I was talking to friend yesterday and discussion went back to my younger days as a working cowboy. Working around big live animals is a dangerous occupation.

I also worked in the oilpatch, which has its own dangers. Oilpatch pays about five times the wages as agricultural workers.

But with so much agriculture being conducted with legal and illegal immigrant labor, one wonders where are values are? We would need to pay $20 to $25 to find real citizens to pick lettuce for us. And such jobs, if done for a few seasons, bring health problems later in life.

But it's a lot harder to put immigrant labor in the oilpatch as such a worker needs experience workers to watch over and train him. But without the high wages, even the immigrant would not stay.

Sorry for the rambling. I just wandering above the wage disparity in these two industries.