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Multiple Texas Farms Shut Down After ‘Almost 100%’ Of Workforce Vanishes Overnight | animalplanethq.com (animalplanethq.com)
submitted 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
46 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Mark my words Republicans will turn to using convict labor to harvest crops before they ever turn on Trump or admit any faults.

Step1: Round up undocumented immigrants and criminals.

Step2: Put them in prison for “crimes”.

Step3: Profit! Lease them to farms for $1 a day. Since slavery is legal if you are incarcerated. Republicans are going to build an entire underclass of criminals who will do these jobs.

Bonus: None of the brown people or criminals will be able to vote because they are now felons. Farmers will cry and vote Republican if anyone even suggests doing away with the prison industrial system.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 53 minutes ago

So slavery with more steps?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago

It's too bad that I don't give a fuck about farmers who voted to arrest their workforce. Put on a cowboy hat and harvest your produce yourself. This is what you wanted.

If you didn't notice, I also hate cowboys.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

They voted for this.

Let them figure it out.

If you own property, start a garden. You’re likely going to need it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Pfff the others Accept it.
US full of hypocrites.
Happy dying

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

" you vote for what i campaigned, on deal with it"-trump

[–] [email protected] 10 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

inb4 they make children and prisoners do it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

why use prisoners? they are detaining countless immigrants, they might put them on forced labour.

so Immigrants will have to work the fields for no pay.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I'm sure there are plenty of Republicans willing to take a job for shit pay that is back breaking and dangerous right?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Finally the jerbs they wanted arrived. So lucky. /s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

It really is wonderful, I could only wish to have the government give me my dream job, and these Republicans just get handed a golden opportunity, it's like Charlie and the golden ticket, I will go down and congrat them on the big winnings and bestest deals while they are knee deep in pig shit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Good.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I wonder how many of these farmers in Texas voted for Trump? My guess is the majority of them. You reap what you sow.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Actually this year is "Nobody reaps what you've sown and it rots in the field" but that's not as succinct.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

It's one of those rare moments when both something and its opposite are objectivelly true.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Who needs food anyway?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Good. Let them starve. Maybe they’ll do something about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Texas exports a lot to Mexico and Canada. This is not something that will only affect the US. Here's a link for some of that if you're curious.

https://ustr.gov/map/state-benefits/tx

[–] [email protected] 12 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Do you think that the only food available in Texas is that which is grown in Texas?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

They ain't paying Mexico prices fer sure

[–] [email protected] 10 points 16 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Even "better", only people with the right connections will have access to this slave labour, so only very wealthy or very Fascist farmers will get their harvests harvested.

Win, win, win for Fascism in the US.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

Don't forget the chillun, unless they only yearn for the mines... ☹

[–] [email protected] 23 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

No, that's phase 3. Phase 2 is foreclosures, bankruptcy, and buying at insanely discounted rates. THEN it's ~~slave~~prison labor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

You're still off by 1, before you can have prison labor they're going to have to make disagreeing with the government punishable by forced labor. Then they're going to farm all of the social media and lock everyone up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

I thought that was phases 3 then 4, phase 2 was building debtors prisons,

[–] [email protected] 7 points 16 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago

Its always the same formula

[–] [email protected] 31 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

I have been predicting the return of slavery wide scale via prisoners for years.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Predicting? I mean.....you're a little late, bub. That shit's been happening since the 80s. Blame Reagan.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

One of the few things Reagan did that was ok was granting amnesty to migrant workers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

It’s not hard to predict something currently happening will continue to happen.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 18 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I heard it in The Shawshank Redemption first.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Cool Hand Luke, too

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

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?!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

So that was written by AI, right?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Disappointing to see such slop so heavily upvoted just because it fits what people want to see.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 13 hours ago

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