Summary
Michigan farmer Rebecca Carlson, a longtime Trump supporter, faces bankruptcy as Trump’s funding freezes stall a $400,000 USDA grant for hiring temporary workers.
Carlson, who hoped Trump’s second term would revive her struggling cherry farm, already spent $200,000 preparing for labor under the H-2A visa program.
With funding halted, she risks losing $200,000 more and can’t move forward with critical hires.
Trump’s new tariffs and immigration crackdowns threaten agriculture costs and labor availability, leaving farmers uncertain and frustrated with unmet promises.
People romanticize farming because it was the basis of society and its economy 100 years ago. Agriculture was key to human survival for millenia before that.
In our increasingly tech driven lives, there’s something pure about your work being dedicated to cultivating the earth and bringing sustenance to people.
But there are modern US farm owners that harken the image of plantation owners during America’s chattel slavery era. Exploiting undocumented workers with undignified working conditions and paying them insufficiently in exchange for irreversibly wearing down their bodies.