Some Florida farmers reduce crops as deportation fears drive workers away [View all]

[UpInArms]

The man looks out at the empty field, squinting: It's midday and the Central Florida sun is intense. To the untrained eye, this looks like a large dry plot of land. But it's one of the most important stages of strawberry farming: preparing the soil for planting so that by next spring, this field is bursting with juicy berries.

He's been farming this land since the 1980s, but "things changed, almost overnight," he laments.

…snip …

But he says he can't afford to hire more H2A visa workers — the costs have been going up for years. "I'm drastically cutting down production next year," he says, "to 35% of what I usually do."

Economists have warned that Trump's ongoing deportation campaign will hurt the U.S. economy, especially sectors that rely on migrant labor. Just in the last four months, agricultural employment has fallen by 155,000 workers, the biggest dip in nearly a decade.

More at:

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/20/nx-s1-5496668/some-florida-farmers-reduce-crops-as-deportation-fears-drive-workers-away