just spitballing, but i wonder if what's impossible is to equitably fill the labor needs of production system centering the ownership and control a single family running a massive monoculture relying entirely on a seasonal, transient workforce.

Straight up communal situation is the only wayt that makes sense to me. The orchards are owned collectively and the community gets together during harvest season to do the work. The harvest is sold and the revenue goes to the community's coffers to pay for things like community housing or the community grocery store to subsidize costs and keep retail prices low to zero.

In situations where the local community can't get enough labor together is where it might become a problem. Are there other communities with orchards that can spare their people to come help or is there a way to ethically maintain an itenerant work force to fill the gaps? National Guard or military Reserves being activated to be workers would be chefs-kiss

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

for sure. treat it as a communal resource and then re-orient the production system towards the labor capacity and desires of the community. that probably is going to involve diversifying the land use to distribute the labor needs of harvest/post-harvest processing more broadly throughout the year instead of spiking it in the fall for the harvest of a single species of perennial. if the community wants to continue to "corner the [nearby] market" for apples and apple products, they will have to summon the effort within themselves.

otherwise, its time to start transitioning infrastructure and production areas into things like maybe strawberries/honey (summer), early greens (late spring), and maple tapping (winter).

the cultural logic of monoculture plantations is an anathema to community food systems/labor provisioning as much as it to ecological resilience. people who want to hang onto them will find themselves defending heinous practices out of "necessity".