Nervous Farmers Wait As Trump’s Deportation Plan Threatens Agriculture Industry

CBS News spoke with farmers across the country, and they are waiting anxiously to see what’s going to happen to their industry and their livelihoods as Donald Trump’s deportation plans get underway. These farmers – many of whom voted for Trump – have been warning for quite some time that mass deportations will destroy their businesses, which in turn could disrupt the food supply for the country. But that doesn’t matter to Trump, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

Subscribe to stay connected to our stories

Support us by becoming a member on YouTube

Or Support us on Patreon

Buy Ring of Fire merch

Find us on social media!

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

CBS News ran a report this week where they actually finally went out and spoke to farmers across the United States and realized just how anxious and nervous these individuals are for both themselves and for their entire industry. As Donald Trump's mass deportation plans get underway. Now, the reason I say finally is because we have seen a lot of news reporters going out and talking to farmers and getting this information. However, pretty much up to this point it has been relegated to foreign news outlets coming over to the United States and actually doing journalism or small independent outlets doing this type of work. CBS one of the, you know, major news networks in the country finally got around to it on Monday of this week, and they reported basically what everybody else has already been reporting for weeks or months at this point. And here's what they had to say.

Talk to any farmer and they will tell you it is difficult work, but it is getting harder and harder to stay in business these days. There was a 7% drop in the number of American farms from 2017 to 2022. That is 142,000 fewer farms in just five years. According to the USDA. So many farmers we spoke with say that they're watching very closely to how President Trump addresses this, given that he has vowed to launch the biggest deportation effort in American history. Recent statistics indicate as many as 42% of farm workers may not have authorization to work in the United States. There is a lot of nervousness among farmers right now, even among those who only hire legal workers as a shrinking labor pool, puts them in tougher competition for the manpower they need. So we're looking at potentially 42% of farm workers in the United States. That's not 42% of farm workers in Wyoming or Oklahoma. That's 42% of farm workers from Maine to Florida to California all the way up to Alaska, all over every state. 42% probably legally not supposed to be here. Right? And those are the people that Donald Trump is going to target. A 42% drop in labor. Hell, even a 30%, even a 15% drop in the amount of available labor for an industry could be enough to kill it.

And I'm glad that CBS is reporting this. Again, they could have done it, you know, two months ago when the foreign outlets were over here reporting on it. But hey, better late than never. Right? The point is, these farmers have been telling us, and again, most of 'em voted for Trump, but they've

Been telling us this is gonna happen, but the deportation plans are already underway, right? He's already declared the national emergency like this is going to happen. This is not hypothetical, it's not a far off thing. It's not like they've got six months to prepare. They have days. Some of them may only have hours because this is happening. And by the way, yes, it's gonna impact those farmers. Yes, many of them will have to shut down. But the ramifications of that stretch far beyond the acres of crops. It goes to your grocery store. Because if we suddenly lose close to half of the farm workers in the country, if we lose a quarter of them crops don't make it to market, which means there's fewer resources, we end up with scarcity, which means we end up with higher prices. And yes, people will have to pay those higher prices.

The they will buy it all, and that'll leave nothing for some of the rest of us. We are looking at the real possibility in the year 2025 that the United States of America solely because of Donald Trump could experience a food shortage. And I don't think that people are paying enough attention to that, right? It's kind of driving me crazy that this is not the biggest story on every single outlet in the United States.