How to Solve the US Farmworker Shortage, According to Congress
As the Trump administration prioritizes immigration enforcement, representatives from farming districts say they need a creative solution to their labor problems, and fast.
Illustration: Qianhui Yu for Bloomberg Businessweek
When Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the solution to the worsening farmworker shortage is tapping some of the 34 million “able-bodied adults on Medicaid,” Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden knew that wasn’t going to work for his constituents in Wisconsin. President Donald Trump’s mass deportations this year have decimated the nation’s migrant labor force, and expecting US-born workers to fill the gap simply isn’t realistic, Van Orden told reporters at the World Dairy Expo in Madison earlier this month. “I’m saying out loud what no Republican wants to say,” he told them. “If we don’t retain our current agriculture workforce, our farms are going to close.”
Without swift action in Washington, it will be more expensive to package food for grocery stores or export. But there’s no relief from the administration in sight, so legislators from rural districts are trying to take matters into their own hands by proposing the kind of labor-market reforms farmers in their districts say would actually make a difference.