Hutterites originated in Austria, but moved from country to country for 300 years, persecuted for their communal life and property ownership, nonviolence, pacifism, adult baptism and unwillingness to swear oaths of allegiance. In 1874, Czar Alexander II withdrew Catherine the Great’s century-old commitment to allow Hutterites to live in peace, without compulsory military service. So a delegation went to North America, looking for land. When they returned, the great migration began.

Hutterite travellers bought tickets in steerage, the cheapest spot on a steamship. They brought wicker baskets and burlap sacks full of food, provisions to feed themselves and their families during the two-week voyage as well as the long trek west, and “hope chests” of seeds for their new gardens in their new land. The voyage was arduous, and some travellers died; children whose parents didn’t survive became wards of close relatives.

The Dakota Territories had been selected as the target: in the western U.S., land was plentiful and inexpensive. The U.S. government had passed the Naturalization Act of 1870, which prioritized white European-born settlers at the expense of would-be Chinese arrivals. Indigenous residents at that point were being forced onto reservations by government-led wars across the Plains, along with the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act, which ended treaty negotiations. Hutterite emigrants who had been successful farmers but left everything behind had hope of buying land, without any knowledge of the Indigenous nations who were forced off their territories to make room for white settlers.

Some Hutterites settled at established U.S. colonies (brotherhoods or bruderhofs, in three Hutterite sects) in South Dakota, while others, known as prairieleit, or “prairie people” opted for private land ownership near Freeman, South Dakota. They stayed for some years, then traveled north across the Medicine Line in early 1900 to take up residence in the North-West Territories of Canada, in what would become known as Alberta and Saskatchewan.

My ancestors, all prairieleit, settled around the towns of Borden, Langham, Dalmeny and Radisson, west of Saskatoon along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, flat and fertile land that surely struck a note of recognition in the eyes of the travelers from Ukraine. Individual men bought land and proved up ground for homesteads. Women dug in their storage chests and pulled out shriveled seeds they had carefully sequestered when they left the old country. Gardens were planted, hardy crops similar to what they’d grown in their fields close to the Sea of Azuv: wheat, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and beets.

Those vegetables, especially the beets, were a lodestar for the homes left behind. Eating beets is the closest we come to eating a mouthful of minerals. Densely textured, richly coloured and earthy, even in seed form, beets are reminiscent of dirt. So roast your roots, and share them. First we eat. Then we’ll share stories of our ancestors.

Next time: the Irish famine and potatoes.

Cooking beets — and what to do with them 

Beets are easy to cook, in a rainbow of colours: purple, white, golden and Chioggia — concentric pink circles shot through with white. Purple are most intensely flavoured, followed in descending order; the palest colours are mildest. Shape influences flavour, too; oval beets are milder than round ones.

Refrigerated beets keep for months if they are wrapped in paper towels in airtight containers or plastic bags.

Beets can be steamed, boiled or roasted. Stovetop cooking is messy if beets leak all over the stovetop. Use the oven! To roast beets, wrap half a dozen beets of similar size in a double layer of foil, and toss them into a hot oven. They cook more quickly in small packets than on large covered trays. Large beets take an hour at least to roast. Squeeze to test for doneness; they should give under your fingers. 

Peel beets after cooking; raw beets bleed profusely if they are peeled or sliced, so cook them clothed. Let them cool a bit, then rub them with a tea towel to slip them out of their skins. Anthocyanin, the colour in purple beets, is water-soluble, but is set by acids. Wash your hands before you get lemon juice on those purple stains, or they endure as long as henna hand painting. Toss purple beets minimally to avoid staining everything. Keep them separate from other components until the last minute, or toss them in separate bowls and serve them side by side. 

For a stellar winter salad, serve golden beets on red leaf lettuce or radicchio, and red beets on green leaf or with spears of Belgian endive. Then choose a red-skinned apple to slice beside the golden beets, and a green-skinned apple to pair with the red beets. Top with citrus vinaigrette, a bit of chèvre and some toasted nuts. 

Cooked beets are great in salads, risotto and pasta, wearing only olive oil and fruit-based vinegar, or dressed up. Many flavours love beets: cabbages, radicchio and endive; nuts and nut oils; all citrus; vanilla; apples; mustard or dill are classic pairings, as is duck, and all cured or smoked pork. Potatoes and beets make red flannel hash; cabbage and onions combine with beets to make borscht, with or without meat. Try sparing amounts of sweet spices such as paprika, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, cinnamon or allspice; add handfuls of herbs such as tarragon, chives, dill, fennel or parsley. Use beets in chocolate cakes, sorbets or ice creams, as a reminder that beets are a source of sugar.

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“It is time to end the danger posed by illegal immigrant and foreign national truck drivers who are not capable of safely operating an 18-wheel commercial vehicle or, in many cases, understanding English language warning signs and road instructions,” Van Duyne said in a news release.

Among those falling under the bill’s definition of “ineligible foreign nationals” are apparently Canadian commercial drivers because it proposes to remove the licensing reciprocity agreement the United States has with foreign countries.

Currently the only countries to have such agreements with the U.S. are Canada and Mexico.

The bill goes on to require any non-resident holder of a state-issued commercial driver’s license to prove residency in that state.

It would seem that this would prevent Canadian drivers from entering the U.S. with a Canadian licence or obtaining a recognized U.S. licence, meaning only U.S. drivers could handle cross-border freight hauls with Canadian carriers effectively shut out.

This is how Section 3 of the proposed bill describes it: “Not later than six months after the date of enactment of this aAct, the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration shall take such actions as are necessary to terminate any existing reciprocity agreements that recognize foreign commercial driver’s licenses in the United States or permit holders of foreign commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) to operate a commercial motor vehicle in the United States, unless expressly authorized by statute.”

Reciprocity for Canadian CDLs stems from a notice published in the FMCSA Register as of May 1989.

The U.S. government shutdown at the time of writing made it impossible to get further comment for this article.

In her online press release, Van Duyne said the bill is in response to an immigration crackdown and a high-profile commercial motor vehicle collision that involved an immigrant driver.

That incident and another fatality crash have spurred a number of government actions in the U.S. aimed at immigrant drivers, including a rule that drivers must pass a roadside English proficiency exam by traffic officers or be placed out of service. In some cases, the truck can be impounded.

Van Duyne’s bill hasn’t yet passed, but if it did and reciprocity was terminated, the disruption to cross-border trade and Canadian commercial carriers would be enormous.

When contacted, a Canadian Trucking Alliance spokesperson said the bill hadn’t yet been brought to its attention and the organization would need time to study it before commenting.

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Rollins said the administration wants a 100 per cent American workforce and suggested some people receiving government aid could replace immigrant workers.

“Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure. And then also, when you think about, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America,” she said at a press conference outside the Department of Agriculture headquarters.

Most adults on Medicaid work full- or part-time or are not working due to illness or disability, caregiving, or school attendance, according to a May brief by the health policy organization KFF.

The farm sector has warned that mass deportation of farm workers would disrupt the U.S. food supply. In June, the Trump administration signaled it might pause raids on some farm worksites. It has since reversed course.

Trump’s tax-cut and spending bill, passed on July 3, introduces work requirements for Medicaid, which the Congressional Budget Office has said is expected to leave nearly 12 million people uninsured.

Later on Tuesday, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said at a cabinet meeting at the White House that the Department of Labor had developed a new office to work with farmers and ranchers, but did not provide more details.

The Labor Department oversees the H-2A program, which provides seasonal visas for agricultural workers.

Farmland owned by ‘adversaries’

Rollins also said at the press conference that the USDA will curb farmland purchases by “foreign adversaries,” including China, and terminate agreements and contracts with people and entities from those countries.

Asked about land already owned by Chinese-owned companies Syngenta and Smithfield Foods, Rollins said the administration is still considering its options.

“You’ll likely see an executive order on this very soon from the White House and we’ll be looking at multiple different authorities within the federal government to begin to claw that back,” Rollins said.

In 2023, Arkansas ordered Syngenta to sell 160 acres (65 hectares) of farmland under a state law barring some foreign entities from acquiring or holding land.

Twenty-six states limit or ban foreign businesses, governments or nationals from owning private farmland, according to the National Agricultural Law Center, and some of those laws have faced legal challenges.

Only about 3.4 per cent of U.S. farmland is owned by foreign entities, and Canada owns the largest share, about 30 per cent, according to the USDA.

Rollins said she will be a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, “as of this afternoon.” The interagency body reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security threats.

Bipartisan lawmakers have supported limits on ownership of farmland by foreign countries, citing national security concerns.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership told field office heads during a call on Monday that it would roll back a directive issued last week that largely paused raids on the businesses, the former officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss the new guidance.

ICE officials were told a daily quota to make 3,000 arrests per day — 10 times the average last year during former President Joe Biden’s administration – would remain in effect, the former officials said. ICE field office heads had raised concerns they could not meet the quota without raids at the businesses that had been exempted, one of the sources said.

It was not clear why last week’s directive was reversed. Some ICE officials left the call confused, and it appeared they would still need to tread carefully with raids on the previously exempted businesses, the former officials said.

‘No safe spaces’

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said ICE would continue to make arrests at worksites but did not respond to questions about the new guidance.

“There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Washington Post first reported the reversal.

Trump took office in January aiming to deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. ICE doubled the pace of arrests under Trump compared with last year but still remains far below what would be needed to deport millions of people.

Top White House aide Stephen Miller ordered ICE in late May to dramatically increase arrests to 3,000 per day, leading to intensified raids that prominently targeted some businesses.

‘Chaos and confusion since the beginning’

Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday that farms and hotel businesses had been suffering from the ramped up enforcement but also said, without evidence or explanation, that criminals were trying to fill those jobs.

ICE issued guidance that day pausing most immigration enforcement at agricultural, hospitality and food processing businesses. But in another Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump called on ICE to target the Democratic strongholds of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York and to use the full extent of their authority to increase deportations.

A White House official said Trump was keeping a promise to deliver the country’s single largest mass deportation program.

“Anyone present in the United States illegally is at risk of deportation,” the White House official said.

Deborah Fleischaker, who held senior roles at both DHS and ICE during Biden’s presidency, said the shifting ICE guidance reflects broader turmoil at the agency since Trump took office. The White House has ousted multiple ICE leaders as it pressed for more arrests.

“It has been chaos and confusion since the beginning,” she said.

Farmers push back

The intensified ICE enforcement after Miller’s late May order renewed long-running concerns among farmers about ICE operations targeting their workforce. Nearly half the nation’s approximately 2 million farm workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor and Agriculture, as do many dairy and meatpacking workers.

Farm industry fears escalated last week when ICE detentions and arrests of workers were reported at California farms, a Nebraska meatpacking plant and a New Mexico dairy.

Livestock and restaurant sector representatives said on a press call organized by the American Business Immigration Coalition on Tuesday that raids make operations more difficult in their heavily immigrant-dependent industries.

“The people pushing for these raids that target farms and feedyards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,” said Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association.

Michael Marsh, CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, said farm groups had not had enough input into the administration’s decision-making so far on immigration enforcement in agriculture.

Marsh said he had not received responses from Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins, Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials to a letter sent last week requesting a meeting.

“We’ve got a serious issue if we have almost a million of our workers that are going to be subject to deportation,” he said. “Because if that’s the case, and they are picked up and they are gone, we can’t fill those positions.”

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The order to scale back U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids came from Trump himself, the person familiar with the matter said, and appears to rein in a late-May demand by top White House aide Stephen Miller for more aggressive sweeps.

Trump was not aware of the extent of the enforcement push and “once it hit him, he pulled it back,” the person said.

New orders to come

The new directive, issued on Thursday, still allows for investigations into serious crimes such as human trafficking. The New York Times first reported the guidance.

Trump took office in January pledging to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. While Trump framed the effort around removing serious criminals, thousands of suspected immigration offenders with no criminal records have been swept up in recent months.

ICE’s more aggressive tactics – including raids in Los Angeles – have sparked protests and pushback from Democrats. Some Republican lawmakers have called on the administration to focus on criminal offenders.

Trump said on Thursday that he would issue an order soon to address the effects of his immigration crackdown on the country’s farm and hotel industries, which rely heavily on immigrant labor.

“We will follow the president’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement when asked about the new ICE guidance.

Farm groups skeptical of promised changes

The White House pointed to a Trump social media post on Thursday where he said farms and hospitality businesses were concerned the administration’s far-reaching immigration enforcement was taking away “very good, long time workers” and promising changes.

U.S. farm industry groups have long wanted Trump to spare their sector from mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain dependent on immigrants.

The United Farm Workers union said on Friday that it was skeptical the new directive would help workers without legal status. The group said it had calls from members about immigration arrests even after the new directive was issued.

“As long as Border Patrol and ICE are allowed to sweep through farm worker communities making chaotic arrests…they are still hunting down farm workers,” the union said in a statement.

— Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco, Ismail Shakil in Ottawa, Anusha Shah in Bengaluru.

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“Our farmers are being hurt badly and we’re going to have to do something about that… We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think,” Trump said at a White House event, adding that the order would address the hotels sector, too.

He did not say what changes the order would implement or when it would take effect. Representatives for the White House and Department of Homeland Security had no specific comment about the order, while representatives at the Department of Agriculture could not be immediately reached.

“We will follow the president’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

Reliance on immigration

U.S. farm industry groups have long wanted Trump to spare their sector from mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain dependent on immigrants.

Nearly half of the nation’s approximately 2 million farm workers and many dairy and meatpacking workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor and Agriculture.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told CNBC that Trump was reviewing all possible steps but that Congress would have to act.

Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a leading farm lobby, said on Thursday that farm workers were key to the nation’s food supply.

“If these workers are not present in fields and barns, there is a risk of supply-chain disruptions similar to those experienced during the pandemic,” Duvall said in a statement.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in labor shortages and supply-chain snarls, with meat plants forced to idle and dairy farms to dump milk, and consumers encountering emptier shelves at grocery stores.

Trump acknowledges impacts

In recent days, demonstrations have been taking place in major U.S. cities to protest immigration raids.

Trump is carrying out his campaign promise to deport immigrants in the country illegally. But protesters and some Trump supporters have questioned the targeting of those who are not convicted criminals, including in places of employment such as those that sparked last week’s protests in Los Angeles.

On Thursday, Trump acknowledged the impact of the crackdown on sectors such as the hotel industry, which includes his company. The Trump Organization has said Trump’s adult sons are running his business.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote on his social media platform. “Changes are coming!”

Farmers have a legal option for hiring temporary or seasonal labor with the H-2A visa program, which allows employers to bring in seasonal workers if they can show there are not enough U.S. workers willing, qualified and available to do the job.

Rollins said Trump was “looking at every potential tool in the toolkit” and pointed to the length of the temporary H-2A visas.

The president understands that we can’t feed our nation or the world without that labor force, and he’s listening to the farmers on that,” she told CNBC.

—Reporting by Jeff Mason, Susan Heavey and P.J. Huffstutter; additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya, Aatreyee Dasgupta, Leah Douglas and Ted Hesson.

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In the wake of Tuesday’s sweep by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, livestock traders and market analysts expressed concerns that the potential deportation of undocumented workers from such raids could disrupt U.S. food production at a time when beef prices have soared and meat processors report a labor shortage.

ICE agents detained about 74 to 76 workers out of roughly 140 at the Glenn Valley Foods plant, President Chad Hartmann said. Other workers did not show up on Wednesday because they felt afraid or traumatized, he said, adding that the facility’s production dropped to about 20 per cent of normal.

Glenn Valley Foods sells steak, chicken and corned beef products to restaurants and grocery stores, according to its website.

Retail beef prices have set records as the size of the U.S. cattle herd has declined to its lowest level in 70 years after a years-long drought raised feed costs. Consumer demand for steaks and hamburgers has stayed strong nevertheless.

Glenn Valley Foods is trying to determine how long it will take to hire new employees, Hartmann said.

“The hole that got punched into our business is staffing,” he said.

Traders fear labour shortages

Livestock traders worried that immigration raids could slow meat companies’ demand to buy cattle from farmers to process into beef, if the companies do not have enough workers. Chicago Mercantile Exchange cattle futures came under pressure on Tuesday during the raid, after recently hitting records.

“There’s certainly going to be nervousness out there on where the labor situation goes, going forward,” said Matt Wiegand, a commodity broker for risk management firm FuturesOne in Nebraska.

Meatpackers still face an acute worker shortage, said Julie Anna Potts, president of the Meat Institute industry group. It worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when major companies such as Tyson Foods temporarily shut plants because of a lack of workers.

Glenn Valley used E-Verify, a federal database used for checking employees’ immigration status. Hartmann said Homeland Security told him on Wednesday that there was no better system.

“We will have to continue to use it,” he said.

ICE alleges large-scale employment of illegal immigrants

ICE said a criminal investigation was ongoing into what immigration officials called a large-scale employment of immigrants who are present in the U.S. illegally.

Footage of the Glenn Valley raid released by ICE showed agents searching the plant, restraining workers’ hands and ankles, and taking them into custody.

ICE officers have been intensifying efforts in recent weeks to deliver on U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda of record-level deportations.

Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles over the weekend when protesters took to the streets after ICE arrested migrants at Home Depot stores, a garment factory and a warehouse, according to rights advocates. On Tuesday night, demonstrators marched in New York, Atlanta and Chicago.

More than half of all meatpacking workers in the U.S. are immigrants, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank.

The Omaha World-Herald newspaper said on Tuesday that raids were also reported at local plants run by large meatpackers Tyson and JBS USA. Tyson and JBS told Reuters their facilities were not raided.

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U.S. Congressman Don Bacon told local media 75-80 people were detained.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid happened at a plant of Glenn Valley Foods. The food packaging company said it was surprised by the raid and had followed the rules regarding immigration status.

Processor says it followed immigration rules

Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, said the plant that was raided used E-Verify, a federal database used for checking employees’ immigration status. He told Reuters that when he said this to a federal agent, the agent responded “the system is broken” and urged him to contact his local congressional representative.

ICE officers have been intensifying efforts in recent weeks to deliver on U.S. President Donald Trump’s promise of record-level deportations. The White House has demanded the agency sharply increase arrests of migrants in the U.S. illegally, sources have told Reuters.

Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles over the weekend when protesters took to the streets after ICE arrested migrants at Home Depot stores, a garment factory and a warehouse, according to migrant advocates.

Local police in Omaha said they were informed by immigration officials about the raid in advance while the company said it got no notice about the operation ahead of time.

Allegations of large-scale illegal employment

Hartmann said federal agents had a warrant that said they had identified 107 people who they believed were using fraudulent documents.

“This was the largest worksite enforcement operation in Nebraska under the Trump Administration,” the Homeland Security Department said on X, adding no law enforcement official was hurt.

ICE said a criminal investigation was ongoing into what immigration officials called a large-scale employment of immigrants who are present in the U.S. illegally.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and federal law enforcement partners, executed a federal search warrant at Glenn Valley Foods, today, based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale employment of aliens without authorization to work in the United States,” an ICE spokesperson told an ABC News affiliate.

More than half of all meatpacking workers in the U.S. are immigrants, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank.

Rights advocates, including the ACLU of Nebraska, condemned the raid.

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Rising demand for such legal services reflects anxiety that Trump will follow through on a campaign vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants once he is sworn in to office Jan. 20, something that could have an outsized impact on the country’s agricultural sector, which heavily relies on their labor.

About half of hired farmworkers nationwide lack legal immigration status, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and farm trade groups have warned deporting them could bring the country’s food production to a halt.

“The administration is not yet sworn in, but people are already afraid,” said Sarait Martinez, executive director of the Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO), an organization that supports indigenous Mexican farmworkers in the Central Valley of California.

Representatives of four U.S. rural and legal advocacy organizations, including CBDIO, told Reuters they have seen as much as a ten-fold increase in interest from immigrant farmworkers in workshops and resources they provide on what to do if confronted by immigration officials and how to ensure their family’s security if they are detained.

The workshops can include role-play confrontations with immigration officials and instructions on how to prepare for potential enforcement: like filling out forms assigning temporary guardians to their children, assigning an alternate to pick up pay, or giving permission for their children to travel internationally in the event they are deported.

Alfredo, a farmworker in Washington State who asked to be identified only by his first name due to concerns he could be targeted, said he is taking part in some of the trainings so he can pass along what he learns to fellow workers.

“We are definitely very concerned,” he told Reuters. “We really take pride in doing farm work, but it’s becoming very hard to look forward to going out to work.”

Against the clock

In his first administration from 2017-21, Trump’s government conducted worksite raids at poultry processing plants and produce processing facilities in Nebraska.

The incoming Trump administration has said it will prioritize the deportation of people in the country illegally who pose a public safety or national security threat, but has not ruled out extending deportations more broadly to undocumented farmworkers.

“President Trump will enlist every federal power and coordinate with state authorities to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families and strengthening our workforce,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump administration transition team.

Farm industry trade groups are worried about the potential impact on food production, and especially in California.

A third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of fruits and nuts are produced in the state, along with huge quantities of dairy and livestock, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

All that food is harvested and processed by about 400,000 farmworkers, according to state employment data. And about 75 per cent of those are undocumented workers, according to the University of California-Merced Community and Labor Center.

Despite the high proportion of undocumented immigrants, there is little access to appropriate legal services for farmworkers in some of the state’s largest agricultural counties, said Ivette Chaidez Villarreal, civic engagement program director at Valley Voices, a workers’ rights and voter education group in the Central Valley.

Since November’s election, the organization has grown its work on immigration services due to a high volume of legal questions and requests from farmworkers. It is also working with other California groups to create a rapid response network to support workers who may be subject to raids, Villarreal said.

Farmworkers often struggle to access legal services because of their rural location, said Patricia Ortiz, immigration legal director at California Rural Legal Assistance, which is developing resources for farmworkers.

“It puts them in a more precarious situation than other workers,” she said.

Undocumented workers who have U.S.-born children are particularly worried about being separated from their families, said Martinez of CBDIO. About 4.4 million U.S.-born children live in a household with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Martinez said many of the workers her group is helping speak languages like Mixteco and Zapoteco, and not Spanish or English, and are seeking help with immigration paperwork and securing passports for their U.S.-born children.

Across the country in upstate New York, the Cornell Farmworker Program has increased its immigration workshops ten-fold since before the election, and expects to soon hold one every day, said director Mary Jo Dudley.

Using role-play, trainers show workers ways to respond to immigration officials if stopped on the street or approached at their homes, Dudley said.

“We’re working against the clock,” she said.

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To anyone suggesting Canadians should just clam up about this development south of the border and mind our own business, I’d reply that Donald Trump will, in many ways, be minding our business — so let’s review what we know so far.

[Editor’s note: This column went to press before Nov. 25, when president-elect Trump announced a threat of a 25 per cent tariff on goods imported from Canada into the U.S., and also announced his plan to nominate Brooke Rollins as U.S. agriculture secretary.]

Given his voting public’s dissatisfaction with inflation, Trump’s obsession with tariffs is ironic at best — especially tariffs that fly in the face of CUSMA, the North American trade agreement he signed. On the stump in September, he warned U.S.-based ag equipment maker John Deere that if it continued to move manufacturing operations to Mexico, “we are putting a 200 per cent tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States.”

Sure, for those of us who like to buy local where possible, it’s understandable to want to lash out at companies that move their business to lower-cost jurisdictions. For those of us concerned about escalating costs in new farm equipment, though, new tariffs mean either you, the paying customer, has to eat the cost of the tariff, or the company repatriates its manufacturing to the U.S. and you eat its increased costs of production.

To be fair, though, it’s also been argued that, in terms of leverage, Trump’s threats of tariffs have been more effective than any actual tariffs.

As for CUSMA itself, the deal’s language commits Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to a review every six years, which means that in 2026 the three parties must “review any recommendations for action” that any of them choose to submit. The president-elect has already said he wants to renegotiate the pact.

How exposed is our ag trade in such a review? Of course, Canada’s protected supply-managed sectors remain a sore spot for U.S. officials. A federal private member’s bill, meant to block Canadian negotiators from conceding any additional tariff rate quotas on dairy, poultry and egg sectors in any future international trade talks, passed the House of Commons last year but has long since stalled in the Senate. Canada’s export-facing ag groups would prefer that Bill C-282 just go away already, but even if it passes before 2026, we can expect pressure from the U.S. to repeal it.

The outlook for U.S. domestic ag policy next year could be brighter for that country’s farmers in some respects — even if only because Republicans are set to take control of both houses of Congress and thus could speed up the passage of a farm bill, updating U.S. federal farm support programs. Anyone concerned about Canada’s ag export competitiveness against subsidized U.S. goods will want to keep an eye on those discussions.

The outlook for U.S. ag policy took a more-unexpected twist in August, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. halted his independent campaign for the presidency and threw his support to the Republican ticket. Trump returned that political favour after the election when he said he would nominate Kennedy to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

On top of Kennedy’s notorious views on vaccines, the nominee for HHS secretary was quoted as saying in October that current U.S. ag policy “destroys the health of America’s soil and water by tilting the playing field in favour of more chemicals, more herbicides, more insecticides, more concentrated mono-crops and feedlots, and finally, it destroys the health of consumers.”

How much direct influence Kennedy will have on those fronts remains to be seen. For example, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency — which sets maximum pesticide residue levels on U.S. crops — might not share those concerns.

Some in U.S. agrifood have also already raised alarm bells about one of the incoming president’s cornerstone pledges: namely, “the largest deportation program in American history” on Day 1 of a new Trump administration, potentially affecting any undocumented migrant now living in the country.

Beyond the immediate humanitarian toll of such a sweep, there lies a massive test for the U.S. labour force. We know immigrant labour forms the bulk of the workforce for U.S. fruit and vegetable growers, dairy farms and meat packing plants. But the exact percentage of that payroll in the U.S. without legal status would only become known when it’s gone.

U.S. dairy producers have already warned that without their foreign-born workforce, domestic retail milk prices would almost double. U.S. meat packing plants, previously well-known targets for raids by federal immigration officials, would likely face such scrutiny again. And the market prices for cattle and hogs on both sides of the border are always subject to our southern neighbour’s capacity to slaughter and process them.

All these questions beg two more: how much of what the president-elect says should be taken seriously? And when, or if, any of his proclamations come to pass, will anyone act to protect farmers from the consequences? Sonny Perdue did a not-bad job as his secretary of agriculture last time around, but Perdue already said this summer he, like many other capable public servants from the first term, has no plans to return.

Until we have more answers, farmers on both sides of the border will at least want to consider the questions. And if you’re asking other questions farmers should consider, do drop us a note.

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