New York's farmers have a big problem with no way out

And Mamdani met with Hakeem Jeffries Friday.

Good afternoon — it’s Friday, and Sour Candy Day.

In today’s CapCon:

• New York farms are facing a new challenge this year that they have no power to stop. The consequences could be devastating.

• Hochul’s not sharing her thoughts on Cuomo staying in the race for NYC mayor, but an endorsement of someone isn’t off the table.

• A new bill introduced in the Legislature would end at-will employment in New York. Read more about it.

Names in today’s CapCon: Kathy Hochul, Richard Ball, Donald J. Trump, Amanda Powers, Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo

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(John Carl D'Annibale/Times Union)

🧑‍🌾 New York farms have it bad — and it’s getting worse

It’s no secret that many farmers in New York struggle to make ends meet. It’s a win if they can break even, let alone earn a healthy profit to reinvest in their business.

If you’ve never been on a farm, it may be difficult to know why that’s so. But there’s a lot more to farming than planting and picking.

Farmers are at the mercy of the weather and environment. If it’s time to harvest and it’s hailing, that’s time lost. Flooding can wipe out weeks of work in one day. And disease can spread quickly among livestock if it’s not caught early.

But another challenge we hear time and again from farmers in New York is over labor — or, more accurately, a lack of it.

It’s not always easy to find people willing to work on a farm, where they often labor for long hours for little pay due to the budget restraints of their employers. It’s even tougher to find seasonal workers and keep them coming back each year.

But that problem has now grown worse, farmers say, because of the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations across the country, including in rural New York.

“They’re just so shocked that someone they probably voted for has turned on them in this way,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said this week when I asked her about that.

She recounted the story of the mother and her three children in Sackets Harbor who were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April. They were ultimately released after Hochul intervened amid public outcry over the raid.

“That farm community, that rural community — I will go out on a limb and say that probably Republican community — was outraged by those actions,” Hochul said.

The father of those children wasn’t caught up in the incident because he wasn’t with them at the time.

“Dad wasn’t home, because why? It’s 6 a.m.,” Hochul said. “He was milking cows.”

State Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball (Will Waldron/Times Union)

🚜 ‘They’re afraid to go to church on Sunday’

There is a new fear among farm workers that they’ll be next and will ultimately be deported, state Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball told me.

If you know Ball, you’ll know that he doesn’t get involved in politics. He’s been head of the state Department of Agriculture and Markets for more than a decade now and largely flies under the radar as far as agency commissioners go.

He talks to farmers and the trade groups that represent them all the time. They’re not shy about their concerns. Right now, their workforce is at the top of the list.

“Many workers are disappearing; they’re not showing up for work,” Ball said. “They’re afraid to go to Walmart on Saturday. They’re afraid to go to church on Sunday because they’ll be targeted because of their ethnicity.”