Unemployment up and farmers can't find labor? Perhaps this could be another reason for food price hikes.

From the above post: "Trees produce fruit, natural fertilizer and wood, monoculture farming and mechanized farming have never, I repeat, never ever been able to match the productivity of an acre of land cared for by animal and manual labor." Very, very important.
It has EVERYTHING to do with the Ron Paul movement and message. The neocons are using the excuse of feeding world hunger, and sold off American Industrial Farms to do it . . . but in reality . . . they cause the starvation by seizing farm lands in the name of progress.

See my entries below with the link to the full article. The snippet above does NOT tell anywhere near the whole story, all you are getting is the reporter's spin.

Now imagine family farms, small ones, producing ENERGY.

Interesting isn't it?

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to assist peoples around the world to be self sufficient. We are setting the example for the world. Legalize drugs and take back the family farms!
That effort alone will finish the neocons off.
With all our communications, all that needs to be done, is for Paris HIlton to declare she loves farming, and all the sheeple will follow. Actually, to educate people about better food choice and exercise and to appreciate orchards and crops are just as important as informing all about the freedom movement.

Around here we have a "pick-it-yourself" farm (part pick... part commercial) very similar to the Singer Farms mentioned in the article. The recently razed a huge amount of acreage that was formerly cherry (and some apple) trees... mainly because the trees were not producing. But instead of replanting, they brought in the dozer, built streets and put up a bunch of McMansions... name of the new subdivision: "The Orchards" (very ironic because there are NO fruit trees anymore... unless the homeowners choose to plant some).

But conversely, there are three small-scale "organic" farms around that during the recent years have begun planting several entirely NEW orchards of fruit trees. Smaller fields (couple of acres each) with more (different) types of trees, rather than 40 acres of single-varieties of apples.

So the large volume operations are maybe closing down (or going automated), but we're getting back a lot more small operations.

Automated fruit growers are volume producers whose output is destined for "factory food" anyway (like WalMart bakery & other junk "food").

Local growers will produce seasonal stuff for consumption locally. Downside is that the price of fruit will probably go up a bit -- upside is that the quality of the fruit will likely improve even more. (Most of the shipped in fruit is rather ghastly in taste anyway).

And personally, with a several apple and pear trees on my own property it doesn't affect me one way or another -- as it is, I give away bushels full every year to friends and neighbors -- and even still there are probably more falls than fruit I actually harvest.

Biofuels are a threat to the corporate owners of the media (mostly Big Oil).

Note all the negative Press ethanol has generated in the past two years. Almost all of it has been alarmism about global food shortages.

What is popularly termed "bio-diesel" (actually common vegetable oil, burned in diesel engines) is a terrific threat to the petroleum industry if its use becomes widespread. It is far more practical than Ethanol and can be made from soybeans, peanuts, canola, and many other sources. Farmers would be able to grow their own fuel. It would be an agrarian revolution.

The price of fuel has risen high enough that bio-diesel is already a practical alternative.

The best way to nip that in the bud, in my opinion, is to create a phony food shortage that is trumpeted by the media as a catastrophic threat to the human race.

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so true so true

I agree; news media deception.

The media is down on farming now and wants to encourage a belief in widespread, catastrophic global food shortages. That is not to say that there won't be widespread, catastrophic global food shortages in our future, but we aren't having them now.

I can tell you exactly why the media is doing this, but to believe me you'll have to understand who owns the media.

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Found the complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/20...

Of note is the caption right under the lead picture:

Jim Bittner of Singer Farms in Appleton, N.Y., cut down 25 acres of cherry trees, some of them 30 years old, because he was not sure of finding enough migrant workers to harvest the crop. There will be no harvest from the cleared fields until at least 2011.

So it was an OLD orchard of cherry trees, it was only 25 acres (< 5 percent of his total acreage). BTW the typical life span of "sweet" type cherry trees is between 15 and 20 years (cf http://www.hort.purdue.ed... ) maybe a few years longer in ideal conditions. So these trees were well beyond their expected END of their productive life; and this orchard was going to need to be cut down within a year or two anyway.

He also dug up 20 acres of peach trees that were 12 to 15 years old.
[...] In all, he razed more than 10 percent of his fruit orchards this year, a decision that he said was a direct response to the immigration situation[...]

And apparently they have been making these plans for a while... its a business change decision (i.e. one of ROI -- not that he could NOT have found workers... just that he couldn't at the wages he wants to pay).

It's not so much that he decided to cut down this orchard (it was time to cut it down anyway) as it is a decision on whether he will replant it with cherry trees again... or something else:

Mr. Bittner said he was planning to grow blueberries, or tart cherries for use in pies, because those crops could be harvested by machine and did not require migrant workers.

The problem apparently is that OTHER FARMS have adapted to using more machinery and other automated processes for harvesting, and the ones who do not cannot compete any longer (in truth were it not for the falsely low wages of illegal immigrants, this probably would have happened years earlier). This is a story of someone NOT wanting to change, to upgrade or otherwise invest in his business in a way that would improve the ROI, instead being overly dependent upon cheap (aka slave) labor.

No pity from me. Sweet cherries will probably go up in price if other orchards likewise switch crops -- once the price rises sufficiently, those orchards that remain will then be able to afford to pay reasonable wages and will be able to hire the workers needed.

This is simple BASIC economics folks. The immigrants just kept an unsustainable and inefficient operation (with old trees) going for a few more years.

Gotta get the whole story folks, AND some background, otherwise you're gonna get spun with stories like this.

Nice observation, when I read the article I got the sense that he wasn't getting enough immigrant workers to the work for lower pay. I could be wrong.