If we’re being honest, TikTok is the best and worst app you can download. The best because it’s very entertaining, but the worst because you can easily waste hours watching random videos. The content on TikTok is all over the place. You can watch people dancing, playing pranks, or informing you on something like Shay Myers does.
Myers is a farmer in Oregon who promotes agriculture through his videos and shares the reality of it. He posted a video on April 19th, 2021 standing in an asparagus field explaining how the whole field would most likely be going to waste because he couldn’t find people to work and the H-2A program is currently backed up.
@shayfarmkid 350,000 pounds of wasted food. #foodwaste #laborshortage #produce #asparagus @brenterenwert
“This is asparagus that will not get picked…it’s beautiful, a phenomenal crop, but we can’t get the labor,” he explained, “we can’t get people to show up to do the work at $16 an hour even with housing, transportation, all of those things.”
Myers let the TikTok world know that what the farm normally does is bring people in on an H-2A visa, but everything keeps getting pushed back and delayed. He said that the border is “screwed up and we can’t get people across,” and the farm probably won’t get any laborers through the program for 30 to 45 days.
“So what are we gonna do? Well, we’re gonna throw it all away,” Myers said. The point of his video comes down to the lack of labor we have in the country. He mentioned that there are plenty of undocumented people showing up in the nation, but they legally can’t work. There are plenty of well-abled people that could work but expect too much money, and the people from other countries that are willing to work in the U.S. through the H-2A program are stuck right now. His hands are tied.
@shayfarmkid With your help we saved almost 100,000 pounds of foodwaste owyheeproduce nyssa thanks
After putting thought into it and not wanted the asparagus to go to waste, Myers decided to invite the community to the farm to pick the fresh produce. The farm ended up having over 6,000 people show up to claim their crop, which helped save almost 100,000 pounds of food from going to waste. The total value of the crop taken home by families was around $160,000 – $200,000.
Hopefully, people like Shay keep on sharing the realities of the agriculture industry because otherwise, people will never know. Also, maybe his videos will help create some change with the labor issues and push those in charge to get the H-2A program running smoothly.
