American Farm Bureau Federation president Zippy Duvall trusts Trump to keep his word.

[Miles Archer]

President Donald Trump said he would seek to keep his tough immigration enforcement policies from harming the U.S. farm industry and its largely immigrant workforce, according to farmers and officials who met with him.

At a roundtable on farm labor at the White House last month, Trump said he did not want to create labor problems for farmers and would look into improving a program that brings in temporary agricultural workers on legal visas.

“He assured us we would have plenty of access to workers,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, one of 14 participants at the April 25 meeting with Trump and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

During the roundtable conversation about agriculture, farmers and representatives of the sector brought up labor and immigration, the details of which have not been previously reported. Some farmers told Trump they often cannot find Americans willing to do the difficult farm jobs, according to interviews with nine of the 14 participants.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trump-tries-to-reassure-worried-farmers-that-immigration-crackdown-is-not-aimed-at-their-workers/

[Vinca]

1. I guess you have to assume anyone named Zippy is pretty gullible.

Sure Trump will allow you to have workers to pick your crops. Just like he's going to provide medical care for everyone.

[LonePirate]

2. Zippy is a complete idiot and should lose his position due to his incompetence.

[titaniumsalute]

3. Well they will find out VERY soon won't they

Farmers in most farming states have already been grumbling about ICE and losing workers. The busy summer months for farming in the midwest will really prove if Dump will keep his word or not. By this time next year if not the farmers will really turn on Drump and hopefully his right-wing Congresscritters.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. He'll send them those unemployed coal miners.

[not fooled]

5. Oh yeah, this prize

was on cloud 9 after the s/election, gibbering on and on about how dump's installation meant that rural 'Murica will no longer be ignored.

Represents the mental activities (I hesitate to call them "thoughts&quot of a lot of red staters.

Of course, getting rid of welfare for farmers (crop subsidies) is not on his mind. Gotta keep those gubmint handouts coming.

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

6. Zippy Duvall trusts Trump

Thus leaving no doubt of his gullibility and idiocy.

[haele]

7. You could never get Americans who did not grow up farming to be willing to do difficult farm jobs.

For all the talk of dumb hicks and hayseeds, there's a skill to doing farm work that is extremely physical in nature.
Good farmworkers start young; there seems to be a specific sort of physiological development required for farming and ranching that is best experienced while one is still growing and before one starts a sit-down or "stand around" job - or starts watching TV and playing Video games for long periods of time.
I lived in some areas of California where there were both 1st generation Oakie families that worked alongside 3rd and 4th generation migrant general labor/farm workers whose families were in California before the current state ceased being a Land Grant colony of Spain. These people had a generational understanding of how to work in an isolated, rural setting and could easily make due with whatever the earth and weather threw at them to get produce to market.

It was pretty apparent even then that the problem with farming is that most Americans aren't capable of leaving the towns and cities to go work farm jobs. Even those tractor-driving country boys who think it can't be that hard just because they watch the migrants doing the grunt work, and have gone out with "you pick'em" baskets getting the gleanings every summer are capable of the day-in/day-out are not going to be able to keep up until they've been working a couple months straight.
Not enough Americans have the baseline physical conditioning that would enable them to spend 10 hours a day hunched over rows and rows of Strawberries to properly pick a couple gross of acceptable ripe fruit without wasted effort and ruining the next day's - or week's harvest while doing so to work the fields. And it wouldn't matter how much pay they're offered to do the work, most are just not going to be able to hang in there long enough to get a harvest out without having to take a couple months off to see a Physical Therapist for their backs, hips, knees, ankles, shoulders...

That's why farmers - especially the Corporate subsidiary farms - need the migrants.

Haele

[gratuitous]

9. Correct

I spent my youthful summers picking strawberries and pole beans to earn money, and I don't think I know 10 guys big enough to make me go out in the fields again.

[workinclasszero]

8. There's a sucker born every minute

[Egnever]

10. .

[Orsino]

11. Or says he does.

He's a Trump supporter, so his word isn't good.

[oasis]

12. Dizzy Duvall is just another Kool aid swilling, boot licking, Trumpbot.

[RedWedge]

13. They all think they're special....

That it will somehow be different this time...