Bless the Hands That Feed Us, Before They’re Gone.
Approximately 73% of all hired farmworkers in the United States are immigrants, highlighting the critical role immigrant labor plays in the agricultural and food sector.
This is not a political story for me. It is a human one. But in this moment, numbers help us see what hearts sometimes miss.
As we approach Thanksgiving, a holiday centered around food, family, and gratitude, I can’t help but think about the people behind our abundance. The ones who rise before dawn to pick, cook, and serve what so many of us will gather around. Their names are rarely known, but their work touches every home.
I was eighteen when I started volunteering as a tutor for the children of farmworkers after school. Many were Guatemalan like me. Their parents worked long shifts in tomato fields, on sugar farms, or in landscaping. They were exhausted when they come to pick up their children. Some still in their work boots, trying to make dinner happen and keep the lights on. I remember, the center used the Quaker House in Lake Worth to run the after-school program. I helped kids with their homework, with spelling and fractions. Some children even wrote poems for me. That season became the reason volunteering turned into a lifelong rhythm for me.
That time of my life changed the way I see every plate that lands in front of me. Now, whenever I sit down to eat, I picture the hands behind the food. The ones that planted, picked, washed, packed, cooked, plated, and cleaned. Food has become the bridge I walk every single day. We all walk it. Everyone eats. Everyone remembers a meal that felt like home. Yet once we cross to the other side, many of us forget where the meal came from, or who made it possible.
THE QUIET WORKFORCE BEHIND OUR FOOD
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, in 2020-22 only 32 percent of hired crop farmworkers were U.S. born, and 42 percent had no work authorization. The rest were immigrants with legal status or citizenship. ers.usda.gov+2ers.usda.gov+2
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that about 2.1 million immigrants work in jobs that grow, harvest, process or sell food in the U.S. While immigrants accounted for 17 percent of all civilian employed workers between 2019–23, they made up around 21 percent of the food supply chain workforce. migrationpolicy.org+1
This extends far beyond the fields. In processing and packaging facilities, immigrants are heavily represented. In grocery stores and retail food service, immigrant workers account for high percentages of labor in front-line roles. For example, one fact sheet reports that the majority of agricultural workers (roughly 70 percent) are foreign-born. National Center for Farmworker Health+1
Even restaurants reflect this trend. Recent reporting shows immigrants make up large shares of chefs and cooks. For example, one article noted 46 percent of chefs and 31 percent of cooks were born outside the U.S. The Guardian
What’s changed now is the climate. Growing enforcement at worksites, increased raids, and rising fears are leaving fields empty and kitchens less staffed. One Reuters report found that up to 70 percent of farmworkers in certain California regions stopped showing up during peak harvest following a series of raids. Reuters
These are not abstractions. They are real people missing from rows of crops, from the back of restaurants, from grocery-store stockrooms—and paychecks missing from homes.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE HANDS DISAPPEAR
When the workers disappear, the land feels it first. The fields don’t just go quiet; they ache. Strawberries ripen and fall back into the dirt. Rows of onions bruise and wilt because no one came to harvest them. In the heat of Florida pastures, cattle stand waiting as smaller crews scramble to keep up. In Texas, chicken houses run short on staff, and processing plants slow down.
For decades, these men and women have been the invisible heartbeat of our food supply. They are the people who rise before sunrise, who pick, feed, lift, pack, and clean. They are the reason the grocery store shelves look full and the restaurant plates arrive on time. But when that heartbeat slows, everything else trembles.
In California, a recent analysis showed a 20 to 40 percent drop in available farm labor after enforcement sweeps, leading to an estimated 3 to 7 billion dollars in crop losses and produce prices up 5 to 12 percent. In some areas, more than 75 percent of farmworkers are undocumented, which means entire harvests hang on the edge of fear.
The same story plays out across other states. Florida has about 44,400 farms and ranches covering nearly 9.7 million acres of land. Agriculture brings in over 182 billion dollars in revenue and supports 2.5 million jobs. Yet nearly half of the state’s farmworkers lack legal status, leaving crops at risk and farmers scrambling for help. This past year, Florida growers reported smaller harvests and rising losses, with some crops—especially tomatoes and watermelons—rotting in the fields for lack of hands.
Texas, home to the largest number of farms and ranches in the country, faces the same problem. About 42 percent of crop workers there are believed to be undocumented. The shortages ripple through the state’s beef, poultry, and dairy sectors—industries that depend on immigrant labor not just for harvesting, but for caring for animals, running machinery, and processing food that reaches every corner of the country.
Between March and July 2025, national agricultural employment dropped by 6.5 percent, the steepest decline in more than a decade. Farmers across the South have described watching fields dry up and produce rot while restaurants in nearby towns struggle to keep cooks, dishwashers, and servers on staff.
One grower in central Florida said, “We can’t harvest hope. We need people.” He wasn’t just talking about crops. He was talking about a system stretched thin, about the fear that makes good workers disappear.
The truth is simple. Either the country imports labor, or it imports food. But behind that neat economic phrase are real lives—families who lose income, businesses that shut their doors, and communities that forget the very people who built them.
If you eat at a diner, this affects you. If you shop at a farmers market, this affects you. If you buy chicken, milk, onions, or tomatoes, this affects you. The food system that feeds the United States is not a machine. It’s a living network of people who rise before dawn and work long after sunset. They are not numbers on a spreadsheet. They are the hands that feed us all.
THE DAY I LEARNED FOOD IS A BRIDGE
I’ll never forget the little boy who carried a small plastic bag of cherry tomatoes to our after-school program. One afternoon he told me, without hesitation, “My mom picked these tomatoes this morning.” He tucked a handful aside for his little sister, and traded the rest for other snacks. Then he looked up at me and said, very matter-of-fact and proud: “These are my favorite snack because my mom picked them.”
That moment shifted something inside me. It wasn’t just about flavor. It was presence. The hours his mother spent stooped in the field, sunlight on her back, picking fruit so her children could carry snacks to class. Her work made his snack possible and her love made it home.
Years later, when my own children were in school, I found myself translating Spanish homilies at our church and tutoring women at El Sol in Jupiter, Florida, helping them prepare for doctor visits, English classes, job interviews. Again and again I met the people behind the food. Families I knew by name, by story, by faith, not headlines or statistics. They were the reason this county stayed fed while guarding their own tables at night.
When I shop for produce now, I think about that little boy and his tomatoes. I think of the woman in the fields, and the trucks, and the kitchens. I think of the bridge that food creates between us all.
WHAT LEADERS AND ADVOCATES ARE SAYING
Voices in the field are turning loud. The United Farm Workers describes recent enforcement sweeps as “indiscriminate,” saying they threaten public safety and fracture entire communities. Dolores Huerta, a lifetime advocate for farmworkers, calls the approach “an atrocity,” placing today’s tactics into the painful context of decades-long struggle.
Meanwhile the policy pages show hints of retreat and rethink: a recent Time Magazine report described how the administration briefly considered relaxing raid guidance in certain industries and then reversed course, leaving employers, families and entire harvests in limbo. The result: uncertainty, fear, and the disappearance of the very hands we rely on.
Industry leaders aren’t silent. At the Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum, Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani said plainly that the American food system needs immigrants to function. The American Farm Bureau Federation warned that without enough workers, food will become scarcer and cost more for everyone.
These voices—advocates, workers, industry leaders, form a chorus whose tune we would do well to listen to.
THE COST OF FORGETTING
Here is what worries me. We celebrate Cinco de Mayo with tacos and margaritas, then forget the families who grew the limes and chopped the cilantro. We rave about farm-to-table menus and brand authenticity, then overlook the farmworkers who harvested the greens. We praise grit and hard work, then vote against the very people who keep food on our plates.
More than 83 percent of hired crop workers today are considered “settled” and living near their work rather than migrating. Nearly one in three lacks work authorization either because the’ve expired or because they are in the process of renewing. These aren’t transient workers passing through. They are our neighbors, our children’s classmates, our fellow parishioners. They buy groceries, pay rent, and attend church in the same towns where they harvest our food.
The USDA confirms this trend: a growing share of hired crop workers now live in the communities they serve. That makes the fear and instability from constant raids and shifting policies hit even harder. When families who have worked the same land for years disappear overnight, it’s not just a workforce that’s gone, it’s part of the community itself.
This is what happens when food stops being sacred and becomes just convenience. We forget the people who make it possible.
A WAY FORWARD, ROOTED IN DIGNITY
I am not offering policy in this article. I am offering perspective — and a plea to remember. To pause before the fork hits the plate. To take a breath and look at what we eat, who picked it, who packed it, and who stood behind the stove to serve it.
Food connects us. Dignity sustains us. And yet, we are watching both slip through our fingers. Prices are already rising. Farms are already short on hands. Restaurant owners are already closing early, not because customers stopped coming, but because workers stopped showing up. Churches that once filled with families who came to give thanks for the harvest now have empty pews where they used to sit. These things aren’t distant possibilities — they’re happening now, quietly, right in front of us.
A farmworker told a reporter this summer, “We are being hunted like animals.” That should stop us cold. Because when fear replaces fairness, when labor becomes invisible, and when gratitude disappears from our plates, something sacred is lost. No meal should depend on fear.
I still believe we can make America kind and welcoming again. Not as a slogan, but as something we can taste. Treat people fairly. Offer clear, humane paths to work. Protect families from chaos. See the people who feed us not as shadows, but as neighbors. Remember that someone’s mother picked those tomatoes, that someone’s father washed those dishes, and that the sweetness you taste is more than sugar. It’s the flavor of sacrifice. Of hope. Of a life spent feeding others.
If we can remember that, then maybe the next time we cross the bridge from hunger to home, we’ll carry gratitude with us. We’ll remember the hands that fed us. And we’ll make sure they’re still here tomorrow.
FINAL THOUGHT
Again, this isn’t a political story for me. It’s a human one. I write this because my heart hurts to see what’s happening, and because silence has never sat right with me. I was raised to stand up for those who can’t speak for themselves, to notice when something isn’t right, and to care enough to do something about it.
As Thanksgiving approaches, I find myself reflecting on what gratitude really means. Around dinner tables everywhere, we’ll hear the same prayer: “Bless the hands that made this meal possible.” Yet this year, I can’t help but think how often we’ve forgotten those very hands once the prayers end. The hands that picked the vegetables, packed the produce, cleaned the kitchens, and made sure there was something to give thanks for.
This isn’t about policies. It’s about hearts. Food connects us all. It’s not just nourishment; it’s belonging. If we can remember that, maybe we’ll treat the people who make it possible with the respect and gratitude they have always deserved.
So as we pass the bread, the salad, the turkey, or the pie, may we truly bless the hands that fed us. Not just the ones in the kitchen, but also the ones in the fields and the ones who keep showing up even when the world forgets. Because when the noise fades and the headlines move on, what remains is love, compassion, and gratitude. And remember, kindness fills both the plate and the soul.
RESOURCES
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: Farm Labor Trends (2020–2022)
Migration Policy Institute: Immigrants in the U.S. Food Supply Chain
National Restaurant Association: Demographics of Restaurant Workers
The Guardian: U.S. Farm Workers Fear ICE Raids
San Francisco Chronicle: Central Valley Harvest Impact
The Wall Street Journal: Food Industry Leaders on Immigration
American Farm Bureau Federation: Labor Shortages and Food Costs
Time Magazine: Policy Shifts on Enforcement
Academic Analysis: Farm Labor Shortages in Oxnard