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SAN ANTONIO — As President Trump’s mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants is ramping up, a question many have is: How will this impact American farms? And that is also a question that farmers are asking.
At the American Farm Bureau Federation convention in San Antonio this weekend, Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall summed up the mood regarding mass deportations and agriculture labor.
“Everyone’s nervous,” Duvall told TPR. “I think what makes us most nervous is we don’t know what steps the full deportation plan has in it.”
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Duvall said he is hearing from some farmers that migrant workers are not showing up. But he has not heard any reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducting raids at farms and agricultural businesses.
“We’re hearing some concern. It’s not a real high level yet,” he said. “We’ve had some communication with some members and most of it is just out of people being fearful to show up for work.”
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said he is not at all concerned. He said the modern farm operates without migrant labor.
““We used to use a lot of illegal labor, but we really don’t anymore,” Miller said on TPR’s Texas Matters. “We’ve gotten into ‘Agriculture 3.0,’ which is technology. So, we got cows that milk themselves, tractors that drive themselves. We can harvest almost all of our crops mechanically— including vegetables now.”
But Brent Hollard, a northern Illinois farmer at the convention, said a mass deportation reduction in farm labor is going to hurt farmers.
“Whether it’s a row crop farm, or a specialty, or just a livestock farm like I have, it is very, very tough to get people to help us on our farms,” Hollard said. “We do have some farm labor that we use.”
Roy Coffer, a farmer in Oregon, said he’s not too concerned since President Trump has promised to target criminal immigrants.
“We expect the criminal and really bad people to be deported but the hard-working folks probably should be okay,” Coffer said.
We hear from Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller. We also talk to Kathleen Bush-Joseph — a Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, co-author of “With “Shock and Awe,” the Second Trump Term Opens with a Bid to Strongly Reshape Immigration.”
White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan has said ICE would focus on rounding up criminal migrants and not conduct mass workplace raids. But this weekend, Trump reportedly told ICE officials to increase their numbers of arrests. This could mean arrests will now include immigrants who have not committed crimes. And immigrant communities are reacting as if that is already the case.
“We are already seeing people are not showing up for work. They’re not sending their children to school,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
She said an aggressive immigration crackdown would have a wide range of impact across America — in multiple economic sectors.
“We know that unauthorized immigrants work around the country. They make up a large part of the workforce. If suddenly many of them are deported or are not able to go to work out of fear of being deported, I think that will have very real impacts on the output of the economy whether there is enough food available.”
The Trump administration has not yet reached out to San Antonio police with any deportation requests.
Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall also said the loss of migrant labor could impact the food cost and supply. And that’s something that many consumers will notice.
“Especially after COVID, our general public is more sensitive to food availability. The food system as a whole, from the farm to the fork,” Duvall said. “And I think that interest that they have is going to put a lot of pressure on our Congress to say our food system depends on having a stable work force.”
Texas Senator John Cornyn said that might mean having a robust guest worker program like the Bracero Program.
“There’s no reason why that couldn’t work again because many migrants want to come on a season basis and work and then go back home to their families along with their earnings,” Cornyn said.
But such a program would have to get through Congress and the Farm Bureau is more interested in first passing a new farm bill and a tax bill.
In the meantime, farmers are wondering how they will farm without migrant labor today.
