Also Driscoll is leaving Ventura County it isn’t going out of business. Read the article.
FuelDramatic1009 | 13 hours ago
Their fruit blows anyways. Molds in like 2 days.
CapeMOGuy | 16 hours ago
What? Did you even read the article? They're growing in the US. Tariffs are irrelevant.
They said it: water quadrupled in cost, labor doubled. Elsewhere they also mentioned fuel costs.
Edit: strawberries are relatively light users of fertilizers.
L3g3ndary-08 | 14 hours ago
It's actually deeper than that. Driscolls has cornered the market on GMO patents to grow berries year round across a multitude of climates and geographies. They've pushed down all the risk and liability to the growers and one of Driscolls key indicators is yield and QA/QC acceptance from customers.
Since yields have been getting crushed because of climate change, poor soil, increase in costs etc, growers have been taking on more and more risk, such as overusing pesticides.
As a result. The grower takes the punishment from the market and Driscolls gets away scott free and will continue to rake in the dough with their IP and limited risk business model.
Here's a great video on the topic. https://youtu.be/nyG-np0S0ZQ?is=r-XRlr8dKg6k7_vV
The TLDR is that Driscoll's is effectively Nestle. They're fucking evil, greedy motherfuckers.
Beginning_Ad_6616 | 16 hours ago
There is a lot of equipment and inputs into agriculture, some of components of that equipment, the equipment itself, and other inputs are imported and subject to tariffs.
The Iran war drove up fuel prices. Labor shortages are happening because the seasonal immigrant labor force are being harassed and deported, so they’re not around.
Water prices being up aren’t a shock because, these crops are being grown in an arena of the country that relies on unsustainable amounts of irrigation.
awesome-alpaca-ace | 14 hours ago
Worse, they are being put in concentration camps, so they are deathly afraid of coming to the US to provide the cheap labor farmers have depended on for decades
Turtlejimbo | 9 hours ago
That's a pure lie
tothemmoooooooooonn | 2 hours ago
Yeah no it's not buddy, they wouldn't be dieing in them if they weren't stuck in them
triplespruce | 13 hours ago
Don't forget about fertilizer & packaging, both of which have been subject to tariffs. Also, the machinery to process the berries, which we don't make here any longer.
HamRadio_73 | 13 hours ago
The workers recently elected to be represented by the United Farm Workers union.
triplespruce | 13 hours ago
Ah, that adds clarity to the story.
A313-Isoke | 16 hours ago
Water and fuels costs increasing are because of GOP policies.
nanooko | 16 hours ago
I get fuel costs but what did they do to increase water costs?
A313-Isoke | 15 hours ago
AI data centers are spiking water costs so water is going up. If AI had been better regulated, that might not have happened.
nanooko | 14 hours ago
Land and water use regulations are state and local issues not federal. You can say climate change is contributing to drought but only a small amount the accumulated co2 emissions of industrialization across the entire planet can't be blamed on the Republican party.
theineffablebob | 15 hours ago
Data centers in California use 0.05% of all water in the state. Try again.
oakfan52 | 14 hours ago
How dare you bring logic to lefts new boogie man. CA is 100% run by 1 party and fuel costs are drastically higher than national average because of CA own policies.
Scrandon | 12 hours ago
Yea cause we actually care about the environment here bud. And we’re not gonna trash our state for your stupid cheap berries.
Bone_Breaker0 | 14 hours ago
Fertilizer and diesel costs have gone up, which were caused by the Trump administration. There’s no way to lower water costs due to climate change and a warming planet.
CapeMOGuy | 9 hours ago
You're leaving out the $2.00 a gallon California diesel premium.
And strawberries are one of the crops needing relatively little fertilizer.
JuanThiccLumpia | 14 hours ago
That’s still too much water for people to AI themselves with celebrities or fake they are on vacation somewhere.
Raichu4u | 14 hours ago
Ok great, that makes for a great moralizing topic, but impractical to the point of it being a nonfactor when talking about this situation here.
CapeMOGuy | 16 hours ago
Trump policy has increased fuel costs. There are also still Biden effects. Canceling leases, increased royalties, and shutting off millions of acres to development.
Water cost increases are all pretty much state policy that Democrats 100% control.
DarkElation | 15 hours ago
Two dozen refinery closures over the last decade have for more impact than the feedstock fluctuating in the band it always fluctuates, but due to inflation, lower cost.
In 2008 oil was in the $140’s and gasoline was about the same as it is today.
curiousengineer601 | 14 hours ago
Trump is simply accelerating the transition away from gasoline and diesel
HamRadio_73 | 13 hours ago
Water is a state policy controlled by CA democrats
Chemical_Enthusiasm4 | 12 hours ago
Water in Ventura county is 97% local. They pumped too much and now they have to spend a ton of money to deal with salt water intrusion
cyanescens_burn | 10 hours ago
Salt water in the aquifer?
A while back I read that there’s areas in the Central Valley of CA that pulled so much from the aquifer that it didn’t replenish, and it’s caused the ground to sink. IIRC, it’s multiple feet lower from where it started.
Chemical_Enthusiasm4 | 9 hours ago
So I have read. Ventura is wedged between mountains and the ocean.
Branical | 6 hours ago
And when the ground sinks, there’s no more empty space for the water to refill. That aquifer is diminished permanently.
RaynOfFyre1 | 3 hours ago
Factually inaccurate. Water in California is primarily handled by water districts or water departments at the local levels. While California is a “blue state,” the number of local governments that govern throughout the state are overwhelmingly red.
WanderlustFella | 15 hours ago
Didn't they have a huge shipment rejected from Canada as well for exceeding the pesticide toxicity? I read that in the news and immediately told my brother to stop buying that specific brand since he has a toddler.
Slight-Hedgehog259 | 12 hours ago
Yeah that's what happens when their cheap labor is deported and nobody wants to harvest their crops. And then some idiot starts a war and raises fuel cost.
Explain to me how tarriffs are irrelevant if evweything they import, fertilizer for example, is more expensive.
WEEGEMAN | 14 hours ago
Fertilizer price has gone up because of tariffs
Chronotheos | 14 hours ago
Yeah, so, tariffs. But also war.
aznology | 13 hours ago
Lol that's tarriffs and immigration and war inflation same shit all directly linked to Trump's usa
UnusualLavishness324 | 12 hours ago
Tariffs are irrelevant? Where do they get their fertilizer? Everything on their farm from irrigation to machinery is produced in the United Stated and is free from tariffs as well? How about the steel and lumber they need to build a new facility. Also tariff free?
amopeyzoolion | 12 hours ago
A lot of fertilizer is also imported and subject to tariffs
jmbirn | 17 hours ago
If I used "just one word" for why expenses were high, I'd choose: INFLATION.
Sure, tariffs on some things (farm equipment for example) raised some prices, but deisel and fertilizer only went through the roof when we started with war with Iran, and farm workers had to unionize and demand fair pay because all of their expenses are going up, while limits on immigrant labor made workers scarce, so labor costs went up too.
Flagtailblue | 17 hours ago
So, tariffs, inflation, military action, trade wars, immigration enforcement and policies?
Make up your mind.
awesome-alpaca-ace | 14 hours ago
Bruh thinks only one thing can happen at once. Try to hold more than one thing in your head at once smooth brain
Baptoozled | 16 hours ago
Well they also went off on a tangent about regulations even though it’s clearly everything related to tariffs, immigration enforcement, and the war with Iran. But conservatives are so fixated on deregulation that they can’t help themselves. And this is coming from fucking Driscoll’s, a company for whom regulations were designed.
aurelorba | 16 hours ago
Tariffs and voluntary boycotts and increased costs for inputs like diesel and fertilizer because... well... we all know why.
Personally avoided Driscoll's long ago because they consistently tasted the worst.
colostitute | 14 hours ago
Also, Driscoll’s farms trash Strawberries. I love when these organizations blame anything other than their shitty value.
alsinaal | 17 hours ago
What? Price of water, land, labor but please enlighten me how did tariffs cause this?
People will always see what they want.
Edit spelling
Strict_Weather9063 | 17 hours ago
Tariffs cause counter tariffs which drive up cost to ship to other countries. Tariffs on materials needed to grow the produce drive up cost domestically.price of land and water may increase but no where near what tariffs are doing to the supply chain.
alsinaal | 17 hours ago
We are talking berry agriculture. The tarrifs may have had many impacts favorable and unfavorable, but they had little to no impact on California berry farming.
Increasing water prices (in case you have not heard California has had a water shortage for many years).
Land costs, go look at where these berries are growing. Spent several years in the Salinas valley, the drive along the monteray bay is berry heaven and some prime real-estate.
Lastly, in case you have not heard Trump has made it difficult to hire field workers. Labor cost have gone up.
Maybe go to r/news to spout silliness - this is an economic forum.
Frogiie | 16 hours ago
The article literally says other factors like the “cost of diesel to the cost of fertilizer” played a role.
Researchers from the Agricultural Risk Policy Center at North Dakota State University have found that the tariffs directly increased fertilizer costs.
Other items like farm equipment and pesticides of course were impacted by the tariffs too.
And fuel prices of course have been impacted by the war in Iran.
alsinaal | 15 hours ago
OK I give up tariffs are 100% of the reason
BiscottiOk7342 | 16 hours ago
do they not own their land?
alsinaal | 15 hours ago
No
BlauSpadern | 15 hours ago
Tariffs cause counter tariffs eh? But only when we levy them against others right? We aren’t allowed the inverse, THAT would be evil.
Certain_Sleep2941 | 12 hours ago
Your semicolon should be a regular colon.
Rgmisll | 2 hours ago
Driscolls is not closing. The article is about SoCal Berry Growers, a distributor of Driscolls. It specifically highlights labor costs (dictated by Californias minimum wage laws) and water costs as the main drivers .
MarsRocks97 | an hour ago
Driscoll isn’t closing. Read. It’s a small farm that sells their strawberries to Driscoll. Driscoll is perfectly fine buying cheap strawberries from another country with no sanitary regulations.
pbbrowniesmmm | 10 hours ago
Driscolls is a terrible company. So sure, I’ll go thank the republicans for this one.
Pitiful_Truth_5948 | 11 hours ago
They will blame Democrats just like they blame Democrats for everything else.
ConejoShrine | 11 hours ago
Americans needs to have a real conversation about how "cheap" their groceries are. They are "subsidized" by illegal immigrants working for dollars in difficult jobs that Americans do not want to do.
Tiny_Reference_3697 | an hour ago
California farmers are mostly red hats, btw, who voted for the present Inflation Administration.
I went to junior hi and high school in the Imperial Valley...I have been in the fields and seen how workers are treated. Most of these landowners would have been quite comfortable in the South in 1850.
Fonsietrader | 19 hours ago
The best counterfactual is what happens to the acreage after this grower exits: continued berry production under a new operator would show the land can still support the crop, while idling or switching crops would point toward persistent local constraints. I’d want water costs and allocation, yield per acre, contracted farmgate prices, and labor cost per unit to compare the main explanations. The timing after unionization is notable, but by itself doesn’t establish why the closure happened.
[OP] CommieMartyr | 19 hours ago
A great term counterficial argument.
YodasLoveSlave | 13 hours ago
I will only buy strawberries from the Mexicans on the street corner or farmers market. All grocery store strawberries are either covered in white mold or are so unripe and sour they are inedible.
tamesage | 10 hours ago
Driscoll's has been reliable.
Low_Ability4450 | 10 hours ago
California’s strawberry industry is facing a deepening crisis as soaring water and labor costs collide with cheaper imports, squeezing domestic growers out of the market.
Winter_Whole2080 | 19 hours ago
One solution is raise prices. Of course the imported competition will be cheaper.
Another is find a different crop or use for the land that makes economic sense.
Seldomsought | 19 hours ago
I grow my own in bus tubs. In fact, on my little quarter acre lot, I grow enough fruit to last the whole year. Probably the only thing I buy is bananas.