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By Roger Allbee
By all accounts, immigrants are an essential part of our U.S. food system today. Every day, the food we eat likely passes through the hands of a guest worker, as they represent 21% of all workers in the U.S. food industry.
According to an April 2020 Report of the Migration Policy Institute on the essential role of immigrants in the U.S. Supply Chain, immigrants are essential workers in all parts of the food supply chain: agricultural workers, food processing, transportation, farm product wholesalers, grocery workers. In the food processing sector alone, immigrants account for 35% of meat processing workers, 34% of workers in commercial bakeries, 30% of the labor in fruit and vegetable processing, and 25% of workers in seafood and other food processing.
Some states like California, Colorado, Alaska in Seafood, and Nebraska in meat processing have a higher percentage of these workers. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “undocumented workers account for 67 percent of people harvesting fruit. They make up 61 percent of all employees on vegetable farms, and as many as half of all workers picking crops.” The Center for American Progress states that nearly 7 million undocumented workers labor in some part of the U.S. food supply chain today. Agriculture is said to have the largest percentage of undocumented labors in the labor force in the last three decades.
In Vermont these guest workers are important as well, both on some of our dairy farms, and with fruit and vegetable production. On dairies in the U.S. 80% of the U.S. milk supply is from farms that employ guest workers, and 50% of the labor is performed by immigrants. In Vermont it is estimated that as many as 1,000 migrants work in milking parlors and dairy barns. In the fruit and vegetable sectors, about 400 H2A federal visa program seasonal workers are employed annually. In all cases, these farms contend that they would not be able to operate without them.
The need of guest workers in food production and other sectors of our food system are not new, however. During World War 1 when migration from Europe declined, growers lobbied, and the first guest worker program was created during 1917-1921. During World War 2, a guest worker program was again established due to the lack of labor on the farm.
Today the lack of farmworkers is said to be one of the most pressing policy issues for agriculture. Due to the lack of labor, it is said that about 20% of agricultural products are unharvested nationwide impacting food availability and pricing. An article in Newsweek on March 12, 2024, America Has a Farming Crisis, states 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. In 2019, 56% of California farmers reported being unable to find all the workers they had needed over the previous five years, according to a survey conducted by the California Farm Bureau Federation.
There have been several attempts over the years to address immigration laws related to farm and food labor needs. As recently as 2022, farmers across the U.S. joined together to push for national immigration reform that they content would ease labor shortages and lower food prices, in the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. If it had been enacted, it provided a stable workforce by creating a path to citizenship for undocumented agricultural workers and it would have reformed the seasonal farmworker H2A farmworker visa program among other things.
Mass deportation has not been one of those recommendations in the past for farm workers due to its disruption of the U.S. food supply chain and the impact it would have on both food availability and food prices and disruption to the economy. In retail milk pricing alone, mass deportation of illegal immigrants could cause the retail price of milk to increase by 90 % according to a study by researchers at Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center for North American Studies. Others too have said that it would significantly disrupt the food supply chain decreasing food availability leading to significant consumer price increases. We know how important labor is to working farms in Vermont and the same is true throughout the country today.
The Author is the Former Vermont Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
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Categories: Agriculture, Commentary
Five dollar tomato will be the new normal price. You had better plant a big garden in 2025.
Mr. Allbee, so what I understand you to write is that we, the citizens of this country, must accept all the undocumented aliens if we want to eat? That having a few million criminals who rape, steal and murder is a small price to pay for eating in this country?
Since we have an estimated 8-20 million undocumented aliens in this country right now, who ostensibly have no jobs except government handouts… i.e. our tax money, then there are a lot of unemployed and available workers.
So, we then should have a GLUT of farmworkers right now, RIGHT?
But not according to
A. https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/farm-worker-shortage-texas-agriculture-indoor-horticulture-greenhouse-revol-farms/
B. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190476628/americas-farms-are-facing-a-serious-labor-shortage
C. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Farming-Fishing-and-Forestry/Agricultural-workers.htm
Seems that despite millions of undocumented aliens we continue to have a shortage of labor. How does this work? What are these freedom-loving illegal aliens doing all day long?
I just want to understand what you are really saying.
Respectfully,
Pam Baker
The slavers don’t want to give up their cheap labor. They have created and allowed for the system and now say, “but who will pick our cotton”?
You’re right. Those who rely on illegal immigrants are, indeed, ‘slavers’. They typically pay wages below legal H-2A visa standards, and they demand allegiance when they allow non-citizens to vote.
The workers that have come here have not done so illegally, instead they are legally here. The massive influx of 20 million unvetted ( un jabbed), unknown people have the effect of undermining the wages of our lowest paid sectors, the minorities who are Americans. Additionally, with this massive influx of unaccountable people, the worst injury has occurred, the increase of child sex traffic and torture with numbers in the 350k of unaccompanied minors involved- being shipped everywhere. For those who don’t know, the USA is the biggest child sex trade in the globe, use of them is particular to politicians who are controlled by blackmail, getting photos or putting them ( politicians) in compromising situations, such as do this to this child or we kill your family, and this is how and why the politicians are always doing the bidding of warmongers. Some surrender their humanity for the ride ‘to the top’ of moral depravity. This open border has brought unspeakable horror to children as the cartels manage the border and their ruthlessness is legendary. Roger, I believe you have missed the mark on this call, however, your call to make the entire state Organic was a worthy one.
No one is arguing that immigration is a problem. The problem is farms whi house, and/or pay under the table, illegal immigrants. These farms should be fined, illegals deported, and able bodied welfare recipients should take there place, instead of a handout. Ya want an omlete, ya gotta break some eggs. The fix is easy, implementation will be difficult. No one in this state has a big enough pair to make this happen.
Until it is clear you are speaking of LEGAL when you simply classify ‘undocumented’. Your numbers reflect accurately enough. If however in the cleaver wordsmithing, you make no reference to these open border numbers including criminals, military age men, children and Ofcourse the cartels and mules. Then the numbers reflect little of what you allude to.
Don’t care. Illegal? Gotta go. Eating, being necessary to life, the market will adjust.
Different cultures equal different standards of sanitary measures and cleanliness. Reality. Notice the vast numbers of food and product recalls over the past four or so years? It is often directly a result from those who do not handwash when needed, those who are unvacinated with core vaccines, and those who come in illegally with communicable diseases that 1st world nations had eradicated.
So not politically correct. So factually correct.
Eat lettuce or ground beef and die. Biden’s America.
They are not immigrants if they are “undocumented”. This is an issue (if there is in fact an issue) of legal work visas for seasonal agricultural work. It shouldn’t be used as an excuse to allow an unfettered influx of people flouting border controls and immigration laws.
You mean illegal aliens right?? And no saftey protical when they harvest thr food as we all can see with all the recalls! They will be going bye bye.
Notice// Three million federal government workers will be fired and have to find a real job working on the farm. The problem is the farmers will not hire these lazy critters.
Immigrant,
Undocumented,
Guest
Why all the euphemisms? The labor descriptors you are looking for are
Trafficked,
Coerced,
Slave
Because nobody from Guatemala, Honduras or Mexico gets the sudden urge to travel to Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont in January. They are brought here by traffickers. You know that. You know their traffickers steal their wages. You know the horrendous living conditions they endure in here.
But you say, well Americans won’t do the work. Of course they won’t at those wages and working conditions. Why would anybody who isn’t forced into it?
I’m probably missing your point but I don’t believe this is quite true. There are many people come from South of the border to get paid lower wages than we do just send it home to their family to give themselves a better life. Oftentimes you forget about the exchange rate of our money versus theirs.
Take for instance mazza farms. Every year they legally bring in many Jamaicans and people from all different countries to come in and pick their fruits and vegetables. These people all come here willingly to this state because there’s a monetary advantage, for them and mazza farms.
I have no problem with legal labor practices and low wages here can be considered high wages in other, poorer countries. That is all above board.
The author isn’t talking about legally employed temporary workers though. He is talking about illegal labor. The link below explains how young teens are trafficked from Guatemala into the US to work on chicken farms in Ohio and Maine.
The owners of these farms don’t ever engage directly with the workers in any official way. Instead that job is “contracted out” to “agents”. The “agents” are human traffickers.
This creates layers of separation and plausible deniability for the owner.
The link below is a PBS Frontline documentary
Immigrants essential to our U.S. food system, that would be legal immigrants, that are payed well below the average, could be called slave wages !!
If you want to fix this, then get all the low life’s of the government TIT, or gather up all the panhandlers that seem to be on every corner and give them a job, oh yeah they don’t want to work, there getting free money !!
If Immigrants are essential, pay them a descent wage, there saving your business.
This is worth a gander re the topic at hand: https://forbiddennews.substack.com/p/darkness-by-design-part-1-baalenciaga?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1658626&post_id=151586567&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2h0n1o&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A country that can’t feed itself is highly likely to starve. – Anyone with common sense.
Why do you think human trafficking is a multi-billion, maybe a trillion dollar a year industry globally? Why are workers from the Asian Pacific rim serving and supplying USA military bases in the Middle East? Why is African labor still prominent when an embassy needs to be built somewhere or a bombed out region has to be rebuilt? Why has China established so much in industry in Africa? Crimes against humanity. I’m sorry people have fooled themselves thinking we need migrants to work for behemouth agricultural industries, while the investors clean up on the stock exhange, and feed us chemically and genetically altered garbage. From the field, to the factory for added poison and leaching nutrients, then to your table. Most of our produce grown here is sent elsewhere, while ours comes from South America or Mexico. Anyone notice canned mushrooms come from France? Why?
There was a time when work visas were the norm and necessary to help privately owned farms and seasonal businesses. Unfortunately, it has gone way beyond nessesity to criminal conduct here and abroad.
The use of the term “immigrant” is very loose in the media, public forums and specifically this article. The designation “immigrant” implies in and of itself, that the holder of that status has sought LEGAL pathways to gain entry to the U.S. That said, there are both “immigrant” and “non-immigrant” visa classes to achieve this…. After providing a fact like “undocumented workers account for 67 percent of people harvesting fruit”, it would be unavoidable for myself as an author (or study of the INA) to title this anything but “Illegal Aliens Essential to US Food System”, for the simple fact this distinct group chose to pay cartels, rather than the US Government to to apply for and process a visa.
If we did not abort so many of our own home grown babies, we wouldn’t need the migrants to do the labor.
Our own offspring would do it, like we, and our parents/grandparents and ancestors had done before us and like nature meant it to be.
How did we get so off track from the blessings of raising children?
In the big picture, we are pretty darn stupid to murder our future labor force and bring in outsiders to take their place.
Our country is self destructing by following these evil genocidal policies.
The truth hurts…doesn’t it?
If Mr. Albee found a need for domestic help I guess he would just open the kitchen door.