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Grow It Here today raised concerns about workforce disruptions across the beef supply chain in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Industry groups report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations this week delayed shipments of thousands of fed cattle to processors and left feedyards, dairies and packing plants short of workers. The disruptions are hitting a farm economy with no margin left to absorb them.
The impact reaches well beyond the region. Three plants in southwest Kansas alone can process nearly 18,000 head of cattle a day, according to Kansas State University.
“I run cattle, and I can tell you livestock don’t take a day off because a crew didn’t show up,” said Chris Gibbs, Grow It Here spokesperson and a corn, soybean, hay and cattle farmer from Maplewood, Ohio. “When fed cattle can’t move and packing plants are short-handed, every rancher and farmer up the chain eats the cost, and families pay for it at the meat counter. Farm country is already hurting. This makes it worse.”
Farmers were already under severe financial strain. USDA expects total farm debt to reach a record $624.7 billion this year. Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies jumped 46% in 2025, and monthly filings this spring hit their highest level in more than six years.
Consumers are feeling it too. Ground beef averaged $6.92 a pound in August, and beef and veal prices ran 5.9% higher than a year earlier.
Grow It Here’s backed research shows labor is part of that equation. Michigan State University agricultural economist Dr. Zachariah Rutledge modeled the effects of a shrinking farm workforce. He found that a 10% drop in domestic farm employment would raise food prices by nearly 3% and cost consumers an estimated $3.4 billion a year.
Grow It Here is calling on Congress and the administration to modernize the agricultural workforce system and protect the long-term viability of American food producers. That starts with a legal, stable workforce that includes the temporary and immigrant workers who fill essential jobs that go unfilled by domestic workers. It also means fixing the H-2A program, which remains costly and burdensome for farmers.
Without meaningful reform, the cost doesn’t stay on the farm. It shows up in every grocery cart in America.
Grow It Here describes itself as a farmer-led national advocacy campaign focused on the agricultural workforce.
Grow It Here news release
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