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How this garlic farm went from a labor shortage to over 150 people on its applicant waitlist
The biggest fresh garlic producer in the nation is giving its employees a hefty raise, reflecting the desperation of farmers to attract a dwindling number of farmworkers.
Christopher Ranch, which grows garlic on 5,000 acres in Gilroy, Calif., announced recently that it would hike pay for farmworkers from $11 an hour to $13 hour this year, or 18%, and then to $15 in 2018. That’s four years earlier than what’s required by California’s schedule for minimum wage increases.
Ken Christopher, vice president at Christopher Ranch, said the effect of the move was immediately obvious. At the end of last year, the farm was short 50 workers needed to help peel, package and roast garlic. Within two weeks of upping wages in January, applications flooded in. Now the company has a wait-list 150 people long.
“I knew it would help a little bit, but I had no idea that it would solve our labor problem,” Christopher said.
Amazing. In all my years of reading about the latest crops-rotting-in-the-fields crisis, I’d always been under the impression that the Law of Supply and Demand had been repealed for California growers. And now this hereditary landowner has had a breakthrough insight denied virtually all economists asked to comment on the labor economics of immigration. Mr. Christopher ought to be the frontrunner for next fall’s quasi-Nobel in Economics.
Seriously, Gilroy is in the southern end of Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, so housing costs are extremely high. I would imagine stoop laborers in Santa Clara County either commute in from far-away or sleep in bunk beds in something barracks-like.
Presumably, the grower will eventually sell his land to a housing subdeveloper for a huge amount of money (potentially in the billions if they can get over $200,000 per acre for their 5,000 acres), but in the meantime it’s nice to make a profit off farming too.
It’s almost as if there are these things called supply and demand.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/youll-never-guess-how-this-silicon-valley-farm-solved-its-labor-problem/#comment-1763969
That’s stupid. All this will do is raise the price of fresh vegetables. Don’t you know how much it costs to feed a family of four?
Besides, this story must be false. Everyone knows that Americans won’t work for farmers. We’re much too lazy to pick garlic, at any price.
Oh well. Time to peel some fresh avocados from Mexico and make some cocktails.
Then after it grows, you can't, like, save it in any way. It disappears when exposed to sunlight for drying and explodes in the temperatures inside an upright freezer. If you pressure can it, it emits gamma rays.
Cash and Carry (restaurant supply store) sack garlic (peeled, five pound bag) now costs $1,400 a pound. This is going to raise it to $1,675 a pound. I have a spreadsheet from UC-Berkeley's Department of Poverty Studies Studies proving this.
And since we eat fifteen pounds of it a week, each, somebody better tell the parrot we're going to have to parlay his Brazilian ancestry into an affirmative action civil service job.
Otherwise, we're going to have to start eating other things. Like squirrels. He hates eating squirrels. He likes them alive, so he can shout at them angrily as they pass by his window.
That or we'll starve, but at least we'll die streaming Netflix videos and playing Grand Theft Judiciary on our iPhone 7s.
You can raise wages or cut benefits.
If there are fewer benefits, people will work for less.
People moving from unemployment benefits to sickness benefits
People moving from countries or states with lower benefits and lower wages to those with higher benefits and wages (eg, from New Zealand to Australia, or from Tasmania to New South Wales).
People refusing to do seasonal jobs for fear of not being able to get back onto benefits when they finish.
Or is there one? Or do you want a race to the bottom? And, leaving aside the morality, who in that case will be buying the products being made? And do you really want to earmark the money you're paying in taxes, for private security?
That kind of thinking, inasmuch as it makes sense, makes more sense in a world where it doesn't entail taking American's last protection against being forced into the same standards of living as the poorest in the world.
5000 acres of garlic in a place that’s growing in wealth?
Here’s another idea. He’s desperate for workers to run his farm so he can blackmail potential developers into giving him him money to stop.
‘Gee Mr. Bigtime Developer. I know my 5000 acre lovely smelling garlic farm is making it impossible for you to build communities that any rich person would want to live in, but what can I do?
‘Take your money for far more than my land is worth? Well thanks Mr Bigtime Developer. Okay $15/hour workers, time’s up.’
“I knew it would help a little bit, but I had no idea that it would solve our labor problem,” Christopher said.
And this clown still has a job?
You hit another reason why its hard to get seasonal labour these days. Hardly anyone provides on-farm accommodation any more.
I suspect one of the reasons is that farmers are nervous about having illegals on their property. Much easier for the government to do an immigration raid on a farm if they know illegals are staying there as well as working there.
I was just reading about Joe Bageant's time in Belize:http://www.energygrid.com/society/2007/02jb-escapeamerica.html
Here’s the question that pops to mind every time there’s a crops-rotting-in-the-field story: What percentage of the cost of veggies is labor? I really have no idea.
And besides, if doubling the cost of food is what it takes to get Americans in the field, then it’s a win-win: Products farther up the “value” chain (i.e., processed crap) will be replaced with cheaper alternatives (i.e., raw ingredients).
The absurdly low prices in the produce aisle still astound me.
Of all the strange bedfellows that the left lies down with, big ag and its walking boss plantation owners has got to be the weirdest.
anon, here in WNY we have “Right to Farm” laws that basically say, hey farming is stinky, smelly, dusty, loud and other unpleasant things, but we gots to have farms. Five thousand acres is an enormous chunk of land, I wonder what the taxes are,
In many counties of California, the assessed value (and tax burden) can be found on-line.
My sister (a school teacher in the area) lived in Gilroy until about a year ago, when the combination of increasing cost of living and growing problems of "vibrancy" in the school led her to move out of California.
I really have no idea why anyone would want to live out there and commute in to the Valley. It's a horrific commute of about 35 traffic-choked miles up the 101. But people do it....
I laughed out loud at the punchline in the article excerpt.
Nicely quoted, Steve.
If there are fewer benefits, people will work for less.
If there are fewer benefits people will leave the area and find somewhere with better benefits or higher wages. Or they will try to move onto a different class of benefits. In the UK commonwealth tougher restrictions on unemployment benefits have resulted in the following:
People moving from unemployment benefits to sickness benefits
People moving from countries or states with lower benefits and lower wages to those with higher benefits and wages (eg, from New Zealand to Australia, or from Tasmania to New South Wales).
People refusing to do seasonal jobs for fear of not being able to get back onto benefits when they finish.
Funny how someone with the username "unpc" turns into a pearl-clutching liberal whenever you propose taking away their precious bennies.
You've hit on something here. I've long railed that my employer shouldn't have any more involvement in my health insurance than he does in my auto or home insurance.
The current scheme is all built on a ridiculous war-era wage control loophole from seventy years ago and makes no sense.
But things like this also persist because someone is profiting from them.
How much is this a new serfdom? Is our entire healthcare system held hostage to the fact that big business likes us dependent on them in this regard? Likes that we have to face health-care uncertainty if we quit the workplace?
To call Gilroy a part of Silicon Valley is a bit misleading in my opinion. It’s a little ways down 101 south of San Jose and mostly farmland best known for its annual Garlic Festival and retail outlet mall off the highway.
Gilroy is billed as the Garlic capital of the world; they even have a festival there every year. Since I like garlic and use it for cooking all the time, my first question is, how much of my garlic comes from Gilroy and how much will that raise the price for me. Personally, I’d rather pay a bit more for garlic than to have more arable turned into tract housing or McMansions. The fringes of the Bay Area used to be covered with orchards, fruits, nuts, and so on, as well as many dairy farms. I get the impression most of that’s gone, now.
As for developing the land with housing, I highly doubt it is possible. At least around San Diego, the remaining farming towns have restrictions of one house per acre or per five acres, plus pretty high development fees.
And this clown still has a job?
Mr. Christopher of Christopher Ranch has his job, landowner, because his family owns 5,000 flat acres of Santa Clara County land.
The dim sons in England always went into the Church.
Does this mean that perhaps farmers aren’t as cynical as restrictionists have assumed? Could it just be ignorance or the effective inculcation of conventional economic logic?
And besides, if doubling the cost of food is what it takes to get Americans in the field, then it's a win-win: Products farther up the "value" chain (i.e., processed crap) will be replaced with cheaper alternatives (i.e., raw ingredients).
The absurdly low prices in the produce aisle still astound me.
Bingo. And as I and others have addressed this issue, you’re already paying extra through more: welfare, crimes, ESL programs in schools, WIC, and host of other social costs that are being passed on to consumers.
Of all the strange bedfellows that the left lies down with, big ag and its walking boss plantation owners has got to be the weirdest.
sing a few lyrics of "Dixie"
Until he sells it.
Of course just about all the land on Manhattan Island used to be farmland. Even in the early 1930′s there was farmland
And then there wasn’t.
Yes the early 1930′s:
http://myinwood.net/the-last-working-farm/
Of all the strange bedfellows that the left lies down with, big ag and its walking boss plantation owners has got to be the weirdest.
“Of all the strange bedfellows that the left lies down with, big ag and its walking boss plantation owners has got to be the weirdest.”
sing a few lyrics of “Dixie”
Until he sells it.
Of course just about all the land on Manhattan Island used to be farmland. Even in the early 1930′s there was farmland
And then there wasn’t.
Yes the early 1930′s:
http://myinwood.net/the-last-working-farm/
A hundred years or so from now people will be talking about the wealthy Christopher family and the brilliant move they made. And the former garlic festival…
SPMoore, Garlic is a cooking staple of mine too, but they grow garlic locally in WNY. If you can grow it is our shortened season, I think you can grow it anywhere. Do some research and maybe you can grow your own. Garlic has a long shelf life, I remember ropes of the bulbs hanging in my grandmother cellar, and no vampires either.
You said I’d never guess but I actually guessed in 1 try.
Not just Bay Area. I grew up in DC and the far western suburbs where we have the family dacha (Loudoun/Clarke county border) used to be farms. Now it’s… McMansions.
I think today the closest operational farms to DC are in PG County. They still have a couple in Oxon Hill, Brandywine and areas along 301.
Lol Gilroy.
Visited my aunt & uncle in San Jose this summer. We drove down to Monterey on a day trip and on the way back stopped in Gilroy at this dumpy tourist shop called Garlic World.
I’ve never seen more garlic in my fe.
Steve rent in the south bay isn’t as bad as silicon valley.
You can get a 2br condo Iin east San Jose for $2800/month
Gilroy is actually a short drive (10 to 15 minutes on 101) from one of the largest bedroom community areas of Silicon Valley, the
Alamden Valley area. That’s as in IBM Almaden, one of IBM’s famous research labs. A few years ago Cisco was going to relocate out near this area Coyote Valley, although that fell apart.
Just south of Almaden, Silicon Valley reverts to being the old ag “Valley of Hearts Delight”.
There is a lot of local ag labour available (and often underemployed) within easy commute distance of Gilroy. It comes mostly from Watsonville and Salinas. These are ag towns that somewhat resemble modern California central valley towns.
This is literally Steinbeck “Grapes of Wrath” country, supposedly the best farmland in the world with the highest average hourly ag wages. This is modern ag, with very large fields, heavily mechanized, a lot of large ag and canning companies. Very much not small farms, rather, big business.
(The land is supposed to be so good because at one time the California central valley was an inland sea the emptied into the Pacific (the Monterey Bay) via this area.)
And this clown still has a job?
He’s still more intelligent than most farmers I know.
The garlic farm workers are often from Salinas:
And Watsonville:
If there are fewer benefits, people will work for less.
Uh-huh. And what, precisely, is your floor? What’s the standard of living you won’t let any significant number of your compatriots fall beneath?
Or is there one? Or do you want a race to the bottom? And, leaving aside the morality, who in that case will be buying the products being made? And do you really want to earmark the money you’re paying in taxes, for private security?
That kind of thinking, inasmuch as it makes sense, makes more sense in a world where it doesn’t entail taking American’s last protection against being forced into the same standards of living as the poorest in the world.
There will never be a house built on that land. Two huge parcels much closer to San Jose, the former HP “ranch” and the old United Technologies rocket plant and test area, were made open space in perpetuity. That’s how they keep land prices high and po folks out of the way down in Salinas.
And, unfortunately for Christopher, garlic is being imported from China now.
Still I'd hate to see that land end up housing a bunch of freaky code monkeys and Hindu imports for some scumbag Silicon Valley firm.
And he’s only a VP?
The dim sons in England always went into the Church.
Supposedly the smart goy boys went into the childless church, depriving future generations of their superior genetics.
The dim sons in England always went into the Church.
Isn’t the fact that rabbis were allowed to have kids and priests weren’t often used to explain Jewish intelligence?
Supposedly the smart goy boys went into the childless church, depriving future generations of their superior genetics.
What percentage of the cost of veggies is labor?
I don’t know if this is accurate, but I’ve heard that in the end-cost of lettuce ag labor can be as low as 5%. That is pretty close to the following (8%):
“The Costs and Benefits of a Raise for Field Workers”, The New York Times, Philip Martin, September 30, 2011:
Philip Martin is identified as “a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, is the author, most recently, of “Importing Poverty? Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural America.”
“Importing Poverty?: Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural America”, Philip Martin, 2009.
From the book’s jacket material:
If you think about this long enough, you might conclude that Confederate plantation owners weren’t really defeated for good, they just moved west and kept their attitudes toward cheap farm labor.
FWIW, the Christophers are said to be good local citizens who donate a lot of money to the community.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_High_School
Also, Gilroy just passed a Portland-style growth boundary so maybe there won’t be houses there after all
http://www.greenbelt.org/blog/vote-yes-measure-h-gilroy/
I have heard that the main reason farmers don’t provide accommodations is because the housing has to be up to code, couldn’t just be simple bunkhouses. In El Paso, TX, the police would let farm workers sleep downtown on the sidewalks and a bus would come pick them up in the morning to take them to the fields.
I was just reading about Joe Bageant’s time in Belize:
http://www.energygrid.com/society/2007/02jb-escapeamerica.html
One could still do this in my Boston suburb until the early '80s.
And, unfortunately for Christopher, garlic is being imported from China now.
That Garlic from China is cr*p, Gilroy Garlic is preferred by Chinese over their own local stuff for obvious reasons like it being grown with contaminated water and fertilizers among other things.
Still I’d hate to see that land end up housing a bunch of freaky code monkeys and Hindu imports for some scumbag Silicon Valley firm.
“Until he sells it.”
and
“There will never be a house built on that land.”
Although never say never, this farmland is so good that if a farming family had a significant amount of land and were smart enough to incorporate so they can pass the farm on to family, they might decide to hold instead of sell. In the Pajaro valley (where Watsonville is):
“California landowners resist efforts to monitor groundwater:
The Pajaro Valley: One region’s water story”, Heesun Wee, CNBC, 13 May 2015:
So that 5,000 acre “family” farm is potentially generating 150 million dollars per year forever.
Are people so stupid they need a story like this to explain common sense. I think you’ll find 65+ million Trump voters who knew this all along.
Most of the garlic sold in this country now comes from China. This article is 10 years old but still valid. Look at the garlic in any big box store and it will probably say “Grown in China.” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11613477
Many crops need to be picked by low skilled Mexicans at cheap wages to be competitive. It can be here in the US or in Mexico or Asia but most people do not put their money where their mouth is and want cheap products
and
"There will never be a house built on that land."
Although never say never, this farmland is so good that if a farming family had a significant amount of land and were smart enough to incorporate so they can pass the farm on to family, they might decide to hold instead of sell. In the Pajaro valley (where Watsonville is):
"California landowners resist efforts to monitor groundwater:
The Pajaro Valley: One region's water story", Heesun Wee, CNBC, 13 May 2015:So that 5,000 acre "family" farm is potentially generating 150 million dollars per year forever.
Life is good and full of options if you own 8 square miles of Santa Clara County.
Christopher Ranch grows higher end and organic garlic. Chinese supermarkets around here have giant containers of peeled garlic from China at about 1/10 the price. Like $2 a pound. It tastes just fine, only a bit inferior to fresh.
As for developing the land with housing, I highly doubt it is possible. At least around San Diego, the remaining farming towns have restrictions of one house per acre or per five acres, plus pretty high development fees.
The garlic is mostly not grown in gilroy anymore. A fungus developed in the soil and the garlic does not grow very well there any longer. They grow a little in gilroy still, and the rest of this company’s garlic comes from land throughout cali. They have a huge processing plant in gilroy and it all comes through there which is why it still smells like garlic.
Costco sells Gilroy garlic.
“‘Gee Mr. Bigtime Developer. I know my 5000 acre lovely smelling garlic farm is making it impossible for you to build communities that any rich person would want to live in, but what can I do?”
You are obvioulsy ignorant whereof you speak. Garlic farms don’t stink; the smell of garlic fields is a mild, pleasant garlic smell and not pungent or acrid at all. If you had ever driven through Gilroy, you’d know that.
Poverty and wealth are in close proximity throughout the greater Bay Area.
This can have interesting consequences.
You can spend a fortune to buy a modest house for your family in Santa Cruz, but that doesn’t guarantee that your daughters won’t run around with boys from nearby Watsonville.
Yes, same in every metro are in Florida.
I believe the correct terminology is ‘an epiphany’.
Besides, this story must be false. Everyone knows that Americans won't work for farmers. We're much too lazy to pick garlic, at any price.
Oh well. Time to peel some fresh avocados from Mexico and make some cocktails.
Like all other forms of produce, garlic doesn’t grow anywhere outside of Gilroy, and if it did, we’d be too stupid to know how.
Then after it grows, you can’t, like, save it in any way. It disappears when exposed to sunlight for drying and explodes in the temperatures inside an upright freezer. If you pressure can it, it emits gamma rays.
Cash and Carry (restaurant supply store) sack garlic (peeled, five pound bag) now costs $1,400 a pound. This is going to raise it to $1,675 a pound. I have a spreadsheet from UC-Berkeley’s Department of Poverty Studies Studies proving this.
And since we eat fifteen pounds of it a week, each, somebody better tell the parrot we’re going to have to parlay his Brazilian ancestry into an affirmative action civil service job.
Otherwise, we’re going to have to start eating other things. Like squirrels. He hates eating squirrels. He likes them alive, so he can shout at them angrily as they pass by his window.
That or we’ll starve, but at least we’ll die streaming Netflix videos and playing Grand Theft Judiciary on our iPhone 7s.
Supposedly the smart goy boys went into the childless church, depriving future generations of their superior genetics.
It’s one dysgenic factor in Catholic societies, I’m sure, having your brightest and best fail to reproduce. Whereas, contra Bill Jones, when the Church of England was formed and allowed its priests to marry, a huge number of priestly families produced notable offspring, so they couldn’t have been that dim (CoE ‘vicars’ were mostly upper/upper-middle class younger sons).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_children_of_clergy#Protestant_and_Anglican
This imperfect list, which includes the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Woodrow Wilson, Christopher Wren, Merkel and Theresa May, manages to leave out Horatio Nelson, Montgomery of Alamein and the scientist Robert Hooke, among I imagine many others. It’s good on country and gospel singers though.
I thought that Ashkenazi intelligence was a result of the fact that they couldn’t own land and were restricted for hundreds of years to high-IQ occupations like finance, where the winners got the best girls and had the most kids.
-2000 years ago Jews had same occupations as everyone else. Judaism was a two pillar religion: animal sacrifice and Torah study
-After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE (common era), Judaism became a one pillar religion and sons were expected to be educated. Even poor farmers had to sacrifice so that their sons could learn to read and study Torah, even though there was no economic benefit.
-From 1st to 5th century number of Jews fell from 5.5m to 1.5m from war, disease, and mostly conversion to Christianity. Christianity didn't require reading and studying. (the dumb Jews voluntarily left)
-During the Muslim Empire, Jewish reading skills became useful. Became merchants, doctors, money lenders, especially during 8th-10th century.
-Jews were money lenders before Christians were banned from the field. Even with the ban, some Christians were money lenders.Begins at 5:30
http://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/178610/why-jews-left-the-fieldsReligious Jewish women don't pick husbands based on future earning potential. I saw video of an ultra-orthodox couple in Israel with nine kids living in a two-bedroom apartment. Pops spent all day studying. He had a full library in that two-bedroom apartment.
People moving from unemployment benefits to sickness benefits
People moving from countries or states with lower benefits and lower wages to those with higher benefits and wages (eg, from New Zealand to Australia, or from Tasmania to New South Wales).
People refusing to do seasonal jobs for fear of not being able to get back onto benefits when they finish.
Toughen up the eligibility for sickness benefits.
Centralise the benefit procedure nationally, and remove the entitlement for foreigners to get benefits.
Don’t care.
Funny how someone with the username “unpc” turns into a pearl-clutching liberal whenever you propose taking away their precious bennies.
Besides, this story must be false. Everyone knows that Americans won't work for farmers. We're much too lazy to pick garlic, at any price.
Oh well. Time to peel some fresh avocados from Mexico and make some cocktails.
Garlic is like 50 cents a piece and folks usually don’t use the whole thing for one recipe. Stop whining and pay up.
I grew up in the DC area, live here now, even Fairfax had running farms in the 80s.
I think today the closest operational farms to DC are in PG County. They still have a couple in Oxon Hill, Brandywine and areas along 301.
During the short cranberry picking season in the NJ pines, they pay $15 plus time-and-a-half for OT for pickers, packers, drivers, etc. Locals, who are white rural middle class people, including cops and teachers, save their vacation days to work nonstop two or three weeks and make a killing. The growers have no choice but to pay because the season is so short and there is a shortage of migrant labor.
Hey iSteve, you know what’s worse than crops rotting in the fields? Real estate rotting in the fields? A close second is not being able to find a handyman, or authentic ethnic food.
Most Undocumented Immigrants Live In Areas That Trump Lost
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-undocumented-immigrants-live-in-areas-that-trump-lost/
are you actually arguing against monarchy?
This only works to the extent that there is a niche market for local garlic
Many crops need to be picked by low skilled Mexicans at cheap wages to be competitive. It can be here in the US or in Mexico or Asia but most people do not put their money where their mouth is and want cheap products
Not because I'm a lazy slob (honestly is there a bigger PITA than peeling and chopping/pressing that stuff. Ladies dislike the authentic 'smash the thing with the side of a knife and toss it in whole' approach, I've found. Doesn't bother me, but then I never peel potatoes either).
Alamden Valley area. That's as in IBM Almaden, one of IBM's famous research labs. A few years ago Cisco was going to relocate out near this area Coyote Valley, although that fell apart.
Just south of Almaden, Silicon Valley reverts to being the old ag "Valley of Hearts Delight".
There is a lot of local ag labour available (and often underemployed) within easy commute distance of Gilroy. It comes mostly from Watsonville and Salinas. These are ag towns that somewhat resemble modern California central valley towns.
This is literally Steinbeck "Grapes of Wrath" country, supposedly the best farmland in the world with the highest average hourly ag wages. This is modern ag, with very large fields, heavily mechanized, a lot of large ag and canning companies. Very much not small farms, rather, big business.
(The land is supposed to be so good because at one time the California central valley was an inland sea the emptied into the Pacific (the Monterey Bay) via this area.)
That inland sea may come back if our dams and spillways can’t hold up to big rainstorms. Shoot, in my neighborhood there was so much rain that I envisioned all the backyard pools overflowing and joining together to make a scene out of the Katrina hurricane.
People moving from unemployment benefits to sickness benefits
People moving from countries or states with lower benefits and lower wages to those with higher benefits and wages (eg, from New Zealand to Australia, or from Tasmania to New South Wales).
People refusing to do seasonal jobs for fear of not being able to get back onto benefits when they finish.
People refusing to do seasonal jobs for fear of not being able to get back onto benefits when they finish.
You’ve hit on something here. I’ve long railed that my employer shouldn’t have any more involvement in my health insurance than he does in my auto or home insurance.
The current scheme is all built on a ridiculous war-era wage control loophole from seventy years ago and makes no sense.
But things like this also persist because someone is profiting from them.
How much is this a new serfdom? Is our entire healthcare system held hostage to the fact that big business likes us dependent on them in this regard? Likes that we have to face health-care uncertainty if we quit the workplace?
Many crops need to be picked by low skilled Mexicans at cheap wages to be competitive. It can be here in the US or in Mexico or Asia but most people do not put their money where their mouth is and want cheap products
Which is why I use the ready squished Italian stuff that comes in oil in a toothpaste tube. Garlic, like dope, doesn’t grow properly here anyway. Might as well pay some guy over in Abroad that has the good gear.
Not because I’m a lazy slob (honestly is there a bigger PITA than peeling and chopping/pressing that stuff. Ladies dislike the authentic ‘smash the thing with the side of a knife and toss it in whole’ approach, I’ve found. Doesn’t bother me, but then I never peel potatoes either).
I was just reading about Joe Bageant's time in Belize:http://www.energygrid.com/society/2007/02jb-escapeamerica.html
you can still send your kid to the store to bring back cigarettes…drink liquor openly while you happily burn trash in your front yard.
One could still do this in my Boston suburb until the early ’80s.
Poverty and wealth are in close proximity throughout the greater Bay Area.
Yes, same in every metro are in Florida.
Besides, this story must be false. Everyone knows that Americans won't work for farmers. We're much too lazy to pick garlic, at any price.
Oh well. Time to peel some fresh avocados from Mexico and make some cocktails.
In Japan, garlic, avocados, limes, etc actually are expensive. But you adjust. Appropos your comment about cocktails, I used to live on margaritas and g&t’s in my hometown, but at almost 1 lime per drink, it is prohibitively expensive in Japan. But whatever. That’s life.
Gilroy isn’t 10-15 minutes from Alamaden Valley nor is it anything approaching a commutable town for Silicon Valley. It’s got an outlet mall, a kids amusement park with agricultural themes, and a lot of farming. It can draw labor from the Monterey peninsula. That part is accurate.
Gsrlic should be easy if it is like onions (is it?). In Mongolia, a bad place to grow vegetables, it’s root veggies you see everywhere.
One could still do this in my Boston suburb until the early '80s.
One can still do this in Japan!
“Gilroy isn’t 10-15 minutes from Alamaden Valley nor is it anything approaching a commutable town for Silicon Valley.”
Okay, google says Gilroy to Almaden Expressway is 23 min (25.6 miles). But there’s a good chunk of stuff before you get to the expressway. I’ll give you that with normal traffic it probably seems impossible to commute on any California highway.
I’ve known people who commute to Silicon Valley from Gilroy. Heck, a decade a ago I knew a lot of people who commuted to Silicon Valley by driving from the Watsonville area, some might still be.
One of the secrets to commuting from Gilroy into Silicon Valley is CalTrain (I’ve known people who brought cheap houses in the Gilroy area and did this):
Gilroy, California, Public transportation:
CalTrain is one of the secrets to silicon valley. (The Santa Clara Valley is silicon valley.) Places that try to reproduce silicon valley often overlook that it’s built on the backbone of the oldest running railroad west of the Mississippi (or so they say, I think.)
Don’t underestimate the long distance silicon valley commuter! I’ve known people who commute from north of the Golden Gate bridge and plenty from Pleasanton, Tracy, and as far as Stockton on the ACE train. I’ve known people who drive from Pleasanton and Tracy.
These ultra-long commutes are one of the side-effects of the weird silicon valley housing market, where even successful people often can’t afford to buy “real” houses if they want to have kids, etc.. It’s an invisible tax. There seem to be lots of factors. The “Google-stock” effect, out-of-control immigration, limited housing space, some just plain crudy places no one would want to live…
My first apartment was in central Cupertino; I used to commute up 280 to Palo Alto to my job. In 1994, that ride was 20-30 minutes. I can only guess what it is now.
Most Undocumented Immigrants Live In Areas That Trump Lost
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-undocumented-immigrants-live-in-areas-that-trump-lost/
It’s not like the undocumented immigrants were voting for Trump…
It’s not the illegals that are the problem. It is the US citizens that benefit from illegal aliens that are the problem. And the 2016 voting patterns show where they live. It is really not IMO agriculture that is the worst offender. It is big city foodies. Real estate owners, who used to be called rentiers. Government workers. Which is to say Blue Staters.
“Many crops need to be picked by low skilled Mexicans at cheap wages to be competitive.”
If that is the case then they shouldn’t be grown here. It’s not like the farmers will be decimated … if they can’t grow lettuce they can grow alfalfa, corn, potatoes, something easily mechanizable. We can get our fresh veg from Mexico etc. Right now I’m noshing on some wonderful blueberries from Chile!
In Orthodox Christian countries, priests are not only allowed to marry, but are expected either to marry or to “get thee to a monkery”. While basic literacy was common among the children of rural priests, beyond that the level of education was not very high. There is not much need for Talmudic-like scholarship. The great Orthodox Christian intellectuals traditionally came from the Byzantine upper middle class. Anyway, this is another data point to consider.
I suspect that, given the name “Christopher Ranch,” and the name of the owner (Christopher), that farm has been in the family for more than the generation or so that would be required to trigger Proposition 13 (and subsequently, Propositions 58 and 193) re-assessments are met. Hence, the taxation on those 5000 acres is in all likelihood, a tiny, tiny fraction of what it would be if they were taxed at their actual, current value.
In many counties of California, the assessed value (and tax burden) can be found on-line.
My sister (a school teacher in the area) lived in Gilroy until about a year ago, when the combination of increasing cost of living and growing problems of “vibrancy” in the school led her to move out of California.
I really have no idea why anyone would want to live out there and commute in to the Valley. It’s a horrific commute of about 35 traffic-choked miles up the 101. But people do it….
Okay, google says Gilroy to Almaden Expressway is 23 min (25.6 miles). But there's a good chunk of stuff before you get to the expressway. I'll give you that with normal traffic it probably seems impossible to commute on any California highway.
I've known people who commute to Silicon Valley from Gilroy. Heck, a decade a ago I knew a lot of people who commuted to Silicon Valley by driving from the Watsonville area, some might still be.
One of the secrets to commuting from Gilroy into Silicon Valley is CalTrain (I've known people who brought cheap houses in the Gilroy area and did this):
Gilroy, California, Public transportation:CalTrain is one of the secrets to silicon valley. (The Santa Clara Valley is silicon valley.) Places that try to reproduce silicon valley often overlook that it's built on the backbone of the oldest running railroad west of the Mississippi (or so they say, I think.)
Don't underestimate the long distance silicon valley commuter! I've known people who commute from north of the Golden Gate bridge and plenty from Pleasanton, Tracy, and as far as Stockton on the ACE train. I've known people who drive from Pleasanton and Tracy.
These ultra-long commutes are one of the side-effects of the weird silicon valley housing market, where even successful people often can't afford to buy "real" houses if they want to have kids, etc.. It's an invisible tax. There seem to be lots of factors. The "Google-stock" effect, out-of-control immigration, limited housing space, some just plain crudy places no one would want to live...
You know, the point you’re referring to (Almaden Expressway) is the END of the Valley. Once you reach it, you’re more or less where people living in Almaden Valley BEGIN their commutes up to the so-called “Golden Triangle” (North First St area) and the tech cities of Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Mountain View, and Palo Alto.
My first apartment was in central Cupertino; I used to commute up 280 to Palo Alto to my job. In 1994, that ride was 20-30 minutes. I can only guess what it is now.
In many counties of California, the assessed value (and tax burden) can be found on-line.
My sister (a school teacher in the area) lived in Gilroy until about a year ago, when the combination of increasing cost of living and growing problems of "vibrancy" in the school led her to move out of California.
I really have no idea why anyone would want to live out there and commute in to the Valley. It's a horrific commute of about 35 traffic-choked miles up the 101. But people do it....
DWB Thank you. Very informative.
Sounds good to me.
Partially true, but one of the biggest offenders is Collin County Texas which has a median income around 80,000 and usually votes Republican. How do I know this, Dallas metro area including Collin County has about 450,000 illegal immigrants and is less than 3 million which means a lot of folks in Dallas to Plano use a lot of illegal immigrants for maids, gardeners and so forth. It ain’t all blue but upper-middle class red state as well.
“I really have no idea why anyone would want to live out there and commute in to the Valley. It’s a horrific commute of about 35 traffic-choked miles up the 101. But people do it….”
There are starting to be more and more stories like this:
“In Search of Cheaper Housing, Silicon Valley Workers Face Long Commutes”, Jeff Barrera, Peninsula Press April 7, 2016:
This little article has lots of iSteve-type data and graphs. This comes from “Data on household incomes, population growth, housing units and commute times come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.”
Today, similar people drive in from Tracy, Manteca, and even Modesto. I have a colleague who commutes to San Mateo (where I now work) EVERY morning from Santa Rosa. I cannot even imagine doing that.
Life is, in essence, about making choices. I made the trade-off of a suburban home (and schools) to buy my first house in central San Jose. I did not get a brand new house in a tract community - I got a 100 year old house in the middle of the city. But I could afford it (at the time, about $250,000), and my commute was 20 minutes on surface streets.
If I had a family at the time, the calculus would have been different, of course. When I got married a few years later, I sold it for $500,000, which allowed a down payment in a more 'suburban' area. You simply HAVE to get on the ladder, or it is impossible, honestly.
Something is going to have to give. There just are not enough paper millionaires, and there is only so much appetite for useless "apps."
Stanford University tries to help solve the problem by maintaining a bunch of early 20th century houses on its massive campus, which can only be bought by Stanford employees (the ZIP code is 94305). Even then, the homes are over a million bucks.
There are starting to be more and more stories like this:
"In Search of Cheaper Housing, Silicon Valley Workers Face Long Commutes", Jeff Barrera, Peninsula Press April 7, 2016:This little article has lots of iSteve-type data and graphs. This comes from "Data on household incomes, population growth, housing units and commute times come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey."
And living 35 miles south of San Jose in Gilroy has better weather than living 100 miles east in the Central Valley.
If the Christopher Family owns 5,000 contiguous acres of nonmountainous land, that’s worth a fortune. For example, that would be a good place for the next University of California campus if there ever is another one. That’s about the size of Stanford’s colossal campus, although a lot of that is hilly.
From interview for The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492:
-No proof of Jews being restricted from land ownership from 70-1492. In the later centuries Jews could and did own land but did not work the land.
-2000 years ago Jews had same occupations as everyone else. Judaism was a two pillar religion: animal sacrifice and Torah study
-After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE (common era), Judaism became a one pillar religion and sons were expected to be educated. Even poor farmers had to sacrifice so that their sons could learn to read and study Torah, even though there was no economic benefit.
-From 1st to 5th century number of Jews fell from 5.5m to 1.5m from war, disease, and mostly conversion to Christianity. Christianity didn’t require reading and studying. (the dumb Jews voluntarily left)
-During the Muslim Empire, Jewish reading skills became useful. Became merchants, doctors, money lenders, especially during 8th-10th century.
-Jews were money lenders before Christians were banned from the field. Even with the ban, some Christians were money lenders.
Begins at 5:30
http://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/178610/why-jews-left-the-fields
Religious Jewish women don’t pick husbands based on future earning potential. I saw video of an ultra-orthodox couple in Israel with nine kids living in a two-bedroom apartment. Pops spent all day studying. He had a full library in that two-bedroom apartment.
There are starting to be more and more stories like this:
"In Search of Cheaper Housing, Silicon Valley Workers Face Long Commutes", Jeff Barrera, Peninsula Press April 7, 2016:This little article has lots of iSteve-type data and graphs. This comes from "Data on household incomes, population growth, housing units and commute times come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey."
The stories are not really new. 20 years ago, a number of people who worked with me at my Santa Clara-based company lived in Pleasanton and Walnut Creek, which at the time were considered the more “affordable” nice suburbs. They would wake and hit the road before sunrise for the hellish commute over the Sunol Grade.
Today, similar people drive in from Tracy, Manteca, and even Modesto. I have a colleague who commutes to San Mateo (where I now work) EVERY morning from Santa Rosa. I cannot even imagine doing that.
Life is, in essence, about making choices. I made the trade-off of a suburban home (and schools) to buy my first house in central San Jose. I did not get a brand new house in a tract community – I got a 100 year old house in the middle of the city. But I could afford it (at the time, about $250,000), and my commute was 20 minutes on surface streets.
If I had a family at the time, the calculus would have been different, of course. When I got married a few years later, I sold it for $500,000, which allowed a down payment in a more ‘suburban’ area. You simply HAVE to get on the ladder, or it is impossible, honestly.
Something is going to have to give. There just are not enough paper millionaires, and there is only so much appetite for useless “apps.”
Stanford University tries to help solve the problem by maintaining a bunch of early 20th century houses on its massive campus, which can only be bought by Stanford employees (the ZIP code is 94305). Even then, the homes are over a million bucks.