Where the Presidential Candidates Stand on Ag Issues

For the past 40 years, the American Farm Bureau Federation has asked every presidential candidate to provide responses to issues likely to impact and affect farmers and ranchers and rural communities in the next four years. Both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have provided their answers.

One major, ongoing ag issue is labor. Farm Bureau asked: As president, what would you do to reform and resolve the critical labor shortage that many farmers and ranchers face each year? How would you address the issue of undocumented workers who are already working on farms across America, as well as the need for a reformed H-2A program that would help provide a long-term agricultural workforce?

Advertisement

Trump: “President Trump has taken strong actions to deal with the immigration and labor challenges facing our country. The Trump/Pence administration understands the labor shortages facing agriculture and the unique challenges our farmers face. A strong agricultural labor system depends on being able to know who is coming to our country, President Trump began building the wall shortly after being elected in 2016. The Trump/Pence Administration has also taken steps to streamline the current H-2A program, including ensuring agriculture can continue to get the farmworkers they need during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Administration worked to ensure common sense flexibilities were deployed to allow H-2A workers to continue working on our farms and moving to new employers that had need of this critical labor …”

Biden: “Farm workers have always been essential to working our farms and feeding our country. A Biden-Harris Administration will provide a path to legalization for agricultural workers who have worked for years on U.S. farms and continue to work in agriculture. Securing adequate, seasonal help in the agricultural sector can be inefficient and difficult to navigate, causing people to avoid or exploit the system, even when jobs remain unfilled. We support compromise legislation between farmworkers and the agricultural sector that will provide legal status based on prior agricultural work history, and a faster-track to a green card and ultimately citizenship. And we will ensure farm workers are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve, regardless of immigration status and ensure labor and safety rules, including overtime, humane living conditions, and protection from pesticide and heat exposure, are enforced with respect to these particularly vulnerable working people.”

Trump and Biden also weighed in on the following ag issues:

Top Articles
New Survey on Sustainability in U.S. Floriculture Industry
  • Food System Resiliency
  • Farm Policy Programs
  • International Trade
  • Tax Policy
  • Energy
  • Regulatory Reform
  • Endangered Species Act
  • Clean Water
  • Biotechnology
  • Rural Life and Health
  • Sustainability and Climate Change

To see the full responses, continue reading at FB.org.

0