California farmers say Medicaid recipients, automation can't replace immigrant workers
By: Andrea Castillo, Suhauna Hussain and Jessica Garrison (Los Angeles Times)
We certainly don't want immigrants to become Americans. Americans won't do this work. Why else would Democrats go out of their way to prefer undocumented immigration over the rule of law? If Democrats really created a pathway to citizenship, we'd all starve because Americans won't do farm work.
The United States is still stuck in a slave mentality concerning farm labor. Why is that? The Trump administration is telling us we can do better by innovating and improving farm practices. It's not Trump's fault the slave mentality persists.
The United States isn't the only country that experiences shortages of farm labor. Instead of just whining and griping, Democrats and liberals should be promoting their global solutions since a shortage of farm labor is a global problem. But, no, the first instinct of liberal Democrats is throw monkey shit rather than find solutions. Other countries have changed farming practices to be more ergonomic to lessen physical demands. Other countries are adopting innovative farm practices to reduce water needs, increase crop yields per square foot, adjust practices to accommodate robots and automation, and are even looking at agrivoltaics to combine revenue from energy generation with food production.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
After Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday that immigrant farmworkers could be replaced with automation and "able-bodied" U.S. citizens "on Medicaid," groups representing farmers and workers in California said that's not realistic.
"There will be no amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way," Rollins said. "And we move the workforce towards automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly."
Rollins spoke during a news conference outside the USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C., alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi. The Trump administration officials announced a plan to protect national security by banning "Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries" from purchasing farmland in the U.S.
Helen McGrath, whose family farms citrus and avocados in Ventura County, said Rollins' comments were insulting.
"I can confidently say that most farmers in the country either laughed out loud or were just deflated by those comments," she said. "It just shows how uninformed and out of touch some of these officials are with what food production looks like in this country."
According to 2022 figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 42% of crop farmworkers had no work authorization, with California having the highest share of unauthorized workers.
Immigration raids at farms, ranches and dairies have recently targeted operations in Ventura County, as well as those in other states, such as Nebraska. Many farmers reported their workers had stayed home for days after such enforcement actions out of fear of arrest.
Last month, President Trump acknowledged concerns among agriculture industry leaders that recent immigration enforcement was taking away critical workers. That led to a pause of worksite raids in the agriculture, hotel and restaurant sectors.
Days later, though, his administration reversed course.
Rollins acknowledged "there's been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands in his vision for farm labor."
She said that when she and Trump have spoken about mass deportations, he has agreed that they must be carried out strategically "so as to not compromise our food supply."
Juan Proano, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights organization, dismissed the agricultural secretary's message, saying the Trump administration has flip-flopped so much that her words shouldn't be taken at face value.
"I wouldn't put too much credence on this," Proano said. "The president understands he's getting significant pressure from the agriculture industry. These workers really are irreplaceable in our food distribution system."
Proano said the idea that "backbreaking work in some of the worst conditions" could be replaced by automation or by people receiving Medicaid is simply not a realistic plan.
"These are large conglomerates worth millions and millions of dollars," Proano said. "If they could have automated picking strawberries and oranges, they would have already."
Automation is not just around the corner, said Mark Bolda, a farm advisor specializing in berry agriculture on the Central Coast of California. Machines have a particularly hard time with strawberries because the soft fruit tends to be hidden under leaves.
"I think the secretary is being overly ambitious," he said.
A transition to automation would require an expensive and unfeasible overhaul of the way strawberries are grown, Bolda said. It would require, for example, replacing sprawling strawberry fields with tabletop beds in controlled greenhouses with flat floors conducive to wheeled machines.
For now, the work of picking strawberries relies on humans.
"Growers are very vigorously testing machines, but nothing's worked," he said.
In 2023, nearly two-thirds of adults ages 19 to 64 who were covered by Medicaid were working, and more than a quarter were not working because of caregiving responsibilities, illness or disability, or because they were in school. That's according to the health policy organization KFF.
Manuel Cunha, head of the Nisei Farmer's League, was skeptical of the idea that Medicaid recipients seeking employment would be a good fit for farm labor.
In the 1990s, he was part of an effort that included several California agricultural counties and state workforce leaders to make farm labor jobs available for people required to seek employment under the "Welfare to Work" program. He said farmers at the time were desperate for workers because many longtime farmworkers had recently become lawful permanent residents under President Reagan's amnesty program and sought jobs in different sectors.
But he said the effort was a disaster.
After diligent outreach, only three people showed up to work, he said. One was late. A second person showed up and worked for part of the day before sustaining an injury and returning to the employment office to say he had gotten hurt on the job.
"We lost crops," Cunha recalled. "Fruit literally rotted on the ground."
During the news conference Tuesday, Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, mentioned her past as a farmer and rancher in South Dakota.
"I recognize that food policy is national security policy," she said. "A country who cannot feed itself, cannot take care of itself, and cannot provide for itself is not secure."
Critics called her comments ironic, saying the Trump administration is taking farmworkers for granted and leaving the country vulnerable to food insecurity.
"These deportations and this cruelty, it is affecting workers and their families and their community, but it's going to get to the point that we're all going to feel the pain," said United Farm Workers President Theresa Romero. "We're not going to find what we want and what we need, and whatever we find is going to be a lot more expensive."
The Trump Organization has filed to bring in at least 1,880 foreign workers under temporary visa programs since 2008 to staff Mar-a-Lago, four of its golf clubs and its Virginia winery, Forbes reported.
In an interview with Fox News last month, Trump said his administration is working to develop a "temporary pass" for immigrants who work in agriculture.
"We're going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge," Trump said. "The farmer knows. He's not going to hire a murderer. When you go into a farm and he's had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work — which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren't going to do it — and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away, it's a problem."
Asked about Rollins' comments later Tuesday, Trump reiterated that "there's no amnesty."
"What we're doing is we're getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program," he said.
Rollins pointed to the H2A visa program and other seasonal worker programs, saying the conversations around temporary farm labor continue.
LULAC, the civil rights group, launched a petition on Friday urging the Trump administration to legalize essential workers, including those in the agricultural and service industries. The petition collected 100,000 signatures in the first 24 hours after it went live, according to the organization.
Proano said he plans to visit Washington in the coming days to have "some open dialogue" with the administration. He said the president himself has voiced support for a legal pathway the petition calls for.
"We are taking essentially the president's own words and his call to action and showing that there are a lot of people that support it," he said. "We hope he will find the wherewithal to do something about it."
Industry groups, including those advocating on behalf of agricultural businesses, have been lobbying Trump for a reprieve.
Ryan Jacobsen, chief executive of the Fresno County Farm Bureau and a farmer of almonds and grapes, said he was caught off guard by Rollins' comments, saying they struck a different tone than Trump's previous remarks.
Jacobsen said that farmers in the Central Valley have, as the secretary suggested, embraced automation, but also know its limits.
"A fresh peach still requires a pair of hands to cut that off of a tree," he said. "Table grapes still require the sensitive hands of an employee removing it from the vine."
Tags
Who is online
423 visitors
Democrats are telling us we need wetbacks to make greenbacks. That's not a pathway to become an American.
It might be a good idea to listen to Trump's 21st century ideas.
Once again the Trump administrative talks a lot of BS about how they’re going to fix a problem they created.
How did they create it?
Arresting and otherwise terrorizing farmworkers has created a shortage of farmworkers. The Trump administration - which, by Trump’s own words, was supposed to be prioritizing dangerous criminals - did that all by themselves.
Why? Are the majority of those immigrant farm workers here illegally?
Absolutely, should probably be a Trump meme that says "I did that"....
I don’t know and neither do you. Any number would be a guess.
Crucially, it doesn’t matter. People who are here with permission are getting arrested at courthouses as they try to comply with the rules. So, whatever partisan impulse you might have to blame everything on “illegals” is misplaced here.
Yeah you could use a picture of a man’s hand on a woman’s crotch. Or a picture of bankruptcy court. Or a jury foreman reading out a felony guilty verdict. Gimme a minute, I’m sure I can think of more.
Why do you think it doesn't matter?
I explained that above.
TLDR: Legal status is no protection against ICE.
Illegals. You mean arresting illegals who should not be in the country in the first place. The same thing previous administrations have done and you kept your mouth shut for.
Ukraine can use the help, deport them to there.
Not saying it's NOT an option.
Trump is not responsible for the slave mentality still prevalent in agricultural work.
Slave mentality? By whom? Farmers or the Trump administration?
Farms: Workers came here freely. They work in a job they chose and are well paid. They are free to come and go.
The Trump Administration: Using anonymous forces to aggressively round people up and put them in cages. Laughs as they threaten them with attack from alligators. Is now talking about letting some of them work, but the work they do will not be up to them. Will they even be paid?
The slave mentality treats workers like livestock. That's what makes the work so onerous.
Immigration advocates tell us we are dependent upon undocumented immigrants to do work Americans won't do and to pay taxes Americans won't pay. What's the incentive for allowing undocumented immigrants to become Americans? If they become Americans they'll want better jobs and won't pay taxes.
Yes, the Trump administration is being more aggressive toward immigration enforcement. But is the concern really for the undocumented immigrants?
Trump's fear campaign is encouraging undocumented immigrants to freely choose not to show up for the jobs. These undocumented immigrants can freely choose to self deport. Where these undocumented immigrants go and what they do is unimportant. What is important are crops rotting in the fields because there's not enough livestock. And the farmers can do absolutely nothing to make the work less demanding and the jobs more attractive.
It's still prevalent among the Democrats and the left as well.
Where did you get that idea?
There’s nothing “free” about a choice made under duress.
Only in your mind.
Again, your should pay attention...
We're repeatedly told undocumented immigrants are necessary for harvesting crops because Americans won't do that work. What happens if Democrats get their pathway to citizenship and these undocumented immigrants become Americans? Are we to believe they'll continue working the fields after they have a legal opportunity to find other work?
Then these undocumented immigrants didn't freely come to the United States. The request for asylum uses duress as a justification.
Self deportation doesn't require returning to their country of origin. They can choose to go elsewhere. They could self deport to Canada, any European country, or an Asian country if they choose.
You mean cages like the ones Obama and Biden used that you kept your mouth shut about? Pitching your little temper tantrum about stuff like this only shows that you only give a shit about the situation, not because it's happening but because WHO is in charge. It's quite tiresome and pathetic.
We are? Some workers are citizens, some are not. Of the latter, some are here legally, and some are not. I don’t think that’s a big secret.
I suppose some might become citizens. And some probably won’t.
You want a guarantee? Why? What are you worried about?
I imagine some will stay in the work and some might not. It’s not as if there are a bunch of PhDs working in the fields. They aren’t going to suddenly take everyone’s white collar jobs.
Why should I defend the claims made by those opposed to Trump's immigration policies? The Trump opposition and immigration activists are the ones repeatedly telling us that Americans won't work the fields to harvest crops. I didn't make that up; it's the TDS deranged influencers who made that up.
And many are legally working on an H2A visa so don't need amnesty. But H2A workers are legally migrants and not immigrants. So political optics are all wrong for immigration activists.
You do understand that Mexican farmers are having difficulty finding enough workers, too. Mexican crops rotting the in fields will impact US consumers just as much as California crops rotting in fields. There's not a win-win solution for the shortage of farm workers. The lack of seasonal farm workers to harvest crops is a global problem that immigration reform in the US won't solve.
I didn't ask you to defend anything, so I don't know what you're talking about.
If you say so. Do you disagree? If so, based on what?
Again, if you say so. Is there a point I should be getting?
If you have a solution, by all means, suggest it.
I thought there was a solution offered. Automation and domestic labor. Medicaid recipients have health insurance that farmers don't have to offer. That health insurance benefit means government will subsidize field work. Farmers can change their farming practices so that field work is less physically demanding. And automation for harvesting fruits and vegetables is already under development.
Countries around the world are finding solutions for shortages of farm labor. Does the United States need someone else to develop innovative ways to reduce the need for human labor, improve the ergonomics of farming tasks to lower physical demands, and manufacture robotic and automated solutions? Has the United States gotten to the point where it is incapable of solving these types of problems?