The reason is simple: an increase in immigration enforcement, including high-profile ICE raids, shook Texas farm workers to their core. The news filtered fast that workers—regardless of legal status—chose safety over a salary.
Farmers, who had been working with their crews for decades, described the loss as “devastating” and “unprecedented.” This is alarming as most farms are founded upon immigrant labor, both legal and illegal, creating a domino effect for the food system as a whole.
. . . When farm workers vanish, the effects are felt far beyond the fields. Livestock is untended, crops go unpicked, food production declines, and food prices dramatically increase. In Texas alone, where specialty vegetables and fruits must be hand-picked, worker shortages jeopardize entire harvest seasons.
This results in fewer foods on grocery store shelves, higher prices for families nationwide, and a greater reliance on imports. Threads on Reddit and YouTube are already predicting price hikes and empty produce shelves.
I’m sure there are plenty of Republicans willing to take a job for shit pay that is back breaking and dangerous right?
I wonder how many of these farmers in Texas voted for Trump? My guess is the majority of them. You reap what you sow.
Actually this year is “Nobody reaps what you’ve sown and it rots in the field” but that’s not as succinct.
Phase 2: Prison labor
It also carries the side “benefit” of getting farm owners (and, indirectly, anyone who cares about being able to eat food) complicit in and supportive of the “person who didn’t do anything wrong -> detention” pipeline as it ramps up and expands.
You heard it here first.
No, that’s phase 3. Phase 2 is foreclosures, bankruptcy, and buying at insanely discounted rates. THEN it’s
slaveprison labor.I thought that was phases 3 then 4, phase 2 was building debtors prisons,
I have been predicting the return of slavery wide scale via prisoners for years.
Predicting? I mean…you’re a little late, bub. That shit’s been happening since the 80s. Blame Reagan.
It’s already been going on, now it will just increase in scale. The ICE detainees are being used for labor in the detention centers for fuck’s sake! At least prisoners are directly exempt in the law for being convicted of a crime (however corrupted the concept might be), detainees waiting for processing aren’t convicted of shit.
It’s not hard to predict something currently happening will continue to happen.
Phase 3: Expansion of laws to criminalise any vauge behaviour the govt decides is unacceptable.
When everyone is guilty, you can extort the funded class to look the other way and exploit the unfunded class by imprisonment and forced Labor. The legal system will be saturated by arrests for ‘disorderly conduct’, ‘resistimg arrest’ and ‘anti-governmemt activities’ faster than the courts can keep up with tossing out bogus charges. If you have money,you post bail and try really hard to behave yourself and not rock the boat. If you don’t have money, it’s off to the work farms for you.
Actually, I think I heard it first in the 1200s when Genghis Khan had similar concepts. He also would raze the village, kill the men and children, and rape the women…but give it time. Maybe that’s one of the provisions within “the big beautiful bill”. Maybe it’s coming next year.
…I don’t know if I should indicate that I’m joking. It’s the kind of joke where you laugh, but also it’s a nervous laugh because you no longer feel safe in your own country, and it REALLY feels like we need a new modern civil war to take out the trash like we did 200 years ago.
Its always the same formula
I heard it in The Shawshank Redemption first.
Cool Hand Luke, too
Can’t a man cut the heads off parking metres in the privacy of his own town without being treated like some sort of criminal?!
Who needs food anyway?
So that was written by AI, right?
It really felt like it, but it has a human’s name on the byline, fwiw. And there were some “rounded corners” that made me think a person edited it a fair bit.
human’s name on the byline
In a different magazine they used human names for their AI. Turned out the profile pics came from ThesePeopleDoNotExist
Good. Let them starve. Maybe they’ll do something about it.
Um…who’s “them” in this scenario? Because if the farms shut down, that means EVERYBODY starves. Can’t feed the public if there’s no food supply.
My guess is “them” = Americans? This (for now) is largely a “them” problem and it’s unlikely anyone will really push back until most people lose their bread and / or circuses. It makes sense. Most people want to just “be” and live peacefully, and will avoid disruptions until they can’t.
I hope they find a way to correct their government before things get to starvation though.
Do you think that the only food available in Texas is that which is grown in Texas?
They ain’t paying Mexico prices fer sure
Good.
