Here’s Why Mass Deportation Could Affect the Nation’s Food Supply

By Jennifer Bamberg

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to begin his second term with the largest mass deportation in history, making the jobs held by undocumented workers available to U.S. citizens.

Undocumented immigrants make up only 5% of the total labor force, according to the most recent federal data from the U.S. Census Bureau and analysis from the Pew Research Center. However, the share of undocumented workers across the nation’s food supply chain is at least 16%.

A significant portion of food- and agriculture-related jobs are filled by immigrants, which include naturalized citizens, green-card holders, permanent residents, people on long-term temporary work visas, refugees, people who have received asylum, and undocumented immigrants.

In some industries, the number is much higher. In Idaho, the third-largest dairy-producing state in the country, the Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that nearly 90% of the state’s on-site dairy workers were born outside of the U.S. Nationally, undocumented people made up roughly 45% of all hired crop farmworkers in 2017, but that number has declined to 41.2% in 2020, according to the USDA.

A study conducted by the Peterson Institute, released in September, found that mass deportation could affect agricultural labor and lead to a 10% increase in food prices.

“If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse,” Mary Jo Dudley, the director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, told Investigate Midwest. “There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place.”

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. 

Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public by exposing the dangerous and costly practices of powerful agricultural corporations through in-depth, data-driven investigative journalism. Visit us at www.investigatemidwest.org.

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