AVONDALE, Pa. is a sleepy, rural corner of southeastern Pennsylvania that produces 70% of the nation’s mushrooms. According to NBC News, President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are threatening the American dream for a tight-knit community of generational mushroom farmers and the immigrant workers they have long employed.
The year-round work of growing and picking the mushrooms that season the stews and stir-fries on American tables is the basis of the local economy in Avondale, a town of just over 1,200 people where more than 60% are Latino. In recent weeks, several immigrants in the area have already been arrested by federal immigration officials who said they were in the country illegally, leaving many worried about the fate of their families, their community, and a $1 billion industry.
“You have to eat food every day. It’s a basic need for each person,” said Ruben, a 31-year-old from Mexico who works at a farm in the area. He’s been picking and harvesting mushrooms for 14 years and asked that his full name not be used for fear of deportation because he is undocumented. The immigration status of workers in the area varies.
Kennett Square, Pa., which is near Avondale, is known as the “Mushroom Capital of the World.” Every year, the nationally recognized Mushroom Festival attracts thousands to this small town.
“I don’t know what the government thinks would happen. Sadly, many families could end up without food on their tables, or at least they would have to pay a lot more for every product that ends up on their table,” he said in Spanish.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it had made more than 33,000 immigration enforcement arrests in the first 50 days of its administration. It has also moved to end legal protections for immigrants, including temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of people and parole programs for another 530,000 people who arrived in the U.S. from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
One multigenerational farm owner told NBC News that Avondale and businesses in nearby Kennett Square are “almost completely dependent on the mushroom farm industry.” NBC News is not naming the farm or farm owner due to concerns they could be targeted with potential immigration enforcement actions.
“Everybody who lives here either works on a mushroom farm, does something adjacent, or caters to the employees of the mushroom farms,” he said, adding that the workers’ presence can be felt in the proliferation of Latino restaurants in the area.
“The town would be dead without us.”
Related: Mushroom industry in Pennsylvania faces labor shortage as TPS ends for Venezuelan workers
Related: Lawmakers introduce bipartisan bill to protect mushroom farmers
Difficult, Year-Round Work
The work on these farms starts early. Between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. every morning, workers begin gently harvesting white mushrooms at one farm in Avondale. The pay is modest: Depending on the quality of the mushrooms, pickers can make around $1.00 to $1.70 per pound, generally earning between $100 to $170 per day.
Like other farms in the area, this one is family-owned, passed down through generations of farmers in an area where Quakers first began growing mushrooms.
The farm owner said that because mushroom picking is tough work, where employees are bent over for hours at a time to gently harvest the mushrooms, and because farms can only afford to pay so much, it’s nearly impossible to get American-born citizens to do the job.
He added that a vast majority of his workers are immigrants, and the documents they presented all appeared legitimate, meaning he believes everyone is working on his farm legally. However, he also knows that despite documentation that may appear valid, agriculture is reliant on both legal and undocumented immigrant labor.
Unlike seasonal workers, many in this community have been working in the industry for years, if not decades. The harvesting, which takes place in temperature- and humidity-controlled growing rooms, allows them to avoid some of the harsher conditions associated with farm labor and other manual jobs, such as being exposed to extreme heat or cold.
However, the year-round nature of the work limits farmers’ ability to hire people through federal seasonal guest worker programs, like H-2A visas. Even federal funding for those programs now appears to be frozen, with farmers unable to get reimbursed for expenses they’ve already incurred under the grant.
For mushroom farmers like the one in Avondale, those programs wouldn’t apply, and “there is no legitimate way to look for outside people to join our industry.”
“If I had a simple legal way to do things or even if I had a complex legal way, I’d hire a lawyer and figure it out, but right now there is nothing,” he said, adding that many farmers around the country “want to do everything legally here, but it’s impossible. They’ve made it impossible.”
A 33-year-old from Mexico who has been in the mushroom farm industry for 14 years said immigrants are essential for agriculture.
“The majority of us do labor that Americans don’t want to do,” said the man, who asked not to be named because he is undocumented and fears being deported. “I don’t know if Trump doesn’t understand or see that this country also depends on us.”
Some 643 million pounds of mushrooms were sold in the 2023-24 season, with Pennsylvania accounting for 69% of the volume of sales, followed by California with 11%, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The value of this crop nationwide was estimated at $1 billion, according to the USDA.
In Chester County, where Avondale is located, mushroom farmers produced nearly 200 million pounds of mushrooms, a decrease of 29% from the previous year. The county has a growing area of 11.1 million square feet.
Second Trump Administration Brings a New Round of Fear
Noreydi, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Guatemala and a mushroom farmworker in the area, came to the U.S. during Trump’s first term, when she was among the thousands of children separated from their parents under the administration’s family separation policy.
“He was the president when I came in and he’s the president now. Where things are going, it is just so scary, and it just terrifies me,” said Noreydi, who asked that her full name not be used because the Trump administration has also been arresting and deporting people with open immigration cases like herself.
She recently witnessed several family members in the area be arrested by immigration officials, she said, adding that they didn’t get to say goodbye to their families. The single mother said when she saw the immigration officials, she was panicked that they were looking for her, even though she has an asylum case, and hid with her baby.
Her biggest fear is that her 1-year-old son could be separated from her, like she was from her father.
“I don’t know what is going to happen if they get me. What about my baby?” she said. “It makes me feel really scared. They’re treating us like you don’t have rights here.”
The impact on the community in Avondale is palpable, several immigrants said. Streets are emptier than they once were, as people are afraid to leave their homes.
Source: NBC News
Author: Daniella Silva
Related: Mushroom industry in Pennsylvania faces labor shortage as TPS ends for Venezuelan workers
Related: Lawmakers introduce bipartisan bill to protect mushroom farmers
