Election 2024: How ag could be impacted

Sept. 12, 2024 The Midwest Center For Investigative Reporting

Presidential election brings high stakes for agriculture

In 54 days, America will choose its next president, and the implications for agriculture will be huge.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the Republican and Democratic nominees, will have the chance to alter immigration and climate policies, set tariff rates, and address the rise in food prices.

In the coming weeks, Investigate Midwest will publish a series of stories examining how the November election could impact different aspects of the agriculture industry. Our team of investigative reporters has conducted dozens of interviews from local farms to political conventions. They’ve reviewed hundreds of documents and deeply researched the Trump and Biden/Harris administrations.

Today, senior reporter Sky Chadde has a story on what the election could mean for immigration policy and farmworkers, who are essential to the U.S. economy.

The Biden administration, with Harris as vice president, has supported more farmworker unionization. Harris has also backed a path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers.

If re-elected, Trump has promised to deport upwards of 20 million undocumented people, many of them agricultural workers who perform dangerous jobs.

We’d like to invite you to support this election coverage. Sunday is Democracy Day, a time to highlight our commitment as a free press to tell the stories shaping the future of farming, food security, and the policies affecting our daily lives. Your support makes this work possible.

— Ben Felder, editor in chief

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Deportations, raids and visa access. How the presidential election could alter life for immigrant farmworkers.
By Sky Chadde, Investigate Midwest

The farmworkers scattered.

There was a union representative in the workers’ employer-provided housing, on an orchard in upstate New York. Their employer, major apple grower Porpiglia Farms, had hired them on H-2A, or temporary labor, visas. That day in August 2023, according to the workers’ union, United Farm Workers, the orchard’s owners burst in. The farmworkers ran or hid in their rooms.

Following the incident, the UFW filed a complaint with New York state, alleging the orchard prevented workers from exercising their rights. Porpiglia Farms disputed the UFW’s account and said it is working with the UFW. However, on that day, the UFW organizer had “trespassed” in an effort to “gin up a controversy,” Anthony Porpiglia, the owner, said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest by his attorneys. The workers “asked her to leave and she refused,” he said.

The following summer, workers arrived for harvest season. Near the orchard’s entrance, workers, whose union has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, noticed a new sign: “Farmers for Trump.”

The scuffle in the orchard epitomizes the division on immigration between the two presidential candidates and what could be at stake for immigrant workers, who have underpinned the agriculture industry for decades.

GRAPHIC: Organic farming in flux: A five-year snapshot
By Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest/Report for America

The number of organic farms in the country has declined by nearly 5% over the past five years, from 18,166 in 2017 to 17,321 in 2022, according to the latest Census of Agriculture data released earlier this year.

However, sales still increased by more than 32%, rising from approximately $7.3 billion in 2017 to about $9.6 billion in 2022.

View the graphic.

ICYMI: Mixed-status families weigh leaving Iowa
By Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest/Report for America

Note: Occasionally we will reshare a previous investigation from our archives. This story originally published in July.

WATERLOO, Iowa — Having spent more than half her life in Waterloo, Iowa, she has built a life here. It’s where she met her husband and where her only daughter, who wants to become a sonographer, was born.

That’s why, after a day’s work at an area meatpacking plant, the 55-year-old Mexican-born woman took to Waterloo’s streets July 1. Waving a banner reading in Spanish, “We are the strength of this country,” she protested a new state law that could severely impact her family, she said.

The law, which a federal judge temporarily blocked as it is contested in court, would allow Iowa law enforcement to arrest individuals even if they have legal permission to remain in the country. While the woman herself would not be directly affected by the law, her husband could be. He’s an undocumented immigrant who was previously deported and re-entered the country.

“We are here with that insecurity. We have considered returning to Mexico, even though it would mean truncating all our dreams for our daughter. It’s a hard decision to even think about and even harder to make,” the woman said in Spanish. She asked Investigate Midwest not to reveal her name or employer over concerns for her family’s safety.