A conservative Republican farmer from Idaho is making an unusual plea to President Donald Trump: “Do the right thing.” His request comes as his family’s longtime farm fights to stay afloat amid worker shortages that he says stem from Trump-era immigration rules.
ABC News reported Wednesday that Shay Myers, general manager of Owyhee Produce — a third-generation farm in Parma, Idaho — is publicly criticizing the increasingly aggressive deportation measures enforced under the Trump administration. According to Myers, these policies are now putting the nation’s food system at risk.
“My reality is, I love these people. I love the culture, and I love the effort that they make. And ethically, to continue to not fix this problem is absolutely completely wrong,” Myers told the outlet. “We as Americans try to do the right thing,” he continued. “Let’s do the right thing.”
Owyhee Produce is among many agricultural operations across the country facing an extreme shortage of labor. Myers stresses that the issue isn’t political — it’s about whether farms can survive.
The farm typically requires roughly 300 workers during harvest, many of whom rely on temporary H-2A agricultural visas. With about 90 percent of those employees coming from Mexico and other countries, the struggle to find labor has intensified.
“We would love to hire people from here. The reality is that we can’t find the numbers of people here,” Myers said. “We’re in a rural area, number one. Number two: This is hard work. It is difficult work, and there are lots of people that are not willing to do it.” But even legal seasonal workers are becoming fearful.
Mauricio Sol, a returning farmworker from Mexico, said the anxiety is spreading among visa holders.
“We all come on the H-2A visa program, so we come all here legally by the season, just for the season, and then we go back to Mexico,” Sol told ABC News.
“We usually get a lot of applications. We’re not getting that many now because people are afraid of that, even when they are legally here, they’re getting arrested for no reason,” Myers said.
The Agriculture Department recently echoed those concerns, warning of a looming food supply disruption tied to instability in the farm labor force.
A report submitted earlier this month cautioned that “the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and [threatens] the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers.”
Experts note the same. James O’Neill, director of Legislative Affairs for the American Business Immigration Coalition, said the nation’s food economy is at a breaking point. “It’s absolutely impacting the labor force,” O’Neill said.
“Nationwide, the USDA’s ag labor survey suggests that somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of our farm labor workforce is undocumented immigrants,” O’Neill explained.
“And if that’s the case, if we were to deport them all overnight, then that’s 60 percent of the workforce, meaning that’s 60 percent of the supply that’s not being met without a shift in demand,” he added. “And I think anyone that understands economics knows that means higher prices for them at the grocery store.”
Although he considers himself a conservative and a Trump supporter, Myers said the escalating crisis left him no choice but to speak publicly — especially because he believes his background might carry weight across partisan lines.
“I have a voice, I have reach. I have people that will listen,” he said.
“And because I am a conservative and a Republican, people assume that I would have a different perspective here, and this is my reality,” Myers added.
You magats broke it, you bought it! No sympathy.
Why does he support Trump when Trump’s policies are damaging to the farm economy?