US farmers not too keen on Trump

But the view of many conservative-leaning agricultural communities is “disgust, bordering on dread”. 

The magazine reports that farmers say Trump’s talk is making worse the already difficult labour shortages they face, and brought unhelpful political attention to issues they had hoped to resolve quietly in Congress through legislation to fix the nation’s broken guest-worker scheme.

Many growers say they will do all they can to tell the public why Trump’s positions jeopardize their livelihoods and the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables.

“Trump is terrible for agriculture,” said California peach and plum grower Harold McClarty, who relies on thousands of workers every year.

Trump’s inflammatory talk, especially his vow to deport 11 million illegal migrants, seriously threatens US growers struggling to get crops to market, said Frank Muller, who grows tomatoes, peppers, almonds and walnuts on his California farm.

“My farm would shut down today if you removed my ... workforce,” Muller said. “You hear all these disparaging remarks about immigrants, but these guys are the hardest-working, most dedicated people ... I’ve ever seen.”

Roughly 1.4m undocumented immigrants work on US farms each year, or about 60% of the farm labour force, said Chuck Conner, president of the National Council of Farm Cooperatives, a trade group, and former deputy agriculture secretary during the George W. Bush administration.

Farmers say they depend on undocumented workers because Americans won’t do the back-breaking work required and the existing scheme for foreign workers is badly broken.

Tim McMillan, a Georgia blackberry farmer and owner of Southern Grace Farms, said he could easily double his operation if he could hire labour.

“We’ve got the land, the water and the management; we’ve got everything in place but the labour,” he told Politico. “I can’t get American citizens to do the work. They just don’t want to do it.”

So farmers are keeping one eye on their orchards and the other on Capitol Hill, hoping lawmakers will vote to overhaul the existing H-2A guest-worker visa scheme many say is cumbersome, costly and inefficient. 

The numbers of labourers needed to harvest America’s fruit and vegetables cannot be met by H-2A, and its complicated rules and high costs push them to hire undocumented workers, said Barry Bedwell, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association.

Farm groups have been quietly lobbying for years to make it easier to temporarily bring farm workers from Mexico and other countries. Under the existing guest-worker scheme preference in filling jobs is given to US citizens. But in many cases American workers don’t want to do the work.

“All this conversation seen as anti-immigrant is not helpful,” said National Farmers Union president Roger Johnson.

Meanwhile, Steve Freeman, vice president at Pacific Coast Producers, a fruit packing firm, told Politico that finding labour is so difficult farmers are growing different crops. Grapes, apples and pears are labour-intensive, so some farmers are switching to almonds, pistachios and walnuts.