YUMA, Ariz. \u2013\u00a0The border crisis is jeopardizing the nation\u2019s food security as migrants trespass through farmland, contaminating crops, two Arizona farmers with fields near the southern border told Fox News.
\n“There’s obviously a food safety concern because our fields are monitored and audited and tested for different pathogens,” Pasquinelli Produce Company President\u00a0Alex Muller told Fox News. “If there’s somebody that walks into our field and then we don’t know about why we put up flags and kind of mark it out and we don\u2019t harvest that.”
\n“That hits the bottom line,” Muller said. “It’s not sustainable. It’s not good for the country.”
\nYuma \u2014 the country’s agricultural leader in leafy green production during the winter months \u2014 provides about 90% of the nation\u2019s supply of romaine and iceberg lettuce, according to the Department of Agriculture. It supplies around 9 billion servings of leafy greens per year, but farmers fear they will lose crops as more migrants pass through the border wall’s gaps and into their fields.
\n“We’ve gotten a fair amount of traffic through and around our fields and through the whole entire Yuma Valley,” a fifth-generation farmer, Hank Auza, said. His properties cover several thousand acres with fields near Morelos Dam, where gaps in the border wall remain.
\nA neighboring farmer lost nearly $100,000 after a handful of migrants hid on his land for a week, Auza told Fox News. He couldn’t harvest the affected crops in case they were contaminated with pathogens that could lead to foodborne illness.
\nMuller told Fox News that Yuma’s agricultural production is vital to feed Americans. He pleaded for the Biden administration to close the border wall gaps and enforce stricter immigration policies to ease the strain on Border Patrol.
\nCBP announced on Jan. 6\u00a0that construction to close Yuma’s border wall gaps would begin this week but it hadn’t started as of Sunday evening.
\n“This is produce that we’re growing for the whole country, and it should be protected,” Muller said.
\nTo hear more from Arizona border farmers on food safety concerns.<\/p>\n