Summary
Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, including heightened ICE raids, are disrupting the U.S. agricultural sector.
In California’s Central Valley, a key food-producing region, undocumented farm workers—over half the workforce—are staying home out of fear, leaving crops like citrus unharvested.
Bakersfield saw up to 75% of workers absent, sparking concerns of economic devastation and rising food prices.
ICE is also targeting sensitive areas like schools and churches after rolling back Obama-era protections.
Experts warn these policies could lead to widespread economic repercussions.
Oh no! The agricultural oligopoly might need to pay employees more to secure a sufficient quantity of labor? Gasp!
Economic devastation is when living wages.
Nah, they’d rather the country starve and they go under than do that
And basic amenities like places to poop, pee, wash your bands and getting raped more gently. Thanks fellow immigrants!
Costco has a peach fire sale! Just $59.99! Per slice! It comes a glass bottle with 3 peach’s in sugar! All American made materials and food. The glass is so strong, you can drop it. That’ll be $543 and 73 cents please! Yes the glass does break when you drop it, we’re just saying that it’s strong and you can drop it, if you want.
I was in Georgia when they enacted the Live scan law. Let me tell you how it went down. Farmers, as in individual/family farms that weren’t owned by large corps, didn’t have the liquidity to pay more for labor. Those small/medium farms went on the news and begged for people to come and work, talking about how they had stuff rotting on the vine and how most folks wouldn’t even finish out their first day. Mid size farmers aren’t exactly poor, but most businesses don’t survive just not having labor and not turning revenue, and by the end of that first growing season, a whole lot of small and mid-size farms ended up selling the farm to large corps or else just outright shutting down.
There is practically zero chance that the farm industry will start paying living wages overnight. They might could do it, given time, oversight, direction, and aid (there’s A LOT of downward pressure on the prices farms sell at), but it’s just not going to happen in one growing season. Realistically, this could be real, real, real bad. The central valley has a huge ag industry, and we grow a LOT of non-grain crops (except corn) for the rest of the country and the world. There’s some crops, like Pistachios, where the central valley is one of two places in the whole world where there’s meaningful agricultural operations for them. We also produce a lot of the good eating oranges (have you ever eaten a Florida Valencia Orange? They taste like eating pure sour armpit, there’s a reason they make them into juice) and other citrus. So, not only are we going to see food shortages (and some pretty specific food supply shortages for the rest of the world), but probably a lot of the farms around here are going to end up being corporate owned, leaving everyone here poorer and worse off than they were before.
Isn’t this a huge plot point of the Cyberpunk universe? Corps own all agriculture?
Yay capitalism
You are not wrong, but I don’t really think abusing the disenfranchised to the extent that they aren’t getting paid at all while food rots away is what I would call a “good path” to living wages.
First off, no one is getting living wages for the work yet, and we have no evidence to suggest they will.
Secondly, even if this does lead to that, maybe we could have found a path forward without all the unnecessary added suffering?
I dunno, it just feels really fucked up to be spinning this like the only outcome is “living wages” when all it has actually done so far is cause additional harm.