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Will they get to keep the produce? Otherwise, this is just slavery and very much in line with conservative ideology again.
Where does it say you don't get paid?
Also, in terms of understanding how things happen, this is definitely not a bad thing.
So many people take everything for granted. I worked a couple of years in agriculture. Long days, tough work. I will never look down on a farmer, and it thought me some neat lessons in life too.
You get paid for jury duty. Making a living off of that? When i read national duty i heard conscription in my head. Maybe because i just assume the idea is as good as the compensation.
Oh maybe I don't worry about this because I'm not American...
Sorry
Where does it say you do get paid?
I worked on a farm from 23-30 and my body is kinda destroyed now. Had surgery on my wrist, my back hurts all the time. I'm getting arthritis in my fingers and knees. All at the ripe age of 36.
It's definitely valuable work, but there's a reason old farmers tend to walk like Arthur Morgan.
Call me naive, but it seems to me that if everyone was pitching in for a season of farm work, less people overall would be doing 8/15/etc consecutive years and getting their bodies destroyed.
It depends on the farm. It's not completely unskilled labor, especially if you're dealing with livestock or large machinery like what's used for harvesting/spreading manure/tilling.
Implementing something like what's being suggested would require some sort if funding from the government to train people to get ready to do it, and honestly a lot of farmers aren't going to want a bunch of green farmhands all at the same time. In a lot of cases it'd be more trouble than it's worth.
Asking someone who has never been on a farm to just jump in on an operation and be helpful is kinda setting everyone up to fail. There's more to a farm than picking crops and cleaning up animal poop.
I mean, something simple like fixing a fence can be a pain in the ass if you dont know what youre doing. Plus, theres a lot of ways to get hurt or killed if you're not familiar with the environment.
Maybe in that one aspect, but I'd imagine the mandatory labor at likely very low wages will make most people resent it more than anything.
When watching the TV Series The Handmaid Tales I kept thinking that things like their very heavy security appartus, military for the continuing seccession war and heavy use of dedicated manpower doing manual work in house chores (at least for the upper classes) would use too much manpower, taking it away from actual productive activities and thus making a modern nation level of life (in the material sense, not other senses) unsustainable, though Gilead could sorta keep going for a while drawing down on the wealth of the part of the US from were it was formed, before falling down to mid-XX century South American levels of wealth or worse.
However temporary slavery like this "national duty field work" might actually "solve" some of the agricultural production manpower shortage problems in such a society.
So it actually makes sense (in a sick way) that it's appealing to the most extreme Fascist amongst the Republicans.
Is it better to force poor people to work in farms to survive? In a world where a large number of 'modern' westernized countries have active military conscription for young people, I don't see this as being worse than that, either. The thing with slavery, is that it is lifetime, unpaid, terrible conditions, based on a feeling of superiority, only for the targeted groups, etc.
Of course, the better solution is just to treat farm workers fairly and pay them well, and work on automation at the same time. But rich people were forced to work in farms too, the conditions would probably get a whole lot nicer for everyone involved, and it would probably create a pretty big incentive to start automation as well.
edit: to actually be fine, it would have to be run by the govt. on nationally owned farms, like schools are, for workers to be paid and well treated, and for rich people to not be exempt