Farmworkers and America’s Food Systems

The demand for labor on America’s food-producing farms and the current anti-immigration climate are crashing into each other and putting America at risk of food shortages and exorbitant prices. Farmers need workers to nurture and harvest the crops, milk the cows, and tend to the livestock, but American workers are unwilling to perform this type of labor.  Consequently, farmers are forced to depend on foreign workers willing to do the work, often undocumented workers. Conservative politicians and White Nationalists have for several years promoted and stirred anti-immigrant sentiments, especially against persons and families coming from the many countries south of the border.  In this context, immigrants willing to perform farm labor have been forced to enter the country without going through the legal process—a system and process that does not meet the nation’s demands for farm labor.

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