The country’s agricultural sector is in full-blown panic mode as President Donald Trump’s long-promised mass deportations are starting to become a reality in farming communities across the United States.
And the ripple effect could soon hit supermarkets, as the chaos surrounding Trump’s strict immigration policies – which already include stepped-up ICE raids – is already threatening to send food prices soaring before long, according to a report in The New Republic.
“Bakersfield, California saw a massive drop off in the number of field workers showing up for work Tuesday while ICE agents in unmarked Chevy Suburbans rounded up and detained immigrants in the area, profiling individuals they believed to be field workers,” the outlet reported.
The roundup resulted in acres of oranges left unpicked in the California sun during the most active period of the season.
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Many undocumented workers have reportedly been targeted where day laborers and field workers are known to gather, including “walking in and out of gas stations, getting breakfast, at Home Depot, or while driving along the 99 Highway,” leaving many too fearful to show up to work.
Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, told CalMatters that the events “sent shockwaves through the entire community.”
“People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school,” Creamer told the publication. “Yesterday about 25% of the workforce, today 75% didn’t show up.”
Richard S. Gearhart, an associate professor of economics at California State University, Bakersfield offered concern for the food industry as a whole.
“If this is the new normal, this is absolute economic devastation,” he said to CalMatters. “You are talking about a recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm.”