At 05:31 PM 12/24/97 +1100, Ajit Sinha wrote:
>At 11:51 23/12/97 -0800, Mike E. wrote:
>>
>>While what you say here is true, my understanding is that the primary
>>motivation for the development of new varieties of tomatoes at the UC-Davis
>>Agricultural School was the need for a variety that would be tough enough to
>>hold up to harvesting by mechanical tomato harvesters, and ones that would
>>ripen slowly off the vine, enabling distribution to national markets. The
>>mechanical harvester was developed to replace field labor and to automate
>>the harvesting process. In part this was a response to labor availability
>>and costs -- a function of immigration policy -- but these were not the only
>>considerations.
>________________
>
>One question: why should labor cost motivate mechanical harvesters. Why
>can't tomatos just become more expensive? Where there other tomato growing
>areas where labor was cheaper?
A farmer I am not; nor an agricultural economist. I suspect the primary
motivation was not labor cost alone. I merely raise this as a factor,
since, absent other compelling reasons, there would be little motivation for
mechanizing if the work could be done more cheaply and effectively by hand
labor. There certainly are other areas where labor is cheaper, and indeed
farms have migrated to them (in Mexico, for example). As a labor organizer
during the 1970s-80s, I became painfully familiar with the phenomenon of
runaway factories. Only after arriving in the Silicon Valley did I become
aware that there could be runaway farms. I am confident there are one or
more participants on this list who actually know something about the
economics of corporate farming (or, being economists, will speak
authoritatively so as to create the impression they do) and can enlighten us
about the price elasticity of tomatoes and the economics of farming.
____
Happy Holidays!
Michael E.
