Farmers Try to Keep Food on the Table Despite Trump

Thanks to Trump’s immigration and tariff policies, the outlook for agriculture is cloudy.

Farm workers labor in the fields south of Bakersfield, in Kern County, “California’s breadbasket,” on April 9, 2025. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

DONALD TRUMP’S PUSH FOR MASS DEPORTATIONS was always reliant on a degree of shock and awe. Fear and intimidation were both means and ends. But recently, the administration has had to slow down or even abandon individual deportations in the face of strong popular resistance. And now the president is signaling another huge exception to his deportation policy.

“We’re also going to work with farmers,” Trump said Thursday. “If they have strong recommendations for their farms for certain people, we’re going to let them stay in for a while. . . . We have to take care of our farmers and our hotels and various places where they need the people.”

Trump’s off-the-cuff comments aren’t necessarily government policy, but they often signal future policy directions. In this case, it sounds like Trump is getting ready to carve out exemptions from his deportation regime for agricultural workers. After all, Trump is right—bear with me—that farms have a special need for immigrant labor.

In February, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) met with California Citrus Mutual, a trade association that represents the growers who provide 90 percent of the country’s lemons, grapefruits, and oranges. Already, just days into Trump’s second term, the association was concerned about the impact Trump’s then-hypothetical tariffs could have on the Central Valley, and the group’s president and CEO, Casey Creamer, had warned that immigration raids threatened the food supply. The problem antedated the Trump administration: After major raids in early January by Customs and Border Protection in Kern County, “one citrus operation reported that 25% of its workers did not show up,” according to Creamer. “By the following day, that number had climbed to 75%.” Locals and labor groups interpret those pre-inauguration raids as the agency trying to impress the incoming president.

Trump’s combination of tariffs and deportations has rattled farmers and growers in California, who provide more than a third of the nation’s vegetables and more than three quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts.

“Farmers in California and across the country are being hit with a trifecta of damaging Republican policies: chaotic tariffs, haphazard mass deportations, and massive cuts to federal programs they rely on,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told The Bulwark. “These reckless actions are leaving farmers in a dangerous limbo, unable to plan for the future and without the workforce that fuels their industry.”

(For his part, Schiff has pointed out that while Trump made an effort to compensate farmers who were hurt during the first round of tariffs four years ago, “the compensation was not evenly distributed, and specialty crop farmers in California got very little compared to farmers elsewhere. So I don’t think anyone should expect to be made whole if we go through another round of that.”)

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), whose father in the 1950s was part of the Bracero program that brought temporary farm laborers from Mexico to the United States, recently held a town hall in the agriculture hub of Bakersfield to hear voters’ concerns. He said Republicans like Rep. David Valadao, who represents the district, are AWOL.

“People tend to forget we’re the breadbasket of the U.S.,” Gomez told The Bulwark. “These tariffs, when it comes to the trade war he [Trump] is starting to wage—first it was a trade war against everybody, which is still having a ripple effect even if turned off—but it’s still on with China. And China is going to retaliate and that’s going to cause more hardship for the agriculture industry. . . . So on one end you have that trade war, but you also need people to pick the crop and make sure things get to market.”

Be Our Guest (Worker)

DESPERATE FOR A STABLE WORKFORCE, California farm groups have come out in support of more H-2A guest worker visas. Labor groups—who represent the people currently doing the work, not those who could theoretically do the work—are less keen on the idea of replacing hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm hands with seasonal workers.

The Los Angeles Times outlined the complicated dynamic between farmers and organized labor. They both agree that a reliable workforce is key to a reliable food supply, but diverge on the details:

But beneath that shared goal a rift has opened around a singular question: Which workforce should be prioritized? Should farming interests push to protect and retain the undocumented workers who have toiled in the country’s fields for years and who, in many cases, have families and community roots? Or should they focus on solidifying the foreign guest worker program that provides a legal channel for importing seasonal laborers on a temporary basis, but offers no path to legal residency and has proved vulnerable to exploitation?

Antonio De Loera-Brust, the communications director for the United Farm Workers, told me that a workforce that is more intimidated is more exploitable, so the way to stop exploitation is to allow every worker to become American.

“We have a very different perspective from the employers. Our true north is we want the farmworkers, people working land they do not own, to make a decent living, to be treated well, and to be safe and respected,” he said. “We want them to be able to afford food on their tables. The real injustice is farmworkers live in poverty. How can you be doing a job this essential and not be able to feed your family?”

Lourdes, 56, an undocumented farmworker from Colorado, has spent the last two decades en el campo—in the fields.¹ She said the country should focus on legalizing those who have spent their lives putting food on Americans’ tables rather than expanding guest-worker programs to bring others in to compete with or replace them.

“Rather than bring in more workers, why don’t we legalize the workers who are already here?” she asked The Bulwark in Spanish.

Loera-Brust said some unscrupulous employers may benefit from the dynamic of having a workforce too afraid of being deported to speak out about working conditions—and not just in agriculture.

“If you’re not being given enough shade or water, or working overtime but they’re not paying minimum wage, that is bad for the construction industry, it’s bad for Latino workers in these industries, and bad for U.S. citizens,” he said.

Steve Murray, the owner of Murray Family Farms east of Bakersfield, told me that’s not the dynamic he fosters at his farm, where he views his mission as improving the quality of consumers’ lives through the food he grows, as well as improving the lives of his workers, whom he says are like family.

Murray said other countries, like New Zealand and Australia, realized the wisdom of creating avenues for skilled workers to come for half a year to work rather than just three weeks at a time. He said the United States needs a better system, citing as a model the Indian and Mexican systems which, following a probationary period of residency, eventually allow a pathway to citizenship.

He acknowledged it can be disruptive for guest workers to be paid more than longtime workers, but “it’s a worker’s market.”

Visas may not be as reliable as farmers hope, as the Trump administration has revoked hundreds of visas seemingly at the personal discretion of the secretary of state.

Murray also disputed claims that workers are liable to be exploited.

“Workers have legal rights, and employers want to keep good workers and can’t disrespect anybody today without people knowing about it,” he said. “They do work hard, it’s hot out in the sun, but California is above minimum wage, and 50 percent of the families in Bakersfield can own their own home if they’re working in agriculture. It’s not a hostile relationship—these people are really family.”

Murray said he runs a “matriarchal” organization where a lot of women lead, including his farm manager, Laura Garcia, who has worked for him for decades. She and her husband, Jesse, have been able to buy a couple of homes and are now landlords. Jesse works in agriculture consulting and even provides tractors to Murray when he needs them.

“The American Dream is in this valley,” Murray said, adding that people like Jesse “can come in and make a living sourcing tractors or trailers when we’re harvesting. The dream here is to own your own business.”

One Last Thing

Check out this video of Sean McGarvey, the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), calling for the return to the United States of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whom the Trump administration wrongly disappeared to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia, who has a U.S. citizen child and wife, is an apprentice in SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers. Loera-Brust from United Farm Workers told me this example of a white working-class guy (McGarvey) referring to a Latino working-class guy as “our brother” is exactly the kind of immigration message we need.

1. For obvious reasons, Lourdes declined to give her last name.