TheNovember Farm Foundation® Forum, Growing Together: Trends and Transformation in U.S. Agriculture Labor, highlighted some of the findings from a recent multi-day symposium that explored the future of the U.S. agricultural workforce. The symposium, held by Farm Foundation and the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aimed to convene a network of researchers and stakeholders to engage in productive discussions focused on farm labor issues. The primary goal was to strengthen and enhance ongoing farm labor research.
This forum highlighted the critical importance of farm labor to the competitiveness of US agriculture, particularly for labor-intensive commodities like fruits and vegetables. The discussion was moderated by Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, and featured panelists: Philip Martin Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis; Andrew Padovani, senior research associate with JBS International; and Alexandra Hill, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Forum covered a wide range of topics, including wage rates and competition, legislative and regulatory challenges, litigation and legal actions, mechanization and labor alternatives, and economic and demographic trends.
Numerous Issues to Consider
One point brought up was that there has been no significant agricultural labor reform since 1986, making it difficult to address current labor issues. Farmers must also contend with many new regulations, including those related to wage rates and worker protection. The impact of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate and competition with countries like Mexico was also discussed.
One solution to rising labor costs is a push toward mechanization, which brings about its own set of questions around adaptation to this change. In some cases, robotic harvesters are not yet fast enough or inexpensive enough to replace human hand pickers, but the gap may be closing fastest for crops like apples.
The H2-A program was also a large part of the discussion. The use of H-2A workers is increasing, but the program’s costs and regulatory requirements are significant. The anticipated impacts of the incoming administration on the potential for ag labor reform was also briefly discussed during audience question and answer session.
Overall, the Forum underscored the urgent need for comprehensive agricultural labor reform to ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of US agriculture. The discussions highlighted the complex interplay of wage rates, regulatory challenges, and the need for mechanization and alternative labor sources.
The two-hour discussion, including the audience question and answer session, was recorded and is archived on the Farm Foundation website.
A ‘For Sale’ sign is seen on March 19 in Austin, Texas. Policymakers are watching for indications of what President-elect Donald Trump plans to do to ease housing costs next year after an election where voters were laser-focused on the economy.
Americans hand over a huge chunk of their paycheck for a roof over their heads. Policymakers are looking out for indications of what President-elect Donald Trump plans to do to ease housing costs next year after an election where voters were laser-focused on the economy.
Housing accounted for 32.9% of consumers’ spending in 2023, making it the largest share of consumer expenditures, according to the most recently available data Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that was an increase of 5.7% from 2022.
This year, many Americans still struggle to find affordable housing, whether they choose to rent or buy a home.
There’s a lot economists and housing advocates still don’t know about what to expect from a second Trump term. It’s unclear which campaign promises will find their way into administrative rules or legislation, even with a Republican trifecta – the GOP will control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
But policy experts, researchers and economic analysts are looking at Trump’s record, his recent remarks on housing, and Project 2025 – the conservative Heritage Foundation’s 900-page plan to overhaul the executive branch – for a glimpse of what may lie ahead.
Tariffs and the cost of building homes
Trump has spoken frequently of his proposed 60% tariff on goods from China, which he has said would create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Tariffs could be as high as 20% on goods from other countries.
But housing economists and other experts say that could be bad news for building more affordable housing.
Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, a financial services company, said tariffs are one of her main concerns about the effects of a second Trump term.
“One of the biggest concerns is not just lumber [costs], but the overall cost of materials, which have been going up,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, a financial services company.
Construction material prices have risen 38.8% since February 2020, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors’ analysis of October Producer Price Index data.
Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning in the department of planning and landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said building costs are already high from tariffs on Canadian lumber that Trump first imposed and that the Biden administration kept and increased.
“It used to be in construction that you would get a bid from a contractor or a subcontractor or supplier and it would be good for 60 days. Now, the bids are good for like five days because you don’t know where prices are going to be,” he said.
Immigration policy and its effect on construction labor
Trump tweeted on Nov. 18 that he is planning to use the declaration of a national emergency as part of his mass deportation plan.
Besides disrupting lives, Trump’s plan could have effects on what it costs to build housing, Hepp said.
“There is the cost of labor as well, if we do indeed have all these deportations. That’s a big, big concern,” she said. “A large share of labor in the construction industry obviously comes from immigrants. That is a huge issue for new construction and particularly new construction as it relates to affordable housing.”
Foreign-born construction workers made up 3 million of the 11.9 million people who work in the construction industry in 2023, according to the latest American Community Survey data.
Trump’s ‘not in my backyard’ rhetoric
The former president hasn’t always been clear on where he stands with zoning regulations and making way for more affordable housing in a wide variety of neighborhoods.
In a July Bloomberg interview, Trump spoke critically of zoning regulations and said that they drive up housing costs. But Trump also has a record of tending toward a “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY, approach to housing that maintained some of these zoning regulations. The Trump administration moved to roll back an Obama-era regulation that tied HUD funding to assessing and reducing housing discrimination in neighborhoods.
“He’ll talk about reducing regulations on developers, but he’ll also use this NIMBYism talking about protecting suburbs from low-income housing and you really can’t have it both ways,” said Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy and field organizing at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Paulsen said Project 2025 embraces a pushback against anti-NIMBY approaches to expand multi-family housing.
“What I read in the Project 2025 documents is a clear statement that says every local community and neighborhood should be able to choose the housing it wants to accept or not. The challenge of that is that if every community in every neighborhood can veto housing, then we just don’t get enough housing and prices go up and prices and rents go up,” he said.
A more punitive approach to homelessness
Last year, homelessness rose to its highest level recorded since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began collecting this information in 2007. The ending of pandemic safety nets that gave some households better financial stability and a lack of affordable housing supply contributed to the number of unhoused people, the report explained.
Trump has been outspoken on his view that homeless people should be “off our streets.” The president-elect has also proposed putting unhoused people with mental health issues into “mental institutions.”
“There’s a movement that I think is largely reflected in Project 2025 that says, actually, cities need more coercive policy tools to enforce public order and to require that someone who’s camping take a shelter placement even if they don’t want it,” Paulsen said.
Saadian said that given the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which makes it easier to criminalize unhoused populations for sleeping outside, she’s worried about a changing political environment where policies that prioritize stable housing over policing fall out of favor.
“I think all of that just shows a culture shift in the political dynamic here that we’re definitely worried about,” she said.
President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday said he intends to tap Brooke Rollins, the president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, as USDA secretary. In this photo, Rollins speaks during an event on education at the institute on Jan. 28, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump Saturday announced his intent to name Brooke Rollins of Texas, the president and CEO of the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute, to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” Trump said in a statement.
Trump’s statement said Rollins is a graduate of Texas A&M University, with an undergraduate degree in agriculture development.
“From her upbringing in the small and Agriculture-centered town of Glen Rose, Texas, to her years of leadership involvement with Future Farmers of America and 4H, to her generational Family Farming background, to guiding her four kids in their show cattle careers, Brooke has a practitioner’s experience, along with deep Policy credentials in both Nonprofit and Government leadership at the State and National levels,” the statement said.
Multiple news reports Friday had quoted sources close to Trump saying he would name former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republican, as secretary of agriculture.
Billions in spending
Rollins, if confirmed by the Senate, would run a crucial agency that administers roughly $213 billion in mandatory and discretionary funding. The current secretary is Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa.
USDA manages food safety practices, conducts agriculture and conservation research, handles farm management and administers the government’s largest food benefits program for low-income families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The agency also provides federal grants for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.
During the first Trump administration, Rollins served in several roles, including with the Domestic Policy Council. She was also director of the Office of American Innovation, and assistant to the president for strategic initiatives, the statement said.
“In these roles, she developed and managed the transformational domestic policy agenda of the Trump Administration, leading to historic achievements for the American people,” according to her biography.
A conservative lawyer, Rollins earned her law degree at the University of Texas. Rollins later served as the policy director for former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who was the secretary of Energy in the first Trump administration.
Rollins also ran the Texas Public Policy Foundation — a conservative think tank — for 15 years.
Farm bill at a standstill
One big effort for the next secretary is to work with Congress to finalize the delayed farm bill that sets agriculture and conservation policy for the next five years. A big portion of the farm bill consists of the nutrition program, or SNAP.
USDA is also implementing portions of the Biden administration’s climate and clean energy program, known as the Inflation Reduction Act. Over the next five years, the IRA will provide USDA with about $20 billion for conservation programs that mitigate climate change.
Republicans have been critical of the climate law, and have vowed to claw back some of the funds.
Rollins is likely to work closely with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump says he will nominate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, if confirmed by the Senate, has publicly voiced his plans to influence the agriculture industry.
Tesla owner Elon Musk, right, was hardly alone in the tech sector in supporting the reelection efforts by Donald Trump, left. Many Silicon Valley investors and innovators were hoping for a lighter regulatory hand than they have seen under President Joe Biden. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Some venture capital investors, who have funded the tech boom in Silicon Valley and beyond, say they are excited by the prospect of a lighter regulatory environment under a new Trump Administration than they saw under President Joe Biden.
But they warn that Trump policies that will benefit many technology companies may come at a cost to other pro-Trump voters.
The Bay Area bubble of Silicon Valley, which is home to institutional tech giants like Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe, had been previously seen as a left-leaning region, like many other California communities. But the 2024 election was a unique one, venture capitalists and founders say.
“There’s been a significant shift in the valley rightward since the last election,” said Joe Endoso, a Silicon Valley investor. “And you’ve seen that in the financial flows — in the level of dollars — that were directed towards supporting President Trump’s campaign from the technology sector.”
Endoso, president of financial tech platform Linqto, said some tech industry people who previously voted for progressive issues and candidates this time cast their ballot for Trump. He said he’s heard more concern about potential regulations in the tech industry and negative economic effects under continued Democratic leadership.
This turn toward Trump wasn’t universal in the Valley. The majority of donations from employees at companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft went toward Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, Reuters reported in September. But tech billionaires like Elon Musk and venture capital investors, like Andreessen Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, poured millions into his campaign.
While Trump didn’t receive unanimous support from the tech sector, many American tech giants and investors are excited about the light-handed approach to tech regulation that’s likely to come in the next four years. Congress has struggled to pass any federal laws around emerging technology like AI, though states have done so on their own on issues like data privacy, transparency, discrimination, and on how AI-generated images can be used.
The Biden administration, however, on its own issued a number of “best practice” guides for emerging technologies and aggressively pursued antitrust cases against some tech giants, including an ongoing case against Google that could force the company to spin off its popular Chrome web browser.
It appears unlikely that Trump will continue the Biden era regulatory and enforcement drives.
Those working in emerging technologies like AI are making advancements so quickly that regulators are unlikely to be able to keep up anyway, Endoso said. The tech industry mindset — move fast and break things, first coined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — will likely continue under Trump’s administration.
“You’re running through walls and hoping that when the regulations come about, they’re not going to be so, you know, restrictive,” Endoso said. “But you’re not going to sit and wait for the regulators. You can’t afford to.”
Why care about the VC market?
Venture capitalists pour money into many promising startups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, looking for the ones that will create lucrative new technologies or “disrupt” existing ones. Silicon Valley successes include Uber, which received its first round of venture capital investment for just about $1.3 million in 2010, and Airbnb, which started with just a $20,000 investment in 2008. Today, the companies are worth $146 billion and $84 billion, respectively.
The high-risk, high-reward nature of the industry makes for a rarified business, and there’s a high barrier to entry. To become an accredited venture capital investor, one must have an income of at least $200,000 a year, or be worth $1 million. The handful of firms pouring the most money into the United States technology market are usually worth billions.
Yet, the technology being developed and funded by wealthy investors today will shape the next decade of everyone’s lives. Some of the most influential technology in the global economy has been released under President Joe Biden’s administration in the last three and a half years.
Advancements in generative AI and machine learning technology, rapid development of augmented and virtual reality, further adoption of cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, such as internet connected appliances and home devices, along with automation of many industries have already shifted much of American life. ChatGPT, one of the most recognizable examples of generative AI that the public can use, was only released two years ago, but the sector of generative AI is already threatening many American jobs.
Those with writing-focused careers like copywriters and social media marketers, are already feeling the disruption, and experts believe STEM professionals, educators and workforce trainers and others in creative and arts fields are going to see much of their job responsibilities automated by AI by 2030.
The venture capital market has been a volatile one over the last four years. Though many of Trump’s attacks on Democrats during his campaign cycle centered on the healthy economy under his first term, the COVID-19 pandemic was the single-biggest economic factor to disrupt the venture capital market and others.
The U.S. saw its biggest year for venture capital investments in 2021, but supply-chain issues and the continuing reliance on remote work changed the trajectory of many companies’ plans to go public on the stock market. High inflation and interest rates have kept many investors from deploying capital and many companies from completing mergers and acquisitions since then, although the second half of 2024 is looking up.
The economy quickly became the number one issue for Americans in the presidential election cycle. And though thriving venture capital markets usually benefit those that are already wealthy enough to invest, we’ll likely see a positive correlation in the general markets too, said Scott Nissenbaum, president and CEO of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, an innovation-centered fund in Pennsylvania.
“A thriving, efficient market is good for venture capital. And the flip side is also true,” he said. “We feed into and create the innovations and the efficiencies and the next generation … that create the robust and the boom.”
How investors and founders are preparing for Trump
Nissenbaum predicts that Trump may remove regulations for technology used by U.S. transportation and military systems, allowing for more tech integration than previously permitted without human safeguards in place. That might look like more flight optimization technology, or more drone usage by military branches. Nissenbaum also thinks Trump will attempt to open up space travel, especially with big backing by Musk, who runs SpaceX.
Health care also has been implementing technology rapidly, and Nissenbaum believes could see some major changes under Trump.
That is of note for healthtech founder Sipra Laddha, an Atlanta-based psychiatrist and cofounder of LunaJoy, which provides in-person and virtual wellness visits for women. The three-year-old company raised venture capital in 2022 and 2023, despite a more challenging fundraising market. Women’s health care companies saw a surge of VC investment in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, an exception to the generally slower investment market at the time.
But she is uncertain about how Trump’s potential cabinet appointees, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was appointed to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will affect LunaJoy’s operation. Kennedy has made health a key issue in his public advocacy and political activity, but he has also espoused eccentric and even false views on issues such as vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
“When women don’t have choices, mental health is significantly worse, and that’s something that goes on, often, for the entire time of that family’s trajectory,” Laddha said. “So I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen, but you know, those are certainly things that, as a women’s mental health company, we are looking at and watching closely to see what sort of legislation, rules and laws come out.”
When it comes to fundraising early next year, Laddha is optimistic. She’s focused on how fragmented the healthcare industry is right now, and plans to showcase how companies like hers will aim to integrate with larger health systems.
“Our role is to be really as disruptive as possible, and to bring to the forefront the most innovative solutions that we can do while still working within the current framework of healthcare that exists today,” she said.
Some sectors worry about Trump economic policy
While software and cloud-based technologists seem excited by the effects of deregulation, startup founders that make physical products, especially using microchip technology, are wary of Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on imported goods.
Samyr Laine, a managing partner at Los Angeles-based Freedom Trail Capital, specializes in consumer tech and consumer packaged goods. Laine said he feels a sense of relief in ending the “uncertainty” around who will take the presidency the next four years, but he predicts many founders will feel the costly effects of Trump’s planned tariffs, and pass those additional costs to consumers.
Though the existing companies in his portfolio won’t be hit too hard, it’s a factor they’ll be forced to review when considering investments in companies in the future. Those that will incur the additional costs of imported goods will have to adjust their profit margins and might not be as attractive to investors.
“As a consumer and someone who isn’t in the space, not to be like a fear monger, but expect that some of the things you typically pay for, the price will go up,” Laine said.
The effect on work
Although Trump was successful in picking up a significant amount of tech industry elite support this election season, much of his voter base is working class people who will not feel the positive effects of tech industry deregulation.
Endoso, the Silicon Valley investor and founder, says the Trump coalition of tech entrepreneurs and working-class voters represents “a division between the haves and the have-nots.” The usual basis on which people pick their electoral preferences, like race, geography, income and proximity to city life, were “shattered” this time around.
“It was a revolt of the working class, at least in my view,” he said.
The advancements of AI and machine learning, which will enrich the investor class, will have large implications on employment for those working class voters. The vast majority of Americans who are not college educated, and work physical jobs, might struggle to thrive, he said. We’ll likely see overhauls of industries as robots replace and automate a majority of physical labor in warehouses, and self-driving vehicles take over jobs like long-haul trucking and ride services such as Uber and Lyft.
“I think those are important questions to be asking from a policy standpoint, and I think that the intelligent answers shouldn’t be ‘let’s shut the innovation down.’” Endoso said. “That didn’t work in 19th century England. It won’t work here today, right? But it does require our rethinking the definition of work, and the definition of how you … organize a society along lines where you don’t need to have the same level of maybe direct labor input as we had in the past.”
Nissenbaum agreed, saying that AI has already begun to leak into every field and industry, and will only continue to disrupt how we work. As revolutionary as the internet and internet companies were in the late 1990s, the web has become the infrastructure for artificial intelligence to become more efficient and effective at everything it does.
With lighter regulation under a new Trump administration, we’re likely to see AI develop at unpredictable rates, he said. And laborers will definitely be feeling the effects over the next four years.
“You’re not going to lose your job to AI,” Nissenbaum said. “You’re going to lose your job to someone who understands how to do your job with AI.”
Wisconsin dairy CAFO (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin DNR)
Two environmental advocacy groups want a review of the wastewater permit issued by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to a Kewaunee County large concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO).
The Midwest Environmental Advocates and Environmental Law and Policy Center filed a petition asking for the review, saying it was needed to address the “DNR’s failure to include necessary conditions to fulfill its duty to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the state” when it granted the permit.
In 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the DNR had the authority to impose stricter regulations on CAFOs, including requiring operators to monitor for groundwater pollution and limiting the number of animals that can be housed to protect water quality. The agency has since faced some push back when it comes to its ability to regulate.
“This case is about making sure CAFOs are held accountable to Wisconsin’s environmental laws by a DNR that isn’t afraid to exercise its authority,” Midwest Environmental Advocates Staff Attorney Adam Voskuil said in a statement.
The permit in question was granted to Pagels Ponderosa, one of the largest dairy farms in Wisconsin with over 11,000 cows, in August.
The two environmental advocacy groups are representing the Clean Water Action Council of Northeast Wisconsin, Friends of the Forestville Dam and a Kewaunee County resident whose private drinking water well has been contaminated by nitrates. According to the petition, the groups are concerned about the impact of Pagels Ponderosa’s manure management practices on the health of their families, drinking water and the lakes, rivers and streams in the area.
Pagels Ponderosa’s cows, according to the petition, are housed in separate facilities located within five miles of one another located close to Kewaunee River. The facilities generate over 100,000,000 gallons of manure annually, and the fields where the CAFO spreads the manure are in a part of the state that is susceptible to groundwater contamination, the petition states.
“Before the final permit was issued, many community members who participated in the DNR’s public hearing process expressed concerns about the impact of Pagels’ manure spreading practices on our groundwater and surface water,” Christine Reid, of Friends of the Forestville Dam, said in a statement. “But the DNR ignored our concerns and approved the permit without any meaningful changes to protect our water resources.”
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