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by Roger Allbee of Townshend, republished from his 10/24/24 post on his blog, “What Ceres Might Say”
Immigrants play a vital role in our U.S. food system. Each day, the food we consume is likely handled by guest workers, who comprise 21% of all employees in the U.S. food industry. According to an April 2020 report by the Migration Policy Institute, immigrants are essential workers throughout the food supply chain, including agricultural workers, food processing, transportation, wholesale distributors, and grocery staff.
In the food processing sector alone, immigrants make up 35% of meat processing workers, 34% of those in commercial bakeries, 30% in fruit and vegetable processing, and 25% in seafood and other food processing areas. It is estimated that approximately 25% of workers in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations are undocumented. The Center for American Progress reports that nearly 1.7 million undocumented workers are involved in the U.S. food supply chain, with agriculture having the highest percentage of undocumented laborers in the workforce over the past three decades
In Vermont, guest workers are also essential on dairy farms and in fruit and vegetable production. It is estimated that as many as 1,000 migrants work in milking parlors and dairy barns in the state. According to the Vermont Farmworker Solidarity Project, “one-half of Vermont’s milk comes from the labor of undocumented workers,” and farmers employing these workers affirm that they could not survive without them. In the fruit and vegetable sectors, around 400 seasonal workers in the H-2A federal visa program are employed annually in Vermont.
According to Food Connects, 11.3% of farm work in Vermont is performed by H-2A seasonal workers. The Vermont Farm to Plate program notes that labor needs and costs are high and that retaining a seasonal workforce is a challenge, resulting in wholesale farms being heavily dependent on H-2A workers. These farms assert that they would be unable to operate without these workers. In dairies across the U.S., 80% of the milk supply comes from farms that employ guest workers, with immigrants performing 50% of the labor. However, the H-2A seasonal program does not meet the full-time labor requirements of U.S. farms.
The need for guest workers in food production is not a recent development. During World War I, when migration from Europe declined, growers lobbied for the establishment of the first guest worker program, which operated from 1917 to 1921. A similar program was created during World War II due to labor shortages. Today, the lack of farmworkers is a pressing policy issue, with approximately 20% of agricultural products going unharvested nationwide. This scarcity significantly impacts food availability and prices. An article in Newsweek, dated March 12, 2024, titled “America Has a Farming Crisis,” reports that “the United States lost 141,733 farms over the course of five years, in part due to a broken workforce system that has led to a worker shortage.” A 2019 survey by the California Farm Bureau Federation found that 56% of California farmers could not find all the workers they needed in the previous five years.
Over the years, there have been multiple attempts to address immigration laws concerning farm and food labor needs. As recently as 2022, farmers across the U.S. united to advocate for national immigration reform through the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which aimed to ease labor shortages and lower food prices. If enacted, this legislation would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented agricultural workers and reformed the seasonal H-2A farmworker visa program, among other measures.
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Categories: Commentary
The issue is not immigrants, but ILLEGAL ones.
This is a really easy concept, come here legally. Do it the right way, there is no reason anyone should be here undocumented, but let’s word that correctly, illegally. If you broke the law coming into the country, you return to sender. Sorry, I can’t just up and go to say Canada, there is a process. If I don’t follow it, I will be picked up, jailed, or sent back. Same should happen here. Come through on a visa, get your citizenship, and make a life. If not, you broke the law, goodbye! And furthermore, any farmer blatantly housing, aiding, and housing an illegal, should be fined. If we lose the farm, so be it. Make a few examples and others will stop being shady and follow the laws.
Notice the historical citations listed are post-world wars? Depopulation, wealth transfer, reset. Nothing new under the sun. If the Master of Puppets wasn’t so good at turning civilizations upside down every 100, more or less years, the people wouldn’t be upended, starved-out, trafficked, and transported around the globe to suit the designed plan of kill, steal, and destroy. Anytime the USA or Europe needed expansion or replacements – bring on a world war, a famine (the Irish potato famine?), or just blow up someone else’s country and displace entire communities. Those who manage to survive the onslaught all get moved around by design on purpose – all to Western nations nonetheless – Central Banking?
They can’t seem to cite or explain that back in the early 1970’s, the farms my relatives and their neighbors operated were managed by a few, not a lot. Could it be the desolation of small family farms that sustained for generations were systematically and purposefully wiped out by corporations and government lawfare warfare? I don’t feel good about Hood – Agri-Mart and fraudulent Dairy Compacts – farm loans, grants and subsidies that can never get paid off, just compounded year after year – all by design. All to destroy what was good and what was honest, dedicated labors of love of the land and for all creatures great and small.
The peddlers of lies and manipulations are working overtime these days.
When owning a business and you need to hire illegal help to expand, you are destroying the free enterprise system. The ones that are legal can not compete with the corporate model getting government grants, and will put the small farmer out of business. Lets see how this plays out in Vermont. Will this be a R. I. C. O. case?????
Automate the farms !
How ya wanna do that? If the farms only have the money to pay an illegal worker minimum wages. How do they pay for expensive robots? Oh, I know Patrick, we’ll use tax payer money and “grant” them the equipment. Sounds fair. No, put the able bodied welfare recipients to work on the farms, replace the illegals, not rocket science.
Some are. As much as currently possible, but it’s not possible to completely replace human labor at any cost.
When we start attacking the food making/delivery system there will be significant disruption on all levels of this supply chain.
Reaching into a working farm takes deportation to another level. I hear all the voices saying but they are illegals, they don’t belong here, get them out……Yep you are all right. I ask you to think of the implications not just of the individual.
No one can dispute going after the usual suspects of criminals, gang members etc. but reaching into those that are linked to the food chain will reach into all of us. The same is true for meat packing plants in the Midwest, citrus crops in Fl. , apples in the Northwest. Yes I know they broke the law but be carful about lumping these people in with the haters and criminals.
Granted it was a 3000 acre farm with a connection to a local celebrity. It could have been nearly any farm in the state. Already enough family farms have been lost in the state. I do not see good Vermonters lined up to take their place. This is their entry into our society not bumping anyone you or I know .
I ask us to be careful, be reflective, be thinking of downstream implications. Having the net thrown out you can be sure it will catch fish not intended. There will be the law of unintended consequences.
The food supply has nothing to with this subject. All farms engaged in these activities should be exposed. The real question is, do these imported workers really want to become American citizens????? Maybe the illegal ones should turn themselves into the county sheriff so he can do his job. This has become a dog and pony show with no end in sight. Only one sheriff in Vermont tried to enforce federal law.
The long-term focus of ag policy in the United States has been to maintain a cheap food supply and the major recipient of the downside of this overwhelming, multilevel and ever-expanding economic injustice is the American farmer.
This discussion about the “need” for immigrant farm workers distracts from the ramifications of a cheap food policy.
A far more relevant query would be “why does a modern dairy require literally hundreds and often now, thousands of cows to achieve viability when seventy years ago a dairy with 30 cows produced an honest living?” or “how could the income provided from 30 milking cows afford a two-story home, barns, land, and associated buildings and equipment?”
The simple answer is that the income received from farm-produced commodities has not kept pace with economic reality.
Cheap food makes it easier for a bureaucracy to provide food stamps, WIC program, farm-to-school, hot lunch program and probably a myriad of other schemes closer to budgetary restraints … all this on the backs of the American farmer.
Now, you may want to look at the devalued dollar and the inflation costs that are built into the costs of producing all products. 1971, the cost of gasoline delivered in my bulk tank at home was .33 cents per gallon. You need to address the real problem.