Summary
California farmers, many of whom supported Trump, face a potential crisis as his immigration policies threaten mass deportations of undocumented workers, who make up at least half of the state’s 162,000 farm labor force.
Deportations could devastate agriculture, leading to labor shortages, unharvested crops, and rising food prices.
Farmers hope for solutions such as workforce legalization or expanded H-2A guest worker programs, though these have been criticized for exploitation risks.
Historical parallels to programs like “Operation Wetback” and the bracero system highlight possible labor and human rights challenges ahead.
Completely agree. It’s extremely viable and should be pursued more. There’s enough vacant land, especially city-owned land, for it to totally work. And you are right about yields, but with a caveat. The issue is the lack of people with the skills and experience in actual production farming - where high yields and high quality are the focus. What happens all to often is that people get enthusiastic, make a big investment, then there’s nobody to carry it through multiple years and through the inevitable trial and error that occurs in any new growing situation. It doesn’t help when people massively undervalue the skill required and essentially call farmers morons, as we’ve seen here. That means often (a) they are not willing to invest in people with the skills and pay them adequately; (b) they assume high production farming is easy and they can do it but then bail when the fail. I personally have been involved in or know of probably a dozen urban farming projects that have failed. It’s sad to see.