Florida farmers plow under tomato crops

[cbabe]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-farmers-now-plowing-over-130000347.html

Florida farmers now plowing over perfectly good tomatoes as Trump’s immigration and tariff policies cause prices to plummet

Christy Bieber
Sun, June 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM

Tony DiMare’s family owns 4,000 acres of tomato farms across Florida and California. Sadly, his Florida crops are not looking good — mowed over and left to rot, like tomato vines across the state.

DiMare told WSVN 7 Miami that President Donald Trump’s tariff and immigration policies are driving farmers to abandon their crops.

In January, he warned that Trump’s crackdown on migrants would squeeze farmers, who rely on migrants to pick produce.

“We have to secure our borders south and north, but you have to have a workforce in this country,” he told the Financial Post.

Deportations devastate farm workforce

About 50% of farm workers in the U.S. are undocumented migrants — including skilled supervisors and machine operators — according to Farmonaut, a farm technology company.

As the Trump administration proceeds with mass deportations of undocumented migrants, there are far fewer pickers in the fields, and crops are left to go bad.

… more …

(Send national guard to pick tomatoes.)

[get the red out]

1. Yes this was inevitable

Along with the larger evil this administration perpetuates, this food waste is SICKENING.

[A HERETIC I AM]

2. Everyone that DIDN'T see this coming, raise your hands

Huh. No one....OH! Yes...MAGA hat wearing man in the back!

[bronxiteforever]

3. Kick for visibility. GOP policies are destroying American farmers

and produce. At least that is what our Party should be saying.

[BOSSHOG]

5. Yeah but Mike johnson

Says trump knows what he’s doing, so all is well in our shithole country.

[bronxiteforever]

7. +1 Squeaker of the House.

[Keepthesoulalive]

8. Did you read what he said

He was worrying about secure borders until it affected him and then he wants an exception. Messaging will not penetrate ignorance that’s fed by Fox News and selfishness.

[Probatim]

11. He KNOWS the people he hires and sometimes pays aren't criminals, it's the rest he worries about...

[Attilatheblond]

10. Seems corporat power behind GOP wants independent producers out of business & have been trying for decades

They, they buy the land cheap from desperate farm families, hire those same families to work the farms, but for slave wages, and hold the US public hostage: 'Pay what we demand for food, or starve'.

It's a battle my late husband fought when he worked for USDA in a field office in a county where nearly everybody kept voting for the GOP pols working to put them off the lands families have held for generations.

[Probatim]

12. The GOP and this presidency is what this is about.

Farms, homes, and lives - all bought for pennies on the dollar. If a few million useless eaters die in the process, that's helpful too.

[Cirsium]

22. It has been going on for a long time

This has been going on for a long time, under every administration. The Trump administration is more "in your face" about it, and is escalating it. But it is nothing new.


US: 20 Years of Immigrant Abuses

Under 1996 Laws, Arbitrary Detention, Fast-Track Deportation, Family Separation

President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, known as AEDPA, on April 24, 1996. The legislation, passed in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, greatly expanded the grounds for detaining and deporting immigrants, including long-term legal residents. It was the first US law to authorize certain now-widely-used fast-track deportation procedures.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), signed in September 1996, made further sweeping changes to immigration laws. It eliminated key defenses against deportation and subjected many more immigrants, including legal permanent residents, to detention and deportation. IIRIRA defined a greatly expanded range of criminal convictions – including relatively minor, nonviolent ones – for which legal permanent residents could be automatically deported. IIRIRA also made it much more difficult for people fleeing persecution to apply for asylum.

Over the last two decades, Human Rights Watch has documented how these laws rip apart the families of even long-term legal residents via the broad swath of criminal convictions considered triggers for automatic deportation or detention.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/25/us-20-years-immigrant-abuses

Mexican Lynchings, Segregation, and Mass Deportations

The history of systemic mistreatment, lynchings, segregation, and mass deportations of Mexican-Americans and Mexican Immigrants is a forgotten one in the United States of American. This history, sadly, isn’t being taught nor talked about like it should be due to the black-white binary, respectfully.

Often times, the history of Mexican-Americans and Mexican Immigrants is placed under the rug as a history that’s important, but not as important as the history between Whites and African-Americans. And I get it–not one group has experienced the pain and exploitation as my African-American brothers and sisters, and this must be acknowledged and brought to light often.

However, what’s often overlooked–and shouldn’t be anymore, is that lynchers targeted many other racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, including my people—Mexicans-Americans and Mexican Immigrants.

Many are largely unaware that Mexicans were frequently the targets of lynch mobs, from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century, second only to African-Americans in the scale and scope of the crimes.

https://theimmigrationcoalition.com/mexican-lynchings-segregation-and-mass-deportations/

Mexicans in U.S. routinely confront legal abuse, racial profiling, ICE targeting and other civil rights violations

More routine civil rights violations happen to Mexicans in the U.S. every day, our report found.

Though children born in the U.S. are entitled by law to American citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status, hundreds of undocumented Mexican women in Texas have been denied birth certificates for their U.S.-born children since 2013, according to a lawsuit filed by parents. In 2016, Texas settled the lawsuit and agreed to expand the types of documents immigrants can use to prove their identity.

And in both Arizona and Texas, so-called “show me your papers” laws allow police to demand identification from anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” may be undocumented, which may lead to discriminatory targeting of Latinos.

Once in government detention, surveys conducted in Mexico of recently deported immigrants show, Mexican deportees are often badly treated.

https://dornsife.usc.edu/eri/2019/08/13/fitzgerald-mcclean-lopez/

[BOSSHOG]

4. Trump touched 4,000 acres of Maters

Bet your neighbors didn’t vote for that.

[Aristus]

6. "We have to secure our borders..."

Sheesh!

Still carrying water for the orange-skinned fuckbasket. The Trumpsters will go to their much-deserved graves never once denouncing the author of all their miseries.

[Torchlight]

9. A direct consequence of current policy

Rotted food will be a smelly odor across the country this summer. Almost 2 billion tons of cabbage are ready for harvest in the US right now. How much food will absurd policy waste this year?

[AZJonnie]

13. Why are 'prices plummeting' for produce, exactly?

And better yet, WHERE? They do not seem to be doing so at the Costco and Safeway I frequent

Or is this actually referring to prices paid to farmers for their commodities falling, and it's maybe because the rest of the world is refusing to buy from the US?

In either case I don't understand how the idea of 'less workers to pick the crops' translates into produce becoming less valuable? Seems like it would increase the value of the crops that are actually picked and ready for market. There must be something I'm missing

[edhopper]

18. Read the article

Mexican tomatoes flooded the market pre tariffs

[Ferrets are Cool]

14. FAFO asshole.

[dutch777]

15. Ag and service industries will suffer with ICE picking people up at their work sites. Probably construction too.

But these people will likely go to ground here rather than self deport, at least as long as they can get by.

[1WorldHope]

16. It looks like we will need to reinstitute the draft.

But instead of boot camp etc. everyone gets to pick fruit and veggies and do all the work formally done by the good people we are now disappearing.

[mcar]

17. Who did he think was going to pick his tomatoes?

[maxsolomon]

19. "We have to secure our borders south and north, but you have to have a workforce in this country"

NO CANADIANS are crossing illegally to pick tomatoes in the Florduh humidity, you dumb fuck.

Next, I hope ICE does the Meatpacking Industry. Prob OVER 50% are undocumented in the midwest slaughterhouses.

[Botany]

23. They look Canadian to me.

[IbogaProject]

20. Double whammy

His tariffs are killing our food exports, as that adjustment can happen quickly. Heavy machinery, tech and medical stuff takes longer to source replacements.

[Botany]

21. FAFO .... Trump voting farmer ... we have to secure both our southern and northern borders.

Canadians are now coming into America to work as farm laborers?

I wonder if this guy will get a big government bale out?

[Ping Tung]

24. Shades of "The Grapes of Wrath". In that book I think it was potato's that they were plowing under while kids starved.

The Joad family were "dust bowl" migrants from Oklahoma rather than Mexican migrants but treated much the same.