The Guardian reports:

Take a drive through the Salinas or Central valleys in California and you’ll pass from town to town advertising its specialty fruit or vegetable: strawberries in Watsonville, garlic in Gilroy, pistachios in Avenal and almonds in Ripon. More than 400 types of commodities are grown in the Golden state – including a third of the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts produced in the United States.

Much of that food is grown by immigrant farm workers – many of whom are undocumented. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), about half of the country’s 2.4 million agricultural farm workers do not have legal status in the US. But farm worker advocates say the number is much higher in places like California, where it can be “as high as 70% in some areas”, according to Alexis Guild, vice-president of strategy and programs at Farmworker Justice, a non-profit based in Washington DC.

Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “launch the largest deportation program in American history” by targeting millions of undocumented immigrants could upend the lives of the majority of these agricultural workers who grow and harvest our food – which would dramatically hit California’s communities and economy, with ripple effects that would touch every table in the country.

“Without undocumented immigrant labor, we wouldn’t be able to sustain a food supply at the capacity that we have right now,” said Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center at the University of California at Merced.

Farm workers already perform dangerous and often underpaid labor. In the fields, they are vulnerable to pesticide exposure and workplace injuries doing work that is exempt from federal overtime laws. Trump and his allies have repeatedly said that undocumented immigrants have “taken” jobs from Black and Hispanic Americans, but farm worker advocates say these are not jobs US citizens are eager to hold.

“Rather than thinking about how immigrants ‘took’ jobs that existed, the historic wave of migration from Mexico that began in the 1970s is really a story of the growth of an industry and a very large and profitable one at that,” said Edward Flores, a sociologist and faculty director of the Community and Labor Center, who compares the size of California’s agricultural industry to Hollywood.

“The fact that there were so many people working in agriculture meant that the nation exported much more produce than it otherwise would have – that it opened up opportunities for people all along the supply chain.”

In 2023, California’s agricultural exports totaled more than $24.7bn, according to the USDA. The state was the nation’s sole producer of many specialty crops – including almonds, artichokes, figs, olives, pomegranates, raisins and walnuts – and the leading producer of other staples, such as lettuce and celery.

“Proposed deportations would be absolutely devastating not just for immigrant households, but most American households,” Flores said. “Mass deportations would disrupt the food chain at a time when inflation is one of workers’ most pressing concerns.” He added that such deportations would slow production and increase prices of many grocery store staples, including milk, wheat and eggs. [Continue reading…]