ottawa foodies

i read this article today and found it very interesting. farmers in the states were trying to hire local workers for their farms and can not find people willing to do the work, even with the economy and high unemployment. many people didn't last through the first day.

www.nytimes.com

In Britanny (France) where my wife grew up, most of the produce is brought in by Africans. They get about 17 eruos an hour, plus meals and lodging (see below). They're glad to take this work though, and they do a good job. The French won't do this work for those wages (though 17 euros is what, $24 an hour?)

My wife's mother was talking to a neighbour casually, and said she would probably need to hire some workers soon. The neighbour asked "but where will you house them?" And my mother-in-law, half joking, said, "well they can just camp in the front yard."

The next morning when she came out her front door she was surprised to find several tents pitched in her front yard and young men ready to start work . . .

For the past ten years, my mother has had a second career working for a company near windsor that grows fruit trees and grapevines as nursery stock. It is impossible for them to find local workers who will do the work for minimum wage, so they have always relied on a government program (sorry not sure what it's called) to bring in temporary foreign workers. Each year potential workers apply for the positions and if selected they come to Canada and work from November to March. The company provides housing: I've seen it in this case, and it's quite nice; large converted industrial building, air conditioned, with multiple bathroom, kitchen and recreation areas. The company pays for their airfare one way, and the guys are responsible for covering the cost of their return trip. I've talked to these guys, and in most cases the money they make in Canada makes a big difference in the lives of their families, helps their kids to attend school, funds businesses they may have back in Jamaica (taxis, restaurants and upholstery businesses are three that I know of). Other farmers in the area employ temporary workers from Asia, Mexico and other parts of the caribbean. For most of these guys, being selected to come to Canada is a big thing, and they want to return year after year. It seems to be a good program, and conditions are good at the farms I have been to. One older worker I knew had a heart attack while in Canada, and although he received good care while he was here, it unfortunately ruled him out for selection the following year. And when the guys return home in November they generally buy computers, appliances etc. in Canada for much less than they can at home, and ship them back.

One of the added benefits of having a foreign population for most of the year is that I can now find good authentic mexican food, a Filipino bakery and good dim sum even in the small farming community of Leamington Ontario. Last time I visited this town of about 30,000 people there were no less than 3 decent Mexican restaurants, so for purely selfish reasons, I hope this program continues. Not sure if anyone in Ottawa is looking outside the country to help with farm work.

Back in the Annapolis Valley (farming region of NS) this was always a problem and a lot of farmers brought in seasonal workers from the carribean. Here in Ottawa I know the problem exists as well and a lot of workers come in from Mexico

EDIT: I will say it would be hard work for min wage. Not sure I'd do it. But I would for 13 or 14 an hour. I volunteered on the farm of my CSA a few weeks ago so have an idea what it is like.

Jamaicans and Mexicans are used on local farms in Ottawa because local people aren't willing to work hard labour anymore. Shame because it is a perfect opportunitely for farm apprenticeship programs to get started.

i don't understand why people here don't want to do the work. minimum wage is higher than social assistance or ei. the work is good, honest work. plus, you don't need bother with a gym pass in order to stay in shape ;)

my husband got tired of the rat-race/pressure/stress of his job and decided to stop. he spent 5 years working outdoors. his season went from mid-april until nov/dec. it was minimum wage the first year, but after the first year the pay is higher. mentally and physically everything improved once he was outdoors all the time. at the end of the day, work is left at work, no stress is brought home. it made him realize what he really wanted to do and now he following his dream and it is working out really well.

What did your husband do outdoors HFF?

Before anyone poo-poos someone not wanting to work farm labour for min wage, I suggest they try it first or zip it up.

I worked six months really hard labour as a butcher and I can tell you that this is not something deserving of min wage.

And farm labourers I do not think ever get more than min wage, though I could be wrong. Though I know someone who just spent 40 days straight picking tomatoes, without a day off. Not sure I know him well enough to start asking about how much you earn doing that, though. But he was grumbling about people not wanting to work on farms these days - as far as I am concerned he has the right to do so. If none of you have done any means of hard physical labour anytime recently, you have no such right.

he wasn't doing farming, but was doing labour intensive work outdoors. all weather conditions, including rain. being outdoors can be difficult, regardless of what the work is.

i would say money should depend on what type of farming you are doing. i think pickers are what the article is referring too and picking is hard work in different ways. my grandfather had a huge peach orchard and had seasonal workers, but the family had to do it too. we had giant baskets with a body harness to wear and you pick, carry and dump. much different muscles are used then haying where you are using the pitch fork to toss giant bales around (depending on what type of hay baler you have). in university, my husband used to hay and that is back-breaking work, but the pay was very good.

for your friend who worked 40 days straight. i'm assuming that is because of weather, need to get tomatoes off vine before frost. how much time will he have off once that is done? that is usually the trade off. many hard days followed by many days off.

it is interesting and i don't mean to suggest people should be working farms, but in tough economic times - as the article suggests - where 1 in 11 is out of work, wouldn't it be worth trying to find a way to use the local labour force for the sake of keeping communities alive?

I do not disagree with your last paragraph hipfunkyfun , but part of it for me comes back to all of us and our unrealistic expectations of cheap food. The price of food needs to double so that people in our communities can raise their families on farm work. You can't raise a family on min wage unless your spouse is in a much higher paying job.

All major labour intensive farming is done with imported labour. This is true for all fruit/veg farmers. I don't know if pay is min wage or piece meal but I'm fairly certain this was done to keep prices down and keep the prices in line with other countries. This isn't a new phenomena or strictly a result of "lazy" individuals.

An interesting (to me anyway) aside is that my sister and husband visited a relative with a winery in Oregon. They helped pick for a week in exchange for some wine. (Free labour) In this case they were *some* of the imported labour and found the work grueling. You really do need to work up/be in shape to handle this type of work, and I can see where it would be hard to find someone who was readily wanting to do it for little money unless they had limited alternatives.

There should be a requirement for a person on EI/Welfare roll for over x amount of months to go work doing labour at minimum wage.

It doesn't have to be hard labour or anything, and can be jobs respective of physical limitations of an individual.

I'm sure many would be happy for the income.

Though that does bring about all sorts of other variables, like do people stop looking for work because they'll get a job anyways etc.

Article is interesting

sourdough - i know of other people who have gone on working vacations in exchange for room & board in somewhere exotic. that has always struck me as ironic. i guess the bragging rights to say you picked avocadoes in hawaii beats saying you picked peaches in ontario. myself, i'd rather spend my vacation having fun :)

i'd think what is being seen in the small farming towns of america is a warning sign that things can't go on as they currently are. out of work locals are not buying local food, they are buying what is cheapest in the store. the imported foreign labour saves their money and takes it home with them to spend. that sort of gets back into what zym is saying above about cheap food.

oh, and zym, your last line is true for my situation. we are definitely fortunate to be able to switch careers midstream. living very simply helps, as does one half of us being in high-tech, though there is no job security in that these days.

There is another benefit to working on a farm (I admit I'm not speaking from experience), the connection between generations. I know there is "bring your kid to work day" and all, but that's only one day. There's something deeply satisfying about a father passing on his skills and knowledge to a son or daughter that is lost in the modern rat race.

RE: minimum wage . . .

Some outdoor work pays a lot more money than minimum wage I think. It costs hundreds of dollars to have a large but ailing tree cut down, and the cutter usually takes the wood away. They dry that wood and sell it too for a few hundred dollars more. Maybe they get more than $500 for a tree all told, and they can cut down and haul away 4 or 5 of those in a day. I know there is some skill to getting a tree to fall the right way and not take out the side of house, but it still seems like a well paid job to me.

On my bike home to Cantley, I pass two fruit and vegetable roadside vendors who are there pretty much all summer long. One vendor is from a local farm up by Mt. Cascades, the other, I found out later, is from the Montreal area and is just reselling fruit and vegetables, capitalizing on people wanting to buy from local vendors, roadside. But here's the thing . . . is local farming viable if the middle men (wholesalers and supermarkets) are cut out of the loop and farmers can sell directly to the eaters of the produce?

The mother jones server is having problems right at this moment, but this link to an article about farm workers should come up eventually once they fix it

www.motherjones.com

Zy thanks for that article. Another reason to buy Ontario produce.

In high school I worked one day on a farm. They picked us up in a school bus in the city at 6am, and drove us out to the fields (essex county). It was really a hot day, and they dropped us at one end of the field. Each of us worked detasselling corn. We carried our own lunch and water, and walked one row for the entire day. no facilities. The bus picked us up at the other end of the field at the end of the day. Got tons of bug bites and the fields were full of snakes too. Pay was $5 a day. I quit after one day, but to this day I really do think about all the effort that goes into raising the food I eat, and I try to treat it with respect. I wonder if conditions have changed for corn detassellers in the last 35 years.

That's funny blubarry because I have almost the same story but it was picking blueberries just over 30 years ago.

I'm old enough to have stooked grain on our farm. It was an all day chore that we kids did between milkings. We had no choice about it. I don't think it did us any harm.

My father had a threshing mill that we took around to all of our neighbours. The ladies made the most amazing meals for us. The pies were excellent! We had the best of everything that they had... and some of them didn't have much.

Sorry... this is probably the wrong place to put this.

And they always had the sweetest water, and the best apples from their trees for us. (I may be reminiscing to much) :)

One of my friends used to work at Continental mushroom farm a few years ago- he drove a truck around their farm and did some labor type work there.

But he did tell me about the people who they hire for the mushroom picking jobs.
He told me that it was mostly non-english speaking people and a lot of Asian people worked there.

Also, that most of them did not have transportation, so the company has a "mushroom bus".
It is this school bus that is painted yellow and green and it pick up the employees at different parts of the city in the morning and drops them off after work.

I have actually seen this bus a few times this year,so he was not making that up.
No idea what they pay the mushroom pickers though.

there were blueberry busses in nova scotia

probably still are

Apparently it's really easy to grow wild blueberries up north (like Sudbury area). They are self seeding and readily spring up on empty lots. And land is cheap up there too.