I think it's more about getting paid for more than the 1 month a year that this work is available. So we could solve it by just paying someone a whole year's salary in a month, then they'd get a lot of applicants. But the farmers want to only pay people for that month, hope they survive in some other way for 11 months, and that they happily come back at the end of that to work for a month again. It's capitalism running into a constraint built by weather and finding out that the only solution is slavery or socialism

[–] D61@hexbear.net 7 points 6 months ago

But the farmers want to only pay people for that month

Pretty sure the orchard operators don't get prepaid for their apples either so they're put into a situation of paying their workers from money saved from the previous year's harvest or through taking out loans. Somebody else besides the farm operator is going to have to foot the bill for paying each worker 20~25k a year US for a month's work.