Free Republic

During the past seven years, the cost to California lettuce growers of complying with the state’s environmental, labor and food safety regulations has increased by a whopping 63.7%, according to a study commissioned by the Monterey County Farm Bureau and prepared by Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, professors Lynn Hamilton, Ph.D., and Michael McCullough, Ph.D.

California farmers could soon enjoy bumper crops thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to lift water restrictions. But who will pick them if he follows through on his deportation threats? The country’s largest agricultural constituency backed Trump in November, bucking California’s deep-blue electorate over his campaign promises to “open the faucet” and deliver more water to the state’s parched, conservative-leaning Central Valley. But now it’s reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction: Trump also campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who make up at least half of the state’s agricultural workforce. That’s left California’s agricultural barons, who employ the most farm...