March 29, 2012

Latest Crop Crisis

You know how every year the press repackages a fill-in-the-blanks press release from a grower's association about how Crop A (or Crop B or Crop C) is rotting in the fields of X (or Y or Z) because of the Peasant Shortage? The L.A. Times has taken the Crop Crisis template global:
In India, lots of coconuts but a dwindling crop of pickers 
Coconut farmers in lush Kerala state find it increasingly difficult to hire people, as younger workers shun manual labor for more prestigious jobs.
... They're just plain lazy," said K.P. Peter, a small-time coconut farmer. "They get all sorts of subsidies from the government, don't show up on time, leave us stranded. There should be a law against such irresponsibility."

Here is a part of the article that's better than the American versions, however:
As part of their search for pickers, industry groups have looked to the likes of Thailand and Indonesia ...

So, there aren't enough poor people in India? Oh ... wait a minute ...
... countries that train monkeys to pluck the coconuts. (Understandably, some local workers find the prospect of being replaced by a monkey mildly insulting.) 
But the monkeys aren't quite working out. 
"The problem is, the monkeys climb but can't tell what's ripe and just harvest everything," said Sree Kumar, a professor at the College of Agriculture in Kerala's capital, Thiruvananthapuram. 
In a bid to broaden the labor pool, the Coconut Board's Friends of the Coconut Tree program is trying to recruit women — picking has traditionally been man's work — older workers and anyone else who dreams of reaching for the fronds. 
The board's six-day Friends course trains people to use climbing devices, allowing even the most uncoordinated workers to get themselves up a trunk, provided they stifle any fear of heights, which can reach 100 feet. (We're talking a 10-story building.) The climbing devices, in sitting and standing models, cost about $50 and work by ratcheting the rider up the trunk with a foot-powered device. Around for at least 30 years, they were upgraded in 2010 with rust-resistant materials and a revolutionary new feature: a safety belt.

A safety belt? What's the world coming to when an employer is expected to provide a safety belt for an employee working only 100 feet off the ground?

Later on, the article explains that workers used to be "paid in coconuts," but now they get paid in money. I bet you could get a reporter in America to write, with a straight-face, that paying workers in coconuts "is good for the economy."

By the way, I think there's a fair chance that L.A. Times reporter Mark Magnier actually gets the joke and is consciously parodying all the economic logic-defying articles the prestige press has run over the years about how there is a Shortage of this type of worker or that type of worker.

Maybe one of these days they'll run an article about how there is a shortage of Apple stock. I would be happy to pay what I feel is a reasonable price for a share of Apple stock -- say, $10 per share -- but there is a Shortage of Apple stock available at the price I want to pay, so Something Ought to Be Done About It. (Maybe, like, I should be able to print up my own undocumented shares of Apple common stock without the government getting all huffy about the law and stuff.) And they can quote me on that.

18 comments:

Kaz said...

Haha Thailand and Indonesia aren't the best places to be, but they certainly beat India.. I don't understand why India is looking elsewhere when they have the world largest excess population.. Are the lower classes of people there THAT bad?

Default User said...

As they say: you pay coconuts, you get monkeys.


I am sure the Wall Street Journal is working on a pro-monkey immigration editorial as I type.

Hunsdon said...

Don't give 'em ideas, Steve!

Duke of Qin said...

Kaz, Steve's editing distorted the meaning of the original paragraph.

The original paragraph reads,

"As part of their search for pickers, industry groups have looked to the likes of Thailand and Indonesia, countries that train monkeys to pluck the coconuts. (Understandably, some local workers find the prospect of being replaced by a monkey mildly insulting.)"

In other words, India isn't looking to Thailand and Indonesia for cheaper labor (both countries are significantly wealthier per capita) but rather as possible examples of replacing human labor.

Not only is Indian labour less productive than a good tabby cat. It's also apparently less than a trained monkey.

Anonymous said...

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts. There they are, all standing in a row. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head.

RKU said...

Clearly, the reason America's economy is in trouble is our absurd commitment to safety belts! When will the WSJ begin running editorials demanding that we dump this failed legacy of 19th Century Marxian Socialism.

Incidentally, India's "booming" economy gets lots of media coverage, but there was a fascinating WSJ article a few months back that mentioned that the annual caloric intake of the bottom half of all Indians has been steadily declining over the last 30 years. So maybe the monkeys are more desirable because they require less food to stay alive...

Anonymous said...

Right. All the Indians are following their 3rd cousins once removed to America on family reunification visas. Why pick crops and risk your neck for sustenance in Kerala when you can wear a madras shirt and sandals while tending a cash register in a Union 76 Groceteria in Bishop, CA?

Anonymous said...

The day that India runs dry of dirt cheap manual labor, is the day when you could bale out the entire Pacific Ocean with a leaking thimble.
No word of a lie or exaggeration.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Thailand has a GDP per capita many, many multiples higher than India - although the usual shills ignore it, it's well on its way to developed status, an infinitely richer, better and ordered society than India.

Another example of the economic illiteracy of this article.

dearieme said...

Top hole, Mr Sailer, top hole.

Aaron B. said...

My parents are farmers, and when I was a kid, they used to hire local kids every summer to help with things like baling hay and cutting weeds out of the fields.

My dad said other farmers were always complaining about how you couldn't hire kids anymore. They were too soft and lazy; they'd rather stay inside and play video games; their parents spoiled them so they didn't need the money; they'd rather flip burgers than do hard work. Since it wasn't possible to hire such help anymore, these farmers said they were forced to buy expensive automated equipment and use more chemicals for things like weed control.

Yet somehow my dad never had trouble finding kids to hire. The reason? He paid well. A kid who showed up and worked hard could make double minimum wage (while other employers were pushing for laws to allow them to pay teenage summer help less than minimum wage), and these were the kids who were determined to save up for a car or college. If one kid stopped coming, others had friends who would snap up the job; all the kids in the neighborhood knew it was a good place to make money if you were willing to work hard.

I always think back to those summers when I hear about "jobs Americans won't do." Of course, my folks could have kept more of the profits to themselves if they'd hired monkeys (or immigrants) to do the work. Somehow I don't think they'd have found that as satisfying as helping local kids to get a good start in life, though.

Anonymous said...

this post has a different voice to me. Steve gets all direct here rather than usual clever self. It's always good but different.

Anonymous said...

Not only is Indian labour less productive than a good tabby cat. It's also apparently less than a trained monkey.

Qin comes from a nation where they eat cats, rats, and monkeys.

jody said...

crop crisis?

"U.S. farmers to plant the most corn in 75 years"

reuters:

http://tinyurl.com/7tdkuof

C. Van Carter said...

Jack the Signalman.

bobn said...

(Maybe, like, I should be able to print up my own undocumented shares of Apple common stock...)

LOL!

ben tillman said...

Ha. Good post.

Anonymous said...

Why can those genius IIT invent a machine to do this?