“I’ve employed Americans, and they quit after a few days. They quit after a few hours.” — Tracy Vinz (Wisconsin organic farm owner)
This lack of hustle is why American farmers have to use non-American labor. I could sneer that my fellow citizens are spoiled. But that’s unfair. I wouldn’t want to work long, back-breaking hours in heat and rain for little money — and no benefits.
The only way this will change is if farmers pay American workers what the American worker is prepared to do the job for. Of course, this would mean every American who eats would have to pay more for food. Luckily, there are millions of Central and South Americans begging to keep groceries relatively affordable in the US.
The Biden administration recognized this win-win situation. In June 2024, the USDA announced a modestly budgeted program:
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is awarding $50 million to 141 awardees in 40 states and Puerto Rico, through the Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program (FLSP Program), reaching 177 unique agricultural operations and over 11,000 workers.
The awards will help improve the resiliency of the US food supply chain by addressing agriculture labor challenges and instability, strengthen protections for farmworkers, and expand legal pathways for labor migration.
This initiative was not a case of a Republican government doling out huge awards to industrial agriculture. It was a Democratic administration underpinning the family farmer. We can debate the wisdom of farm subsidies. But, if we are going to have them, let them go to people who get dirt under their nails and who don’t head for their yacht when the sun shines.
JJ Ficken (37) was one of these small farmers. He received a financial commitment from the USDA. The Washington Post explained what happened next. (CLICK HERE for the whole story. Paywall should be down)
“The federal government had promised JJ a $200,000 grant, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In a place where local, legal help was nearly impossible to keep, the extra worker would give him the freedom to handle more jobs and invest in his own equipment.
It was an opportunity that could transform his family’s future, but, JJ explained to his friend, President Donald Trump had frozen the money.”
JJ’s friend proved his MAGA bona fides with a stunning lack of empathy. WaPo reported the conversation thus:
“Good,” the man said, grinning. “Too much spending here and there. I’m okay with a little hurt.”
JJ took a breath.
“It needed to be done,” JJ said, softly, because he was also a Republican who, like nearly every farmer he knew, thought the country wasted too much money.
“But not all of it,” JJ said, because he rejected the notion that his grant was a waste.
“I guess,” JJ said, because he didn’t want to argue.
Bring out the whips. Let the self-flagellation begin. These schmucks are so deluded by the propaganda they will vote to shoot themselves in the financial foot in order to install a regime operatic in its corruption.
Yes, JJ and JJ’s friend, you will feel the pain. But not one of the people you voted for will suffer so much as a financial hangnail. MAGA politicians will remain snout-deep in the public trough — while calculating their future earnings from corporate sponsors.
The rich will see their taxes cut. Corporations will no longer have their profits troubled by health and environmental regulations. And the orange malignancy sitting on the top of the manure pile of avarice will add billion-dollar bribes — and a fancy plane — to his balance sheet.
And none of them will give a shit about JJ and his callous friend.
Of course, it is not just Ficken who has discovered that when Trump said, “I will protect American farmers,” he was lying through his porcine teeth. The Biden program was national. It underwrote farmers from red Florida to blue Washington.
However, as the program was agricultural, it favored conservatives. It wasn’t Seattle’s white wine-swilling, pronoun purists who were promised federal funds. It was the East of the Cascades, Northern good old boys who planned their financial futures on the funds that Trump kiboshed.
Take JJ. He may be a citizen of blue Colorado. But he lives in Kirk, a two-hour drive east of Denver. This rural hamlet is in Yuma County. There, a full 81.6% of the locals supported Trump. Now, these farmers are reaping what they sowed. Have none of these benighted souls ever thought for themselves? The Kool-Aid must flow freely in those parts.
As much as I want to curse JJ for enabling America’s neo-fascism, I am struck by his essential decency. And gobsmacked by his naivety. WaPo adds this:
“I tried to do things right,” JJ said, because he could have taken on an undocumented laborer at any time for $14 an hour, as many of his neighbors had, but he didn’t believe in supporting illegal immigration.
Almost nothing mattered more to him than his word, and he’d kept it to the US government: He’d committed to buy a plane ticket for a 24-year-old from Guatemala named Otto Vargas. He’d rented him a single-wide. He’d bought him an old pickup to use. He’d spent tens of thousands of dollars to do what the grant required, covering most of it with a line of credit at 8.5 percent interest.
Now, he didn’t know if Otto would ever get here, or if the government would ever pay him back.
In some ways, he is like a small child who breaks a plate. You are mad at him, but you understand he didn’t intend to cause harm. Then you remember that JJ is 37. And it’s time he got his head out of his ass.
If JJ wants to live in a country where citizens are honor-bound to keep their word, he should vote Democratic. I make no representation that the left is without fault or blemish. But unlike the right, they do not make lying a political norm. Nor is dishonesty baked into their DNA.
And let no one claim to be surprised by Trump’s actions. In 2016, Americans had not yet witnessed the totality of Trump’s depravity. But by the 2024 election, only morons could still think that there was any probity lurking in this crook’s self-serving immorality. Or they did indeed know their man — and voted for him out of pure bigotry.
JJ’s friend said he was “Ok with a little hurt.” So am I (theirs not mine) if it means that JJ and his fellow self-harming fellow travelers finally understand that if they want a government that works for them, they’ve got to stop voting Republican. I am not holding my breath.
