My brother is good friends with a family that has a fairly large farming operation near our hometown. Their dad puts out blog posts periodically and in one of them he mentioned something about the South African workers being delayed or unavailable due to the pandemic.
I would guess they maybe make a good labor pool due to being in the opposite hemisphere, so they can come up to the US during their off season. Not sure on that though.
I was surprised when I read about it, and then a little less surprised when I read it in this article. Guess it's a thing.
We have the same thing here in Norway, both in fruit and vegetable farming (planting, weeding in ecological farms) as well as in sheep farming were sheep shearers fly in from Australia/New Zealand after finishing the season down under.
I'm guessing the extremely expensive Norwegian labour costs make that viable? In Ireland, I never heard of sheep shearers being brought in from Australia or New Zealand (in fact the flow of young workers has been in the other direction since the 2008 crash).
My understanding was that the sheep shearers were specialists and the others were cheap labor.
Note that Norway has strict laws and regulations when it comes to wages, but especially this year it has become clear that certain farms finds all kinds of ways to fleece some of these people anyway:
- rent out overpriced "flats" with bunk beds that are the bare minimum allowed standard
- changing terms after people arrive
- generally try to skirt regulations in every way possible
I would guess they maybe make a good labor pool due to being in the opposite hemisphere, so they can come up to the US during their off season. Not sure on that though.
I was surprised when I read about it, and then a little less surprised when I read it in this article. Guess it's a thing.