At least in my limited knowledge, it's the small time farmers that commit suicide (so owner that works), and generally in the older population. What else are you going to do if you've been doing that your whole life, you're 50, no college (or it was for agriculture)? You likely can't stay where you are because many of the areas are depressed and they'll take your land if you can't pay the taxes, are foreclosed, etc. Just making it to the next year and all the hard choices become a heavy burden - one that you can struggle with for years and only make it that long because you've motivated yourself that it's the only way and only goal. So it's not just a job, but their entire way of life and identity that are lost.
Yes, people agree that farm works sucks and have low wage.
But the point that you and others are missing is that if farm works sucks, and pays low, then that means we should not be sending more people to become farmers.
And what exactly are we going to have them do that doesn't suck and isn't low wage?
The point you are missing is that jobs that suck still have to be done. If we ship many the low/medium skill jobs over seas and then automate many of the remaining ones, what are those people to do? Surely if they were able to get a higher paying job that didn't suck they would have done so.
The better solution is to make sure we appropriately value tasks that are necessary and have some level of potential self sufficiency should we find ourselves in a global event like conflict, famine, etc. Not to mention, the non-industrial farms are generally better for animals and the environment. This shouldn't be a race to the bottom.
> And what exactly are we going to have them do that doesn't suck and isn't low wage?
I am not saying that we need to retrain all existing farmers. Instead, I am saying that we should simply discourage more people going into that industry, instead of what the original poster was claiming, which is that we'd need more people there.
> The point you are missing is that jobs that suck still have to be done
We don't need more people in that industry, no. We can have less in that industry.
> what are those people to do
At a very minimum we shouldn't be adding more problems by encourage more people to go into these bad jobs, is the point though. That would just make things worse.
You didn't answer the question. What are these people going to do instead? If we keep eliminating low/middle skilled jobs, what is left for them to do?
