The Trump administration’s trade war will have a major impact on the nation’s agriculture sector, especially as the U.S. and China have raised tariff rates against each other. Here’s the latest: 

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Trump’s tariffs vs. U.S. agriculture: A quick FAQ

Last updated on April 16, 2025

What’s the impact of tariffs on U.S. farmers?

Tariffs have made U.S. exports less competitive, especially soybeans. China, once the top customer, now buys mostly from Brazil, leaving American farmers with fewer buyers and lower prices.

The tariff on imports will also increase the price farmers pay for machinery and equipment that is manufactured in other countries. Many of the nation’s largest farm equipment manufacturers, including Deere & Co., have facilities in Canada and Mexico. 

​​“Whatever will hit us on the cost side will be priced to our customers,” said Gerrit Marx, an executive at CNH Industrial, an agricultural equipment manufacturer. 

Why is China so important?

Trump has imposed a 145% tariff on most Chinese imports, which could cause the country to look elsewhere for agricultural products. ​​China buys more U.S. soybeans than any other country, using them to feed its massive pork and poultry industries. In 2024, over 40% of U.S. soybeans were exported—nearly half of those went to China.

Can farmers just sell soybeans in the U.S. instead?

No. Domestic demand can’t match the scale of exports to China. Most U.S. soy is processed into oil and meal, and crushing capacity is already stretched.

Who’s benefiting from the trade war?

Brazil. With record harvests and a growing footprint in China, Brazilian farmers have taken over U.S. market share. Their exports to China jumped from 46% in 2016 to 71% in 2024.

Is help coming for U.S. producers?

Possibly. The Trump administration and lawmakers are discussing relief for impacted farmers, but details are still unclear. Farm groups are pushing for new trade agreements and market access.

The post Tariff tracker: The latest moves shaking up global ag trade appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced late Tuesday it will release previously authorized grant funds to farmers and small rural business owners to build renewable energy projects—but only if they rewrite applications to comply with President Donald Trump’s energy priorities.

The move has left some farmers perplexed—and doubtful that they’ll ever get the grant money they were promised, given the Trump administration’s emphasis on fossil fuels and hostility toward renewable energy.

Some of the roughly 6,000 grant applicants have already completed the solar, wind or other energy projects and are awaiting promised repayment from the government. Others say they can’t afford to take on the projects they’d been planning unless the grant money comes through.

A Floodlight analysis shows the overwhelming majority of the intended recipients of this money reside in Trump country—congressional districts represented by Republicans.

After hearing of the USDA’s latest announcement Wednesday, Minnesota strawberry farmer Andy Petran said he suspects many previously approved projects won’t be funded. He’d been approved for a $39,625 grant to install solar panels on his farm. But like many other farmers nationally, Petran got word from the USDA earlier this year that his grant money had been put on hold.

“It’s not like any small farmer who is looking to put solar panels on their farms will be able to put a natural gas refinery or a coal refinery on the farm,” Petran said. “I don’t know what they expect me to switch to.”

Petran was counting on the benefits that solar power would bring to his farm.

After getting word in September that the USDA had approved his grant application, he expected the solar panels would not only reduce his electricity bill but allow him to sell power back to the grid. He and his wife figured the extra income would help expand their Twin Cities Berry Co. and pay down their debt more quickly.

Petran’s optimism was soon extinguished. A USDA representative told him earlier this year that the grant had been frozen.

His 15-acre farm about 40 miles north of Minneapolis operates on a razor-thin margin, Petran said, so without the grant money, he can’t afford to build the $80,000 solar project.

“Winning these grants was a contract between us and the government,” he said. “There was a level of trust there. That trust has been broken.”

In its announcement, issued Tuesday night, the USDA said grant recipients will have 30 days to review and revise their project plans to align with President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, which prioritizes fossil fuel production and cuts federal support for renewable energy projects.

“This process gives rural electric providers and small businesses the opportunity to refocus their projects on expanding American energy production while eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals,” the USDA news release said. “… This updated guidance reflects a broader shift away from the Green New Deal.”

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in the release that the new directive will give rural energy providers and small businesses a chance to “realign their projects” with Trump’s priorities.

It’s unclear what this will mean for grant recipients who’ve already spent money on renewable energy projects—or those whose planned projects have been stalled by the administration’s funding freeze.

The USDA didn’t directly answer those questions. In an email to Floodlight on Wednesday, a department spokesperson said the agency must approve any proposed changes to plans—but offered no specific guidance on what or whether changes should be made.

“Awardees that do not respond via the website will be considered as not wishing to make changes to their proposals, and disbursements and other actions will resume after 30 days,” the email said. “For awardees who respond via the website to confirm no changes, processing on their projects will resume immediately.”

IRA funding targeted

The grant funding was put on hold after an executive order issued by President Trump on his first day in office. It froze hundreds of billions of dollars for renewable energy under President Joe Biden’s massive climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The law added more than $1 billion to the USDA’s 17-year-old Rural Energy for America (REAP) program.

About 6,000 REAP grants funded with IRA money have been paused and are being reviewed for compliance with Trump’s executive order, according to a March 5 email from the USDA’s rural development office to the office of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

A lawsuit filed earlier this month challenges the legality of the freeze on IRA funding for REAP projects.

Earthjustice lawyer Hana Vizcarra, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, called the latest USDA announcement a “disingenuous stunt.”

“President Trump and Secretary Rollins can’t change the rules of the game well into the second half,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “This is the definition of an arbitrary and capricious catch-22.”

Under the REAP grant program, farmers pay for renewable and lower carbon energy projects, then submit proof of the completed work to the USDA for reimbursement. The grants were intended to fund solar panels, wind turbines, grain dryers, irrigation upgrades and other projects, USDA data shows.

At a press conference in Atlanta on March 12, Rollins said, “If our farmers and ranchers, especially, have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole.”

But some contend the administration is unfairly making farmers jump through more hoops.

“This isn’t cutting red tape; it’s adding more,” said Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest-based environmental advocacy group. “The USDA claims to deliver on commitments, but these new rules could result in awarded grants being permanently frozen.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a longtime farmer and Maine Democrat who sits on the House agriculture committee, said she thinks it’s illegal and unconstitutional for the administration to withhold grant money allocated by Congress. Beyond that, she said, it has hurt cash-strapped farmers.

“This is about farmers making ends meet,” she told Floodlight. “It’s not some ideological issue for us.”

GOP lawmakers silent

Using USDA data, Floodlight identified the top 10 congressional districts that received the most grants. They’re all represented by Republicans who have said little publicly about the funding freezes affecting thousands of their constituents. It’s impossible to tell from the USDA data which REAP grants will get paid out.

The congressional district that received the most REAP grants was Iowa’s 2nd District, in the northeastern part of the state. Farmers and business owners there got more than 300 grants from 2023 through 2025. The district is represented by U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has previously voiced support for “alternative energy strategies.”

“More than half of the energy produced in Iowa is from renewable sources, and that is something for Iowans to be very proud of,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in June 2022.

Hinson’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter.

The No. 2 spot for REAP grants: Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, represented by U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad. In that district, which spans southern Minnesota, more than 260 farmers and rural businesses were approved for REAP grants.

Finstad’s office did not return multiple emails and calls requesting comment. His constituents have been complaining about his silence on funding freezes. They’ve staged at least two demonstrations at his offices in Minnesota. Finstad said he held a February 26 telephone town hall joined by 3,000 people in his district.

In a February 28 letter to a constituent, Finstad said Rollins has announced that the USDA will honor contracts already signed with farmers and that he looks forward to working with the administration “to support the needs of farm country.”

Finstad is no stranger to the REAP program. Before becoming a congressman, he was the USDA’s state director of rural development for Minnesota. In that role, he was a renewable booster.

“By reducing energy costs, renewable energy helps to create opportunities for improvement elsewhere, like creating jobs,” Finstad said in a 2021 USDA press release. That has since been deleted from the agency’s website.

Rollins, meanwhile, called herself “a massive defender of fossil fuels” at her confirmation hearing, and she has expressed skepticism about the findings of climate scientists. “We know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid,” Rollins said at the Heartland Institute’s 2018 conference on energy.

She has also said that she welcomes the efforts of Elon Musk and his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency team at the USDA.

Losing trust in government

Jake Rabe, a solar installer in Blairstown, Iowa, said he has put up more than 100,000 solar modules in the state since getting into the business in 2015. More than 30 of his customers have completed their installation but are awaiting frozen grant funding, he said. At least 10 more have signed the paperwork but are hesitant to begin construction. Millions of dollars worth of his business are frozen, he said.

On top of that, Rabe said, the state’s net metering policies—in which solar users get credits for any excess power they send back to the grid—are set to expire in 2026.

“I kind of feel like it may be the beginning of the end for the solar industry in Iowa with what’s going on,” said Rabe, who owns Rabe Hardware.

Despite it all, he remains a Trump supporter.

“Under the current administration, I think we’re doing things that are necessary for the betterment of the entire United States,” he said.

On March 13, Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, filed a federal lawsuit against the USDA on behalf of five farmers and three nonprofits. They’re seeking a court order to compel the Trump administration to honor the government’s grant commitments, saying it violated the Constitution by refusing to disburse funds allocated by Congress.

Vizcarra, the Earthjustice lawyer, said she is disturbed by the lack of concern from Congress, whose powers appear to have been usurped by the administration.

She added, “These are real people, real farmers and real organizations whose projects have impacts on communities who are left with this horrible situation with no idea of when it will end.”

One of the plaintiffs, Laura Beth Resnick, grows dahlias, zinnias and other cut flowers on a small farm about 30 miles north of Baltimore.

Florists are her customers, and demand for her flowers blooms during cold-weather holidays like Thanksgiving. Each of her three greenhouses is half the length of a football field and heating them during those months isn’t cheap, Resnick said. The power bill for Butterbee Farm often exceeds $500 a month.

So a year ago, Resnick applied for a USDA renewable energy grant, hoping to put solar panels on her barn roof—a move that she estimated would save about $5,000 a year. In August, the USDA sent word that her farm had been awarded a grant for $36,450.

The cost of installing solar panels was $72,000, she said. So she paid a solar contractor $36,000 upfront, expecting that she’d pay the rest in January when the federal grant money came in. The solar panels were installed in December.

But the federal government’s check never arrived. A February 4 email from a USDA representative said her request for reimbursement was rejected due to the Trump administration’s recent executive orders.

Resnick said she sought help from her elected representatives but got “pretty much nowhere.”

After hearing about the USDA’s announcement Wednesday, Resnick said that based on the response she’s previously gotten from the USDA, she’s not confident she will get her grant money.

“I’ve lost my trust in the USDA at this point,” she said. “Our project is complete, so we can’t change the scope of it.”

Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, said he supports the legal fight against the funding freeze.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are scamming our farmers,” Van Hollen said in a statement to Floodlight. “By illegally withholding these reimbursements for work done under federal grants, they’re breaking a promise to farmers and small businesses in Maryland and across the country.”

Renewable projects on hold

Since 2023, when IRA funding became available, the USDA has given or loaned about $21.3 billion through programs to support renewable energy in rural areas, according to a Floodlight analysis of agency data, including the REAP program.

Those grant payments were processed until January 20, when the Trump administration announced its freeze.

Trump’s decision was in line with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation aimed at reshaping the U.S. government. That document called for repealing the IRA and rescinding “all funds not already spent by these programs.”

Environmental groups have sharply criticized the administration’s move, and several lawsuits are challenging the legality of the freeze of IRA funding.

At a recent public roundtable, Maggie Bruns, CEO of the Prairie Rivers Network which supports Illinois communities’ transition to clean energy, listed REAP grants that have been held up in Illinois, where her multifaceted environmental nonprofit is based. A $390,000 grant for a solar array at the grocery store in Carlinville; $27,000 for solar panels at an auto body shop in Staunton; $51,000 for a solar array for a golf course in Alton.

Since 2023, farmers and businesses in Illinois have been approved for more than 590 REAP grants, making the state the third highest in number of recipients in the United States, Floodlight’s analysis shows. In an interview with Barn Raiser, Bruns said the decision to freeze such grants has caused unneeded stress for farmers. Before the executive order, USDA’s rural development team had worked hard to bring dollars for renewable energy projects to Illinois farmers, she said.

“That’s the thing we should be celebrating right now,” Bruns said, “and instead we have to fight to make sure that money actually does land into the pockets of the people who have gone ahead, jumped through all these hoops and are attempting to do the right thing for their businesses and their farms.”

In January, Dan Batson’s nursery in Mississippi was approved for a $400,367 REAP grant—money that he planned to use to install four solar arrays. He intended to use that solar energy to power the pumps that irrigate more than 1 million trees, a move that would have saved the company about $25,000 a year in electricity costs.

Seated in a wooded area about 30 miles north of Biloxi, his 42-year-old GreenForest nursery ships potted magnolias, hollies, crepe myrtles and other trees to southern states. Until a couple of months ago, Batson had been excited about what the grant money would mean for the business.

But when he saw news about the funding being held up earlier this year, he called a local USDA representative who confirmed the funds had been frozen. Batson had already sent the solar contractor $240,000. Now, his plans are on hold.

“I just can’t do the project if I don’t get the money,” he said.

Tuesday’s announcement from the USDA makes him no more confident he’ll get the money, he said.

Batson said he’s a fiscal conservative, so he understands the effort to cut costs. “But,” he said, “the way they’ve gone about it has disrupted a lot of business owners’ lives.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

The post Farmers in Trump Country Were Counting on Clean Energy Grants. Then the Government Changed the Rules. appeared first on Barn Raiser.

Lessie Ann Patterson lived in Monticello, Illinois, for 25 years before dying in 2015 from glioblastoma, a rapidly advancing brain cancer with an average survival time of 12 to 18 months.

Belinda Barnhart, Patterson’s stepdaughter, witnessed firsthand the effects of glioblastoma in her family.

“There was no clear reason why she ended up with it,” Barnhart said in an interview. “And then when you hear about so many of them in the Monticello area, you just think about all the devastation it has caused, and it does make you want to say, ‘Why is this one area so rife with glioblastoma specifically?’”

Patterson was one of many victims of brain cancer in Piatt County that have been identified by a local researcher and health professional, Caitlin McClain.

Concerns about the number of cases came to light last year when McClain started researching and gathering information on glioblastoma cases in Monticello and Piatt County following the death of her father-in-law from the disease in 2022.

As of last fall, she said she had collected information on at least 30 cases from the past 20 years — with at least 14 deaths from the cancer in just the last five years. McClain collected her data through obituaries, surveys and speaking with residents.

She said she has had to investigate on her own because public health data lags years behind and sometimes is suppressed — that is, not disclosed — for smaller counties that would allow individuals to be identified. Piatt County’s population is about 16,700, of which just over 6,000 people live in Monticello, according the latest census data.

McClain took her findings to the Illinois Department of Public Health several times in 2024, but she said department officials did not follow the federal health guidelines for investigating possible cancer clusters and dismissed her concerns, saying the numbers did not indicate a cancer cluster.

But there is a protocol from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Cancer Society, on how an agency should respond. The CDC has guidelines for responding to reports of suspicious numbers of cancer cases and calls for public health agencies to talk to citizens and visit the community.

Glioblastoma has an incidence rate of about 3.2 cases per 100,000 people according to a 2017 study available at the National Library of Medicine. For Piatt County, the rate of brain cancer, which includes glioblastoma, from 2017 to 2021 was 9.1 for males on average. The registry counted 5 male cases during that time. It was only a 1.2 rate for females and the registry reported one case.

Yet McClain’s data shows five women living in or primarily from Monticello died of glioblastoma between 2017 and 2021 including Tina M. Purcell, a resident of Monticello since she married in 1990, and lifelong resident Connie Jean Hendrix.

“I have spoken to so many people at this point it is difficult to keep track of everything,” McClain said in October.

Citing McClain’s data and information, Barnhart, whose stepmother died, said the state department’s response has been disappointing.

“It’s incredibly disappointing that your local public health office won’t even entertain the idea that something could be going on specifically in that area, that there could be a cancer cluster,” she said.

After numerous calls from CU-CitizenAccess, Michael Claffey, the public health department spokesperson, responded in December 2024.

“I will try to find out more about this,” Claffey wrote in an email.

But with federal funding for public health under siege, Claffey said in February:

“Sorry for the slow response to this. We have really been swamped recently given all the federal changes and everything else that is going on. I don’t have anything for you at this point.”

McClain said Chief Medical Officer Arti Barnes at the state public health department asked for an update from her in early February this year, but “there has been zero communication from IDPH otherwise.”

University researchers said cases are concerning

Biomedical researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said they are concerned about the reports of glioblastoma in Monticello.

Professor Catherine Alicia Best-Popescu, a biomedical researcher at the University of Illinois whose focus is molecular, cellular and tissue engineering, said in December that Monticello’s glioblastoma rates are worth investigating, calling the pattern a “huge cluster.” Glioblastoma, she explained, is notoriously challenging to treat due to its aggressive nature.

“It’s a really impossible cancer to treat because it can evade your immune system, evade radiation therapy,” Popescu said. “We give it a superpower in a way.”

The CDC sets clear guidelines for investigating cancer clusters, which prioritize cases with higher-than-expected numbers of rare cancers like glioblastoma. The investigations require experts to study the cancer data to establish if there is a concerning rate.

Under those guidelines, health departments’ partners and officials are expected to review data from cancer registries and other databases to monitor the estimated rates of cancer incidents routinely. The guidelines note that state resources and small populations can restrict state health departments from proactively reviewing or monitoring cancer data.

The CDC also said a cancer cluster must have one of these traits:

• There is a greater-than-expected number of a specific type of cancer (or types of cancer that are known to have a common cause).
• There are several cases of a rare type of cancer.
• The cancers are a type that is not usually seen in a certain group of people (for example, children getting cancer usually seen in adults).

For rural Illinois residents, accessing information about the occurrence of cancer in their area is difficult because cancer data are sometimes suppressed in rural areas due to concerns of confidentiality and small populations.

Suppressed means the number of cases do not show up on state maps and data.

While the goal of the U.S. Census Bureau’s privacy protection system is to protect individual identities by injecting statistical noise into aggregate population data, a study by the National Library of Medicine found discrepancies increase dramatically in rural areas, raising concerns that the new system may misrepresent population trends and demographic changes.

“Whenever we talk about it, they say, ‘Try not to be alarmed.’ We are very alarmed. We’re very upset about it. It’s absolutely unacceptable.” Popescu said.

Severity of cases questioned by public health

Last year, McClain said multiple state officials questioned whether her data indicates a cancer cluster, including those from the Illinois Cancer Registry, the state public health department and state representatives.

The Illinois Department of Public Health — tasked with protecting public health and the environment — said the number of cases was not alarming and there was no need or resources to look into the cases. Officials said McClain’s data did not indicate evidence of a cancer cluster because the rate of the cases was insufficient.

When McClain first contacted health officials in early 2024 she had documented 19 cases of glioblastoma since 2004. By October, she identified 30 cases total since 2004 — with seven cases within 2.3 square miles in Monticello.

Under cancer cluster investigation guidelines, the Illinois Department of Public Health is expected to review data available from cancer registries and other databases to monitor the estimated rates for cancer incidents.

But databases and cancer registries are outdated. According to the CDC, the latest cancer incidence data available are from 2021, four years ago, and recent cancer death data are from 2022. Illinois’s cancer incidence data is from 2021.

McClain said she found at least 11 people with glioblastoma died between 2017 and 2021, of which 6 were men and 5 were women.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the state public health department in November, a FOIA officer said “the Department follows CDC guidelines when determining whether and how to investigate or assess a cancer cluster.”

As of February this year, no additional investigation by the Illinois Department of Public Health had been done.

Cause of glioblastoma unclear, linked to pesticides

While glioblastoma’s exact causes remain unclear, exposure to carcinogens, radiation and agricultural chemicals has been linked to DNA mutations that drive the disease.

National studies show that pesticides, which are widely used in the county and in the Midwest, have been linked to brain cancer. This relationship can be seen in studies from the National Library of Medicine “Brain tumours and exposure to pesticides” and “Organochlorine Pesticides and Epigenetic Alterations in Brain Cancer.”

“It is my opinion that Illinois as a whole refuses to accept that agricultural chemicals pose risk to human life,” McClain said in October. “They seem to be behind in research and correspondence with the public compared to other rural states … Some farmers have left more space between their crops and the homes and schools this year once I brought the risk to their attention.”

In response to McClain asking for the city of Monticello to test the water, officials did so and saw nothing worrisome in the results, which showed no violations for disinfectants or inorganic contaminants.

Water test reports from 2023, obtained in an email from Monticello Public Works, show most regulated contaminants are within acceptable levels.

“Any time Caitlin has brought something to our attention, we’ve expeditiously looked into it and gone from there,” Monticello City Administrator Terry Summers said in an interview in November 2024.

Summers initiated water tests of the county’s water supply and found the nitrate levels were almost undetectable. He said there was no sign that the public water supply was behind the number of brain cancers.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 1,000 suspected cancer clusters are reported to state health departments in the United States each year.

The stakes are high for those diagnosed with glioblastoma: the average survival time is just 12 to 18 months, even with aggressive treatment.

Gita Kwatra, CEO of the Glioblastoma Foundation Inc, a non-profit organization in Durham, North Carolina, said glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor, with slim survival rates.

“The disease is incredibly fast, incredibly lethal cancer. There isn’t enough research funding that goes to this cancer. There isn’t enough awareness,” Kwatra said in a phone interview. “Five to seven percent of people who are diagnosed will survive to five years, and five years is important in the medical community, five years is used as a surrogate marker for beating the disease.”

The post Concerns about brain cancer cases in Piatt County grow, but Illinois public health agency yet to investigate appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

Egg prices remain volatile in the wake of the ongoing bird flu outbreaks, which have decimated commercial poultry and egg production across the U.S.

At the end of 2024, the epidemic pushed egg prices to the second-highest level – $4.15 per dozen – in the past decade, according to the Consumer Price Index. That’s second only to the first onset of the recent bird flu outbreaks.

Retail grocery stores were still dealing with inflationary pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic when initial bird flu outbreaks began across the country in early 2022.

By the end of that year, egg prices had doubled from the year before, from less than $2 a dozen to more than $4 a dozen, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Egg prices began to stabilize throughout 2023, but as new waves of bird flu hit, the price of eggs shot back up. 

Bird flu has ravaged commercial poultry and egg production, with more than 134 million birds killed since early 2022.

The recent rise in grocery staples can also be attributed to post-COVID-19 pandemic inflationary pressures, a shortage of beef cattle caused by droughts, and bird flu outbreaks. 

Beef prices climbed 22% from early 2022 to the end of last year, a reflection of the long-term ripple effects of declining herd sizes in the face of feed and water shortages. 

Grocery prices have taken center stage as activists, politicians and government agencies have denounced meat and food industry consolidation alongside alleged price gouging.

The post Egg prices continue to swing drastically, cracking already strained grocery budgets appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

Farmers have begun raising concerns about the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations on their operations, but the president’s nominee for agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, said any issues stemming from a lost labor force are “hypothetical.”

If farms are affected by mass deportations, she and other administration officials would “hopefully solve some of these problems,” Rollins said during her nomination hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Thursday. When a senator remarked he hoped the issues caused by mass deportations were hypothetical, Rollins said, “I do, too.”

These comments stand in contrast with those of other Trump policy officials regarding mass deportations. In an interview with The New York Times in 2023, Stephen Miller, now a deputy chief of staff in the White House, said the deportations would have a major impact: “Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers.”

Before Trump was elected, experts and farmworker rights advocates said mass deportations could lead to the agriculture industry’s collapse. Nationwide, an estimated 42% of farm workers were undocumented in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Given how long farms have relied on undocumented labor, no other workforce currently exists that could replace unauthorized workers.

Rollins said Trump would not forget about farmers’ needs when implementing his deportation plans. While she agreed with the policies, she said she would listen to farmers and act accordingly, likely by augmenting the H-2A program, which brings foreign workers into the U.S. temporarily to pick crops. The program is run by the U.S. Department of Labor.

“The president’s vision of a secure border and mass deportation at a scale that matters is something I support,” Rollins said during Thursday’s hearing. “You may argue that is in conflict” with my duties to support agriculture, she added, but, “having both of those as key priorities, my job is to work with the secretary of labor on the H-2A program.”

The H-2A program is rife with well-documented abuse and wage theft. There have already been warnings that increased use of the program could overwhelm the government and negatively impact workers’ rights.

Rollins was also asked if she thought deporting farmworkers could increase food prices, as Trump campaigned on the high cost of groceries. She again said that was a hypothetical issue.

While food prices have outstripped the rate of inflation in recent years, one reason food has remained relatively affordable in the U.S. is because farm labor can be cheap. In the Times interview, Miller said Americans would replace the deported workers and “be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.”

Rollins and Republican senators on the Senate’s agriculture committee emphasized her rural roots and her time in 4H, but Rollins does not have extensive experience in the agriculture industry. Multiple times, she told senators that she looked forward to learning more about an issue they asked about, including the increase in bird flu among poultry and livestock.

She repeatedly said Thursday she would rely on data to help drive decision-making. But, when discussing undocumented labor on farms, she said no one knew how many people might be affected by Trump’s mass deportations.

“We don’t know, first of all, who ‘they’ are,” Rollins said, putting air quotes around “they.” “We all throw numbers around. 40%, 50%, 60%. The answer is we just don’t know.”

While the exact figure may not be known, the U.S. Department of Labor publishes a survey with well-regarded and oft-cited data on the number of undocumented farmworkers. According to the survey, about 40% of America’s 2 million farmworkers are not authorized to work in the country.

Several agricultural industries rely on undocumented labor. For instance, dairy farms are not eligible for H-2A visa labor — often trumpeted as a labor solution — and often do not ask about employees’ statuses. The meatpacking industry, subjected to immigration raids under the first Trump administration, also uses undocumented labor.

One of the largest meatpacking companies in the country, Tyson Foods, told Investigate Midwest it would not be affected by any mass deportations, however.

“Tyson Foods is strongly opposed to illegal immigration, and we fully participate with the federal government’s E-Verify and IMAGE programs,” a Tyson Foods spokesperson said. “We employ 120,000 team members in the United States, all of whom are required to be legally authorized to work in this country and any enforcement against undocumented workers would not have an impact on our company.”

Near the end of Rollins’ nomination hearing, Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, asked Rollins how farms would replace their workforce if mass deportation plans materialized.

“Americans don’t want to do that work,” he said. “It’s frankly too backbreaking, so who is going to work the farms?”

Rollins responded by saying, “President Trump ran and was overwhelmingly elected on the priority of border security and mass deportation.” Trump’s margin of victory in November was the fourth-smallest since 1960, at 1.62%, according to PBS. “The American people have asked for a secure border and a system where they do not have to be concerned with the millions and millions that crossed here illegally and brought a lot of strife and unsafe communities to America.”

She added there might need to be changes made to the H-2A program to address a lost workforce. 

“I will work around the clock with our new labor secretary, if she’s confirmed,” she said. 

Then, Schiff asked, “If they’re gone, who’s going to do that work?”

“As these processes and programs are being implemented under this new administration and with the full support of the majority of Americans,” Rollins replied. “I think that we — as the leaders in agriculture, myself as the leader at USDA, you on this committee as well as others on the committee — that we will work together to understand and hopefully solve some of these problems. 

“The dairy cattle have to be milked,” she added, “but if we have a mass deportation program underway, then there is a lot of work that we need to do through the labor department and working with Congress to solve for a lot of this through our current labor programs that are already on the books.”

Schiff then asked about food prices. “If we deport a large percentage of our farm workforce, farm labor is going to be scarce,” he said. “Isn’t that inevitably going to push up food prices? And if so, isn’t that in sharp contrast with what the president said he wanted to do to bring down egg prices and food prices?”

“First of all, we’re speaking in hypotheticals,” Rollins said. “But, certainly, these are hypotheticals that we do need to be thinking through. It’s a very fair point. The president has made food inflation and the cost of food one of his top priorities. I have worked alongside him and have been part of his team for many years now. I believe in his vision and his commitment to America and to his promises, and in so doing, we will be able to find in our toolkit what we need to do to solve for any hypothetical issues that turn out to be real moving forward over the coming months and years.”

“I hope they’re hypothetical,” Schiff responded.

“I do, too,” Rollins said.

“I fear they’re all too real,” Schiff said.

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The new leader of the U.S. Senate’s agriculture committee, Arkansas’ John Boozman, has several ties to meatpacking behemoths, including Tyson Foods, and has recently resisted efforts by his fellow Republicans to reign in their economic power.

New Democratic leadership on the committee also has strong agriculture ties, as Sen. Amy Klobuchar has received thousands from employees at the grain processor Cargill.

Republicans recently won control of the U.S. Senate, along with the presidency and the U.S. House of Representatives. This puts the GOP back in charge of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, which has sway over important food legislation, such as the Farm Bill. 

New chairman Boozman became the committee’s ranking minority member in 2021, with Democrats controlling the Senate. He was first elected in 2001.

Over his two decades in Congress, employees at Tyson Foods, one of America’s largest meat companies, donated more than $120,000 to his campaigns — the third-most he’s received during his career, according to OpenSecrets.

Neither Boozman or Tyson returned a request for comment.

Just four companies, including Tyson Foods, control 85% of the beef industry, which critics argue limits competition and gives them significant power to set prices. Most beef is bought through contracts, but independent ranchers in rural areas have called for legislation requiring the companies to purchase at least some of their beef on the open market.

In 2021, Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, championed the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act to address ranchers’ concerns. But, when the bill faced opposition from his fellow Republicans, Grassley pointed the finger at Tyson and its peers. 

“You got to think behind all this is the political power of the big four packers,” he said, according to Politico.

In response, Boozman said Grassley is a “good friend and we work together very closely, but I think there’s a misunderstanding that somehow we’re trying to block this bill.”

Politico reported that some of the concerns among those trying to pass the legislation were the connections to the meat industry on Boozman’s committee staff. His policy director, Chelsie Keys, used to work for the National Pork Producers Council, which represents major meatpackers. Also, the policy director’s spouse, Gordon Chandler Keys III, is a lobbyist for JBS USA, one of the four companies that control most of the beef industry.

In recent years, Chandler Keys has lobbied the Senate on issues related to “meat inspection” and the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, or GIPSA, according to lobbying disclosure records. GIPSA is tasked with investigating unfair market practices. Originally an independent agency within the USDA, the first Trump administration moved it under the umbrella of another agency, which has reduced its effectiveness, critics have said.

The records do not specify which senators were lobbied, and a committee spokesperson told Politico in 2022 that Keys does not lobby Boozman. Keys did not return requests for comment.

Grassley told KMALand, a radio station in Iowa, that he will continue to push for the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act in this year’s Congress, perhaps as an addition to the Farm Bill.

When asked about the act’s chances, given Boozman’s reported resistance, a spokesperson for Grassley’s office said, “Senator Grassley remains committed to enhancing transparency in the cattle market and ensuring a level playing field for all cattle producers.”

Tyson’s relationship with its contract farmers could be further scrutinized during the next congressional term as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the company after it closed several of its plants in recent years.

Because of industry consolidation, rural farmers who raised Tyson’s chickens had no other company to sell their chickens to, leaving them saddled with debt. 

In Missouri, a Tyson competitor attempted to buy a shuttered plant, but Tyson worked to prevent the purchase, according to an investigation by Watchdog Writers Group and Investigate Midwest. Tyson also subpoenaed communication between former growers and federal investigators. Boozman’s Republican colleague, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, called the company’s actions “anti-American.”

So far, Boozman has not publicly commented on the Tyson plant closures. When he was formally tapped to lead the agriculture committee, he released a statement saying his aim was to “bolster rural communities.”

Sen. Klobuchar, a Democratic member of the Senate ag committee, has ties to Cargill

On the Democratic side, significant changes are reshaping the Senate agriculture committee’s leadership for the first time in years, driven by a major retirement and election losses. 

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2001, is leaving. She has helped shape several farm bills, most recently as committee chairwoman. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who has been a recent committee mainstay, lost his re-election bid in November.

Klobuchar, of Minnesota, is now the ranking minority member. She’s received consistent support from employees at Cargill, the nation’s largest private company and a major grain processor. Over the years, she’s supported the biofuel industry, a key component of Cargill’s business.

In 2020, as Klobuchar ran for president, the then-CEO of Cargill, Dave MacLennan, served as her campaign bundler, a usually wealthy person who raises substantial cash from others. Overall that year, Cargill employees donated about $37,000 to her — the third highest total from company employees, according to OpenSecrets. 

In 2024, Cargill employees donated about $13,600 to Klobuchar, the fifth-most that year, according to OpenSecrets. Cargill employees also donated to Boozman and California’s Adam Schiff, who is also on the Senate agriculture committee. 

Cargill is a major producer of biofuels, such as ethanol. A growing body of evidence suggests that ethanol — trumpeted as a climate smart alternative to gasoline — might have minimal climate benefits or, perhaps, might be worse than gas. 

Klobuchar has consistently supported the industry. Over the past few years, she has introduced legislation focused on E15, a blend of ethanol that Cargill and others sell. One bill would have removed warnings about ethanol’s potential impact on cars, and another would allow E15 to be sold year-round.

Klobuchar’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The email address that Cargill said was the “best way” for reporters to contact the company bounced back.

New Farm Bill will be area of focus for new committee leaders

The agriculture committee's most important business will likely be passing a Farm Bill, which funds subsidies for farms and financial assistance for low-income families, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The 2018 Farm Bill expired in 2023, but Congress has approved two-year funding stopgaps since then. 

In June, Boozman, as the ranking minority member, published his framework for a new farm bill. He called for increased spending on the so-called “farm safety net” and on trade programs. In November, following her retirement announcement, Stabenow released her framework, which Boozman called “insulting.” While also increasing funding for the farm safety net, it emphasized funding for SNAP and conservation programs related to climate change.

Republicans have 53 votes in the U.S. Senate, but it takes 60 to pass a farm bill in the upper chamber. The legislation will need to attract some Democrats.

“I think at times last year, pretty consistently, it was clear that the ability to work across partisan lines had frayed in the Senate ag committee,” said Mike Lavender, the policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which advocates for sustainable food systems. “The biggest question on my mind is, how will new leadership really lean into a bipartisan approach and working together to get a bill done?”

From a policy standpoint, the shift in leadership likely won’t result in dramatic changes, especially given Boozman’s previous role as ranking minority member, he said. But having different individuals in charge might lead to different points of emphasis. 

For instance, Stabenow focused on funding specialty crops, which are a big part of Michigan agriculture. But Klobuchar might focus on competition and antitrust laws, Lavender said. In 2022, Klobuchar published a book on monopoly power.

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The nation’s agriculture sector, which relies heavily on undocumented workers, could face a significant challenge when President-elect Donald Trump takes office this month amid promises to enact stricter immigration policies.

The percentage of undocumented farmworkers — those without legal status — dropped from 54% in 2020 to 42% in 2022, according to the USDA and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Trump said his mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would start with the “criminals,” but that “you have no choice” but to eventually deport everyone in the country illegally, according to a December interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, emphasized the potential consequences of such policies, telling Investigate Midwest, “If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse.”

“There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place,” she said.

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In the wake of the 2024 election, Barn Raiser talks to prominent Native leaders and mentors, who tell us in edited interviews how and why their communities have long endured, even in divisive and unsettled times.

Right now, all of us who live together on this earth face not just political instability but the “dual crises of climate change and social injustice,” according to Fawn Sharp, citizen of the Quinalt Indian Nation, in Taholah, Washington, and former president of the National Congress of American Indians.

“Now, more than ever,” Sharp says, “the world needs the wisdom, resilience and stewardship that Indigenous leaders uniquely bring. Our survival in this rapidly changing world may well depend on it.”

The views of each of those who spoke to Barn Raiser are deeply personal and rooted in their own unique cultures.

The Long View

For the past 16 years, the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project, at Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, has hosted numerous programs in the arts, gardening, cooking, sports and more. The activities are designed to prepare Zuni youth to be healthy adults who can continue Zuni cultural traditions. Of Zuni’s 10,000 residents, almost a third are under the age of 18. Kiara Zunie, a Zuni tribal citizen and ZYEP’s Youth Development Coordinator, and ZYEP Operations Manager Josh Kudrna describe accompanying tribal youth on a recent visit to their people’s emergence place in what is now called the Grand Canyon. Zunie and Kudrna are joined in this interview by ZYEP Executive Director Tahlia Natachu-Eriacho, a tribal citizen.

Kiara Zunie: Backpacking down the Grand Canyon was a beautiful and humbling experience for everyone. We shared moments of aching legs, tingling fingers and shallow breathing from the weight of our packs. The journey reminded us that resilience isn’t just about physical strength, it’s about mental toughness, too. We took care of each another through consistent check-ins, positive encouragement and song lyrics. Each rugged step we took was also a reminder of our ancestors’ enduring strength and their prayers coming to fruition through a group like us.

Tahlia Natachu-Eriacho: This program is important for us because it acknowledges Zuni’s migration story. We Zuni people emerged from there and made our way to where we are now in Zuni Pueblo. The fact that we still live on the lands our ancestors intended us to be on is so powerful. And a privilege. Our reservation is where we are supposed to be.

We have been intentional about calling the trips to the Grand Canyon ‘visits.’ They’re not adventures or expeditions and other ideas that come from the goals of colonization. We are going to visit our relatives, to where our ancestors were, to places that have meaning for our culture and our identity and who we are today.

Josh Kudrna: During the three-day visit, we hiked 17 miles. That may not sound like a lot to people who run marathons, but it’s down about 7,000 feet to get to the water at the base of the canyon, then back up 7,000 feet. It’s very steep climbing, and all of our participants were carrying everything they needed—about 30 to 40 pounds—on their backs.

Ahead of time, I try to prep them for what’s about to happen, but it’s hard to conceptualize that after about three miles your legs will be quaking with every step. It’s very hard work, and they connect to the ancestors, who didn’t have fancy boots, who didn’t have internal-frame backpacks, but were still carrying their children and everything they needed on their backs as they continually went up and down the canyon.

Zunie: The day we hiked out of the Grand Canyon happened to fall on Indigenous People’s Day. We were nearing the top when we heard the echo of a drumbeat. The National Park Service had organized traditional dances to celebrate Indigenous culture. As we listened to the drums, I looked at the group, reminding myself of the journey we had just endured. Remembering the aches and pains and the moments of laughter and camaraderie, I started to cry.

A Place to Call Home

Good news is imminent at the Native American Community of Central Ohio (NAICCO), in Columbus. Executive Director Masami Smith and Project Director Ty Smith lead the urban-Indian organization and its activities on behalf of the cultural, community and economic development of the area’s Native people. Both Masami and Ty are enrolled citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, in Oregon. A major project nearing fruition is LandBack NAICCO, with nearly $400,000 in donations and earned income that will allow the group to acquire land. The group is currently looking at land in Central Ohio and the broader Ohio area. According to the major Indigenous news source Native News Online, many Native communities  are finding ways to reconstitute portions of homelands and reservations lost in the process of European settlement. Ty tells us about NAICCO and its plans.

Ty Smith: The urban setting is different in many ways from Indigenous homelands on the reservations. You’re navigating two worlds simultaneously while trying to maintain balance and harmony in your life. The sense of home is strong for our Native people. But where do you find that in Ohio, which has no infrastructure for us—no tribes, which were expelled in the 1800s, no reservations, no Indian Health Service, no Bureau of Indian Affairs, no Bureau of Indian Education?

Because Ohio doesn’t include the tribes that were originally here, there are holes in the story. The dots don’t connect. Native people who have come to live here in recent years—for higher education, work and more—lean on each other. They come into NAICCO and start to make it home and make relations.

As an intertribal community, we bond in ways we never thought possible. A sense of togetherness and belonging has become the heart and soul of NAICCO. We all agree that we want a better tomorrow for our children. When you have that commonality, it speaks truth. It’s our foundation. The group becomes family, not by blood but by shared experience in the newfound Ohio home.

Since Masami and I came here in 2011, people have asked, “What if we could have our own place?’ While doing other programs, we never lost track of that: a piece of land in addition to our agency building on the south side of Columbus, a place we could call home, where we could connect with Nature.

We launched LandBack NAICCO in 2019, right before Covid struck. It didn’t get a lot of traction because of the pandemic. So we re-launched it in 2022. To our surprise, wow, in 2024 we have almost $400,000 to buy land that is not just ours, but where we can reawaken the Native within. Land that we don’t just walk upon, but where we engage in foraging, tending, stewarding, rewilding and conservation, where we can create a relationship with Mother Nature. How does Nature teach us, how do we take care of her? This is essential to who we are.

Native people have advocated for this idea, of course. It’s exciting, surprising and humbling that non-Native relatives, supporters, friends and allies have also rallied behind us and lifted us. Non-Native subject-matter experts, including conservationists and environmentalists, have told us that once we have the land, let them know. They’re there to offer resources, services, insight, wisdom. Very cool. Multiple organizations and private parties have come forward to participate as well. We don’t know how this will end. It’s hard to talk about because it’s happening right now, in real time.

We never imagined this in our wildest dreams. In these turbulent times, it gives you hope that there’s something good at hand. It points to a good life, not just for the individual but for the community. There’s hope here and a dream. LandBack NAICCO is about planting seeds for a better tomorrow.

Strengthening Connections

Anahkwet (Guy Reiter) is a citizen of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and executive director of the grassroots nonprofit Menikanaehkem Community Rebuilders. The group has a range of supportive programming, including building solar-powered “tiny homes” for those who need shelter during life transitions, setting up women’s leadership and empowerment projects, including midwifery and traditional birthing practices, developing forest- and garden-based food sovereignty and advocating against proposals for dangerous open-pit mines and pipelines. Anahkwet talks about how his tribe understands the connections that strengthen individuals and communities.

Anahkwet: With the results of the recent election, hopefully people will now understand what this country has always been about since 1492. This moment is like many other moments in our Indigenous history with the dominant society. We at Menominee have been here before, unfortunately sometimes in more dire circumstances.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, our greatest enemy is the European mind, which comes in many shapes, forms, colors and creeds. It’s such a dangerous outlook because it’s based in fear. Through its languages, it perceives problems, defines them and builds things around them in ways that isolate a person—on a planet with 8 billion people. Anything built on fear and distrust never ends well. It’s a shaky foundation to build anything on.

Our Menominee language isn’t like that. It’s built on relationships, love and a connection to all things. The more we move in that direction, the stronger we will get. Indigenous leadership in this regard is already there throughout the world. It’s a question of others waking up to it and realizing it. Indigenous leaders have been present this whole time, but others haven’t seen them, haven’t taken the time to listen to them.

Our people are amazing at—and have mastered—resilience. Their deep connections to our culture and our language have kept them deeply grounded and able to withstand much struggle and oppression. Without those connections, you can see that a person might feel hopeless, lost, confused.

For us, struggle strengthens our connections. It alerts us to the importance of remembering who we are—our languages, our culture, our ceremonies. It’s a reminder to continue them. Our young people can see the sacrifices of their ancestors. They see the reason we’re still here, through all the things that happened to us. They see that our language, our culture and our way of life have held us together—have given us all we need in terms of hope, understanding and direction.

One of our greatest teachers is the Earth. If you slow down and listen, she’ll show you exactly what you need to know. If you want to build an organization, look to a forest. How does a forest have that much diversity, yet life thrives? What characteristics of a healthy forest do you see? In our teachings, in our culture, we talk about representation from grandma and grandpa trees, adult trees, teen trees, baby trees. They all need to exist within that ecosystem for it to be healthy. It doesn’t take long to understand the simplicity of it all. If you’re able to slow down and connect with the Earth, the answers are there.

When we went ricing this year, we took our young people along. [While ricing, one person poles a canoe through the shallow water of a wild-rice paddy, while the other uses sticks to tap the ripe wild-rice grains into the canoe.] It’s more than getting in a canoe, getting in the water and paddling, which is amazing in itself. Understanding the relationship the canoe has to the water and we have to the canoe, the connection to the trees, the land, the fish—all those things come into play. Before we go ricing, we pray. We ask for good days. We make sure everyone is safe.

The canoe in the water can teach you a lot of things about yourself. It can show you how you relate to another person. If it’s a windy day, you understand quickly how much teamwork ricing takes. When the wind is blowing hard in your face, the two of you are not going to make it across the lake if you don’t take the time to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, to work together. You’re also not fearful. You don’t make quick reactions. In this world, everyone wants quick this, quick that, but it’s not like that in the natural world.

Our people have stressed we must have good thoughts as we harvest this rice that has nourished our people for thousands of years. We harvest with a good heart and a good mind. We do it to feed our families, as well as other families, so they won’t go hungry. We think of all those who came before us, who treated the rice as we do, so it would continue to thrive. It will continue to take care of us if we take care of it.

All people around the world have gone through times like these at various points in their histories. In those times, they found strategies, ways to move forward. Today, there are good people and amazing things happening. Someone once told me in reference to a hurricane in Florida that all over the news you see what a tragedy it is. News shows show the destruction and the horrors.

But, this person said, remember to look for the helpers—helping, doing their work. The same is true now. Look for the helpers. They’re doing their work.

The post Hope in Turbulent Times: Native Leaders Take the Long View appeared first on Barn Raiser.

Key takeaways:

Shifted resources. To keep up with high demand, the U.S. Department of Labor moved staff from processing other visas to reviewing H-2A visas. That has created a backlog in other visas the agency oversees.
Questioned integrity. Because of high demand, the Labor Department performed far fewer audits of H-2A applications in 2023 than it did just a few years ago. That’s because the staff that would perform the audits are busy processing applications. The agency itself has said high demand might affect “program integrity.”
Continued growth? The first Trump administration promoted the use of the H-2A program while performing raids on workplaces suspected of having undocumented workers — a large component of the agriculture workforce.

Farm employers’ increasing use of guest visa farmworkers has strained federal agencies, potentially impairing workers’ rights, a federal watchdog found in a report released Thursday.

The report comes days after Donald Trump was re-elected president. During his first term, Trump championed the use of guest farmworkers — foreign laborers who work temporarily in U.S. agricultural fields — as a legal alternative for farm labor. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented.

Trump has promised mass deportations of people who are not in the country legally. That could mean an even greater increase in guest farmworkers coming to the U.S. through the H-2A visa program, further straining federal oversight responsibilities.

“Agencies’ approaches to processing H-2A applications amid growth may have unintended consequences for the agencies,” the report from the Government Accountability Office reads, “such as their ability to perform oversight, process adjudications for other programs in a timely manner, and ensure workers are provided with information about their rights.”

The H-2A program has grown in popularity as a response to farm labor shortages. Between 2018 and 2023, the number of applications for H-2A workers increased by 72%, according to the GAO’s analysis.

However, the time the federal government took to review and approve applications remained static. This was accomplished, in part, by shifting staff from other responsibilities to focus on the H-2A program.

The federal government has said the program is an essential part of national security because it helps ensure widespread access to food in the U.S. Given that, agencies have prioritized approving H-2A applications quickly. 

Eliminating the H-2A program was a component of Project 2025, the blueprint created by Trump’s allies for his next administration. During his campaign, Trump disavowed the policy proposal, and, during his first term, he called H-2A labor a “source of legal and verified labor for agriculture.”

Currently, the H-2A program is intended to be used for field labor. (Some employers, however, use H-2A workers to construct animal confinements.) But industry groups representing other parts of the agriculture sector — such as dairy farms and meatpacking plants — have pushed to expand the program to include their operations.

As of Friday, Trump has yet to announce who he will nominate as his labor secretary, the person ultimately responsible for the H-2A program.

H-2A program’s integrity possibly impaired by rapid expansion

Three agencies coordinate approval of H-2A visa applications, though the U.S. Department of Labor performs most oversight. The agency reviews and approves employers’ applications for workers. 

The U.S. Department of State interviews potential workers at its consulates in foreign countries, primarily Mexico. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reviews a worker’s visa as they cross into the country.

In budget documents, the labor department has said the H-2A program might be compromised by the need to process applications in a timely manner. 

When employers apply, they provide evidence that no U.S. workers want the available jobs, list wage rates and show proof of adequate housing. If an employer’s application does not meet all requirements, the agency can send a “notice of deficiency.”

As the H-2A program expanded, the number of notices decreased, the GAO found. In 2018, almost half of applications were flagged for various infractions, such as inaccurate job descriptions, lacking proof of adequate housing, or missing information on employee transportation. In 2022, just a third were. (In 2023, the figure jumped back to almost half, which officials contributed to new reporting requirements.)

The agency has conducted audits to ensure employers comply with requirements.

But, with the increase in applications, the number of audits has dropped precipitously. In 2018, the agency conducted more than 500. In 2023, the figure was 30, according to the GAO.

“Officials attributed the reduction in H-2A audits to the competing priorities of staff,” the GAO wrote in its report. “Specifically, officials told us they have limited resources to conduct audits because the same staff who process applications also audit the approved applications.”

Prioritizing the H-2A program can also lead to backlogs in other visa programs the labor department oversees, the GAO said.

In some instances, the labor department has approved H-2A applications for employers that then faced scrutiny. 

In 2023, 13 Black farmworkers in Mississippi reached settlements with two employers after the employers hired white South Africans through the H-2A program. The employers told the labor department they would offer the same pay and same number of hours to the U.S. citizens and the H-2A workers — a legal requirement. The U.S. workers were given fewer hours and less pay, they alleged. 

Also, in recent years, contractors in Nebraska who provide detasseling labor — primarily teenagers earning pocket money — have cried foul. H-2A employers have taken some of their business, despite long waitlists of teenagers available to work.

State Department policies may lead to worker exploitation

The State Department is supposed to conduct interviews with prospective H-2A employees at its consulates. During the interviews, workers are provided with “know your rights” pamphlets — the H-2A program has a well-documented history of abuse.

But, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency waived the interview requirement, and, now, most H-2A workers are no longer interviewed in person. In 2023, the agency waived 90% of interviews, the GAO said. 

If an interview is waived, the consulate sends the pamphlet with the worker’s passport. However, the recruiter or the workers’ employer will often pick up passports on workers’ behalf, the GAO said.

This situation — coupled with the fact some employers confiscate passports and charge return fees — “suggests some employers may not prefer to provide H-2A workers with the information about their rights,” according to the GAO’s report. 

The State Department said it was taking steps to address this. 

For instance, when workers apply for visas online, they must certify they have read the information in the “know your rights” pamphlet in order to complete the application. The state and labor agencies are also collaborating with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to identify recruiting fraud.

Labor department has small number of investigators

H-2A workers often face abuse while in the U.S., but a couple factors impair the labor department’s ability to investigate abusive employers, according to the GAO.

For one, workers do not feel they can complain. If they do, they could face retaliation, such as being blacklisted by recruiters or being fired, which essentially maroons them in the U.S. if their passport was taken by an employer. Worker complaints were the origin of only 15% of investigations between 2018 and 2023, according to the GAO.

However, complaints are valuable to the agency. When investigations begin with worker complaints, investigators found, on average, 38 violations. When investigations began other ways, such as through a report by the media, investigators found, on average, 22 violations.

Second, the labor department has relatively few investigators now, and their focus is not just on agriculture or the H-2A program.

The agency’s Wage and Hour Division investigates employment issues, such as stolen wages, for H-2A workers. (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, another labor department division, focuses on workplace safety.) In 2014, the wage and hour division had nearly 1,000 investigators.

Now, it has 773 investigators — one of its lowest staffing levels in the past 50 years, according to the GAO. 

These issues likely factor into the small number of investigations that the wage and hour division has pursued in recent years. Between 2018 and 2023, the Labor Department approved more than 90,000 H-2A applications, but it investigated fewer than 3,000 employers, according to the GAO.

In April, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said the department needed more resources to shore up its enforcement responsibilities.

“Laws are only as powerful as their enforcement,” she said. “We need more resources in order to do what we need to do. We cannot allow companies that profit off of workers, who decide that it’s cheaper to break the law and the chances of getting caught are slim and the costs even if you do get caught are negligible, to keep on pursuing those practices.”

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