A lifetime farmer who lives in an area filled with signs supporting Donald Trump fears one of the president-elect’s key campaign promises, according to a report.
Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, expressed concerns about what will happen if promises for mass deportations are kept.
“We can’t have deportations here because it would disrupt our food supply for our country,” he told France24 in an interview. “We really don’t think anyone wants that.”
Trump’s so-called “border czar,” Tom Homan, has said he wants to deport at least 9 million immigrants along with their families regardless of citizenship status. France24 reported that 11 million total immigrants are at risk.
ALSO READ: Trump Cabinet pick raises alarm on unchecked domestic terrorism
Homan called his Day 1 plan “shock and awe,” ABC News reported last month.
“I’m excited. We’re already working on these plans,” he told Donald Trump Jr. on a podcast after the election.
France 24’s report cited Labor Department numbers showing that 44 percent of the 2.4 million farm laborers in the United States are undocumented migrants.
“There are few, if any, issues more important than food supply and public health. California is the largest producer of food in the nation. It’s vital to protect our food chain and its workers,” Del Bosque wrote on X over the weekend.
“Without our people, our farms will come to a stop,” he told France24.
“We will not be able to harvest our fruits and vegetables and nuts,” he continued. “And that will interrupt the food chain for Americans. And it would possibly increase food prices tremendously too.”
The report cited farmers and ranchers who say that many low-paying jobs harvesting crops are not the jobs Americans are willing to do.
“If you wanted to say, okay, everybody’s going to get taken away—which I don’t think is going to happen, and I have to emphasize that—mechanization is coming,” Tom Barcellos, a dairy farmer, said in the report.
Mechanization, however, takes time to invent, produce, and distribute. For Barcellos, machines have taken over milking, but dairy farms haven’t needed a large workforce for quite some time. The first milking machine was invented and patented in 1879, and the first milking robot prototype appeared in 1992.
If Trump makes good on the promise of deportations, implements 25 percent tariffs on all imports from Mexico or Central America and issues a 10 percent tariff on all other imports, it will mean a quick and dramatic increase in food prices, CBS News said in a report at the end of November.
