This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Doug Sackman is a history professor at the University of Puget Sound.
The has , with agents from across the country .
Now, farmers are facing a : not enough people to pick crops.
On , President Donald Trump said, 鈥淲e can鈥檛 let our farmers not have anybody.鈥� To assure farmers that he had their back despite the immigration raids, he sought to distinguish immigrants he called 鈥渃riminals鈥� and 鈥渕urderers鈥� from nonthreatening for years.
To do so, for farmworkers: 鈥淭hese people do it naturally, naturally.鈥� Trump recounted asking a farmer: 鈥淲hat happens if they get a bad back? He said, 鈥楾hey don鈥檛 get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.鈥欌��
鈥淚n many ways, they鈥檙e very, very special people,鈥� said Trump, referring to undocumented farmworkers.
Trump is labeling some of the people his administration has targeted for deportation as naturals.
As a , I think the Trump administration鈥檚 contradictions on farmworkers are part of a long history of idealizing farming in America. It鈥檚 a history in which race, nature, exploitation and the very identity of America itself have all been involved.
From Jefferson to Sunkist
, most famous for writing the Declaration of Independence, also declared, 鈥淭hose who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.鈥�
was to be an agrarian nation, for virtuous and independent farmers would also be perfect citizens. But Jefferson didn鈥檛 actually get his own . He told that he 鈥渒new nothing鈥� about farming.
The Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, in ,鈥� crystallized the critiques against what came to be called 鈥�,鈥� which praises agricultural life and the virtues of farmers, but fails to acknowledge it was not the planters who did the backbreaking work: 鈥溾�榃e plant seeds in the South. We create.鈥� Yeah, keep ranting: We know who鈥檚 really doing the planting.鈥�
The image of America built up by white farmers contrasted with a reality that 鈥渢hose who labour in the earth鈥� were often enslaved people. As the cotton empire expanded, so did slavery.
Apologists for this system of inequality argued that the 鈥溾�� of Black people was to be enslaved. Black people were portrayed as natural manual laborers 鈥� and by extension, the institution of slavery itself was defended as natural, rather than an abrogation of the 鈥渘atural rights鈥� promised to all men in .
American agricultural leaders in the early 20th century, as I document in my book 鈥�,鈥� adapted these forms of 鈥渘aturalization鈥� 鈥� the process, as , through which man-made things such as racial hierarchies are made to appear natural.
In this naturalizing mode, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce argued in 1929 that 鈥渕uch of California鈥檚 agricultural labor requirements consist of those tasks to which the oriental and Mexican due to their crouching and bending habits are fully adapted, while the white is physically unable to adapt himself to them.鈥�
, the president of the citrus growers cooperative Sunkist insisted in 1944 that Mexicans 鈥渁re naturally adapted to agricultural work, particularly in the handling of fruits and vegetables.鈥�
Through this naturalization, racism appeared to be made in nature. Everything in farming 鈥� all of the food grown in what author Carey McWilliams called 鈥渇actories in the field鈥� in his 1939 鈥� was carefully constructed by farmers, their lobbyists and their advertisers to appear natural. That includes the racism and at the heart of it.
While naturalizing workers as evolutionarily adapted to stoop labor, this system all but to the other kind of naturalization: .
So when anti-immigrant ideology sparks ICE raids and deportations, the nation鈥檚 farms end up losing the labor they have long relied on.
Whose homeland?
On X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been presenting itself as if it鈥檚 on a mission to secure a white homeland. It has posted of white people enjoying America鈥檚 natural wonders to the tune of Woody Guthrie鈥檚 鈥淭his Land is Your Land鈥� and , the idea that the U.S. is destined to extend its dominion across North America.
Homeland Security recently posted John Gast鈥檚 1872 painting 鈥溾�� as a 鈥淗eritage to be proud of.鈥� It depicts a luminous white goddess flying west over the American landscape, with white farmers plowing the soil beneath, while petrified Native Americans, shrouded in darkness, are being chased from their homelands.
As and have pointed out, Homeland Security is using coded messages to affirm white supremacists鈥� vision of turning America into a white homeland.
today, , as if the Gast painting is coming to life. The United Farm Workers union, referring to 鈥渧ideos of agents chasing farm workers thru the field,鈥� says that 鈥�.鈥� One worker said they are 鈥�.鈥�
鈥楪rounds for dreaming鈥�
Trump told CNBC that he does not believe that 鈥溾�� people can come to the rescue of farmers, whose .
As , Trump is now floating the idea of expanding an existing visa program for temporary agricultural workers and creating a new program that requires them to leave the U.S. before reentering legally. If so, he would essentially be reinventing the Bracero Program 鈥� with Mexico created at the behest of California growers during World War II that lasted until the 1960s.
Ian Chandler is an whose cherries are rotting on the trees because he鈥檚 lost the farmworkers who normally pick them. He that these people 鈥渁re part of our community, just like my arm is connected to my body, they are part of us. So it鈥檚 not just a matter of like cutting them off 鈥� if we lose them we lose part of who we are as well.鈥�
The Spanish word bracero roughly translates to someone who works with their arms, but the earlier guest worker program didn鈥檛 have the same inclusive meaning Chandler intends. Instead, it racialized Mexicans as natural farmworkers, as mere brawn extracted from human beings who were .
As , 鈥淪umner Welles, former under secretary of state to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excoriated the 鈥榩oisoning discriminations鈥� faced by bracero workers and equated their experiences with the 鈥楯uan Crow鈥� racism.鈥�
Over the course of its history, many Americans have held out hope that the U.S. would create a farming nation that lives up to the original promise of an organic democracy 鈥� the democracy Jefferson mythologized and one where all Americans are included 鈥� built from the ground up.
As historians and have shown, farmworkers, whatever their official status, have worked hard to find 鈥済rounds for dreaming鈥� in America.
Making that American dream a reality involves seeing farmworkers for who they are, I believe: vital members of the body politic who reconnect all Americans to nature through the foods they eat.
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