I had a realization today while weeding my vegetable garden on a warm day. I’m fairly recent to gardening and I flatter myself thinking I am getting the hang of it and actually growing food that we eat. As I weeded the plants, I realized how important weeding and tending the plants is to their eventual food yield.

I suddenly realized how much physical, sweat labor is required to grow food. It’s backbreaking and unending and we’d all starve quickly in my house if we depended on my garden’s yield for survival. Humans have understood this for eons, but perhaps some are forgetting.

Today’s immigrants are the backbone of the U.S. food growing system. Without them, and their labor, store shelves would be appreciably barer, like during COVID, and prices would be appreciably higher. The dependence on mechanization and AI isn’t going to make the difference.

The Trump administration’s attitude and stance toward immigrants is misguided, self-defeating and fails to understand the reality of America’s food production system. We’ve heard it said, “No farms, no food.” Without migrant people and the labor they provide, many farms stop providing food. We should be grateful for the backbreaking labor that migrant people do to keep our store shelves full. Immigrants are valuable and worthy for their very being, regardless of their labor, but let’s be real about their work contribution, sacrifices and value to our survival.

Ed Ferreira
New Sharon