You could soon pay more money for worse food. Thanks, Donald Trump.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

President-elect Donald Trump has promised a major crackdown on illegal immigration, triggering immense alarm among the country's 11 million undocumented people. But Trump’s deportation promises, if fulfilled, would ripple far beyond the lives of illegal immigrants. Deportations would affect vast swaths of the economy — with a particularly dramatic impact on agriculture.

As a result, Americans could see the cost of some fruits and vegetables soar.

Undocumented workers account for 67 percent of people harvesting fruit, according to the Agriculture Department. They make up 61 percent of all employees on vegetable farms, and as many as half of all workers picking crops.

Agricultural economists across the political spectrum say that there’s no way that workforce could be raptured up without reverberations throughout the food system — think farm bankruptcies, labor shortages and an eventual contraction of the broader economy. And even if you’re far from the agriculture industry, you could see $4 milk, low-quality oranges, and extortionately priced raspberries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/06/why-you-might-pay-a-lot-more-for-food-under-trump/?utm_term=.2c8c3967f8f9&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1#comments

[metroins]

1. I don't mind at all

It will force farming to pay their workers more, provide for a better standard of living and create a safer work environment.

I don't understand why anybody would be pro "undocumented" workers...they'll work for less wages and unsafe conditions...

That isn't an America I want to live in.

If food costs go up to create a sustainable pay and safe working conditions, I'm ok with it.

[RKP5637]

2. Same here. n/t

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. Except that's not the option Trump and the Republicans are offering

They're not offering a fast track to legitimize these workers. Instead they want a whole scale deportation.

The HBO show Vice did a story of Alabama doing this. Farmers in that state could not find enough replacement workers to harvest their crops.

[Hortensis]

6. Absolutely agree about documenting workers, but that's not

the way it would work under those bastards. Of course. They, in office and out, are the ones who've always fought documentation that would give immigrants rights. Like actually collecting on the years they pay into programs like unemployment and Social Security, or alternatively the right not to pay in. (Losing this money we extort from them is a huge issue.)

I was hoping that under Hill the amount of water that could be injected in meat would be cut back. A modest, reasonable hope. Some of the stuff I buy is disgusting, no other word for it when I pour a big puddle of salty, turbid water down the drain. Except, of course, cheat, exploitation, and outrage-provoking.

[Ilsa]

8. If minimum wages and other wages increase also, then I can

Get on board with it. Feeding a family is expensive. Feeding teenagers cost a fortune.

[Warpy]

3. Soon we'll be living in Dickensian England

where the only people who ever saw fruit and vegetables on the table were either rich or able to grow them in the yard. The diet of the urban poor was especially wretched.

This isn't about fair wages or safe conditions in the fields.

[VMA131Marine]

5. Unless they are talking about a half gallon

I already pay more than $4/gallon for milk unless it's on sale (I'm in Connecticut). On the other hand, we do have a $9.60/hour minimum wage and it's going up to $10.10/hour in 2017 so I'm not all that bothered about it.

[yallerdawg]

7. The death knell of American farming.

Don't worry. Imports for the well-off elites will keep fresh produce in vogue.

We more common people will be doing a lot of homegrown - and picking - ourselves soon.

Just to survive.

[Runningdawg]

10. I am so glad

I was raised by a whole slew of extended family who survived the depression. The things I learned like gardening, canning and preserving meat, sewing, foraging, fishing, hunting and trapping will help my family survive Trump now. I predict those that had a good laugh at "preppers" expense will be dining on crow in the near future.

[yallerdawg]

11. What happens.

Tomatoes rotting in Alabama farmer Brian Cash's field after his 65-strong workforce vanished to avoid the immigration crackdown

For generations, Cash's family have farmed 125 acres atop the Chandler mountain, a plateau in the north of the state about nine miles long and two miles wide. It's perfect tomato-growing country – the soil is sandy and rich, and the elevation provides a breeze that keeps frost at bay and allows early planting.

For four months every year he employs almost exclusively Hispanic male workers to pick the harvest. This year he had 64 men out in the fields. Then HB56 came into effect, the new law that makes it a crime not to carry valid immigration documents and forces the police to check on anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally.

Today there is no-one left. The fields around his colonial-style farmhouse on top of a mountain are empty of pickers and the tomato plants are withering on the vine as far as the eye can see. The sweet, slightly acrid smell of rotting tomato flesh hangs in the air.

The blow to Cash can be measured in those $100,000 – money he says he had wanted to put aside as insurance against a poor crop in future years. But it can also be measured in other ways.

Cash says that losing his pickers is much more than a commercial disaster. "Many of these people are friends and like family to us. They have been working for my family for years."

The crew leader for Cash's fields has been working for his family for 17 years. "He's my age and we pretty much grew up together," he says.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers

[Runningdawg]

14. My family were potato farmers until the 2nd world war

when their harvest crews went to fight and never came home. There were many friends and family lost. I know mega farms are on the way out and that means horrible losses for many people but the writing is on the wall. That is why it important now more than ever to have many, many more small farms. Adapting is the key to the future.

[yeoman6987]

9. Can food really increase anymore? Prices are ridiculous already.

[Kingofalldems]

13. You always seem to jump in and defend Trump. Am I wrong?

[vi5]

12. I spent 20 years in the food industry...

..trust me. We've been paying more for worse/less steadily with each passing fiscal year.