Sugar Beet Farms Research Articles

Discussion: The Agricultural Labor Problem

John Southern's paper represents an interesting attempt to grapple with some complex policy issues of agricultural labor. His description of the overriding conditions of the agricultural labor market (i.e., labor as another input, program discrimination, declining demand, and relatively low wages) is quite perceptive, as is his summary of factors leading to the demise of Public Law 78. Moreover, there is considerable merit to the propositions that (a) agricultural manpower policy should be integrated with national policy,' and that (b) manpower supplies within regions should be utilized more effectively. Unfortunately, Mr. Southern offers no plan for an effective regional utilization of rural and small-city manpower, and a few of his specific proposals for rationalizing farm labor with national labor policy appear somewhat bewildering. Federal income supplements to farm workers, severance payments to workers displaced by crop diversion programs, and minimum wage programs for agriculture on a commodity basis are not likely to have much political support. Moreover, the agricultural priceand income-support legislation that Mr. Southern seeks to amend does not involve the horticultural and specialty crops-crops for which hired farm labor demands are particularly important. The amendment of individual commodity legislation for the purpose of providing income, wage, or other labor standards will only lead to a myriad of inequities among farm laborers. It would seem more sensible to argue for minimum wage and other labor standards within the context of established and general labor laws. While I have not analyzed the effectiveness of the labor provision of the Sugar Act in recent years, my conclusion in 1960 was that the Secretary of Agriculture established minimum wages in the sugar-beet area at or below the prevailing wage. Also, the Secretary of Agriculture's wage determination excluded skilled or semiskilled persons employed on sugarbeet farms [4, p. 105]. While the Sugar Act is unique insofar as agricultural labor (including child labor) programs are concerned, the Act should not be used as a model for agriculture in general. With respect to John Southern's query regarding bargaining privileges for nonfarmers (presumably farm laborers), it would be naive to assume

Sugar Beet Farming in Britain

Sugar Beet Farming in Britain

An analysis of production practices of sugar beet farmers in Michigan, 1958

An analysis of production practices of sugar beet farmers in Michigan, 1958

The Farm Women of France

If they are over worked beasts of burden?just critters as the knee-farmers of Europe say?then the farm civilization of that land is poverty stricken beyond redemption. Or what is even worse, it is cursed with the self-imposed poverty of pinching parsimony. Describe in detail the farm homes, the tasks that are turned over to the women and children indoors and afield, the pres? ence or absence of home conveniences, comforts and luxuries?books, magazines and newspapers, musical instruments and music, electric lights, telephones, running water, waste disposal systems and the like?the look of hopefulness or blank apathy in the faces of the women and the children, the sickness ratios of the family and the death rates of infants and children, and you have a graphic, photographic picture of the farm civili? zation of a country. Whatever lifts the level of the farm home lifts the nation; whatever depresses the farm home dooms the social order it supports. It is a matter worth considering, because under modern condi? tions our own small-scale farmers are moving little by little toward the low estate of the kneefarming pleasants of the Old World countries where the farm burdens rest in the main upon the backs of the women and children. Signs of it appear in our tobacco patches, in our cotton fields in the chopping and picking seasons, in our truck and fruit areas everywhere, in the cranberry bogs of New Jersey and Wisconsin, and the sugar beet farms of the West. And the native farm women of America will not bear it without revolt. The city ward drift of country populations in more than half the states of the Union is largely the result of impossible living conditions in our farm homes. The small-scale farmers of Denmark found a way of escape (1) in ownership farming, (2) in self-feeding farm systems, (3) in the abundant use of small labor-saving machines, (4) in business machines created by cooperative effort, and (5) in community-culture organiza? tions and enterprises. The result is farm homes on the highest possible levels of happiness and hopefulness for the women and children. And I see no other way of escape for the small-scale farmers of our southern cotton-tobacco belt. If the women and the children of the farm