The Post exposed this farmer’s struggle. Then the USDA called.
www.yahoo.com/news/article…— Martin J McSweeny (@smartymarty1965.bsky.social) August 4, 2025 at 10:21 AM
I posted the WaPo‘s original story about JJ Ficken back in June, and commentor reaction was… let’s say, mixed. And yet! It’s good that one of the few remaining national newspapers can get a response from the current Oval Office occupation [unpaywalled link]:
He had begun to doubt the call would ever come, but as JJ Ficken arrived one afternoon last month at a meeting for the local farming cooperative in eastern Colorado, his phone buzzed. An acronym he knew well appeared on the screen: “USDA.”…
Four days earlier, The Washington Post had published a story about a federal grant program that promised JJ $200,000, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In January, President Donald Trump suspended billions in agriculture funding, and even when a court ordered the money unfrozen, it was disbursed at a trickle, leaving desperate farmers fearful the administration would kill the program before it reimbursed them. JJ, 37, endured months of uncertainty as he took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to bring in a 24-year-old stranger from Guatemala.
Now, in the phone call on June 25, an empathetic staffer from the U.S. Agriculture Department told him that, after The Post’s story, she had been directed to pay him as fast as possible. “She was told to get it done,” he said, and two days later, the first $100,000 appeared in his bank account.
JJ realized he’d been prioritized, and he worried for the dozens of other farmers in the program who had also waited weeks or months to receive critical reimbursements. Now, in the aftermath of The Post’s story, the Agriculture Department has moved to expedite all the payments.
The process has lagged, at least in part, because the Trump administration decimated the agency’s workforce, reducing its staff by more than 15,000. Earlier this month, it began recruiting internal specialists to disburse the grant money more quickly, according to current and former department officials as well as records obtained by The Post.
“The program has been processing payments since May, and they will continue to be processed as required documents are reviewed and subsequently verified,” an agency spokesperson told The Post in an emailed statement, acknowledging that it “has reallocated resources within the department” to assist the grant program…
The Agriculture Department also declined to answer questions about the program’s future or whether it might still be canceled, but the current and former agency officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal, said the decision to bring on additional staff suggests the grant will continue through 2026, as the government originally pledged. That would provide farmers the financial support to bring back foreign workers for a second season.
Because the grant was created under President Joe Biden, Trump’s political appointees may never officially support it, according to a former agency official close to the program…
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Dozens of farmers The Post interviewed, including many who said they voted for Trump, have been confounded by his administration’s unwillingness to endorse a program so popular among key constituents. Few threats to their livelihoods are more existential than the chronic labor shortage. At least a dozen American workers quit on Bennett before he turned to H-2A. Since 2008, Padilla estimated she’d lost nearly 50, costing her an average of $20,000 a year in wasted training.
They and many other farmers in the program have raved about their migrant workers, whom it was also designed to benefit and protect. H-2A laborers – who can be hired only after the jobs are advertised to U.S. citizens – have at times been abused and exploited by employers, but farmers in the program must agree to provide quality conditions and arrange for their workers to attend “know your rights and resources” training.
In April, the Agriculture Department canceled research that would measure whether the program helped farmers or curbed illegal immigration. In a letter to researchers, the agency alleged, without evidence, that their efforts supported “DEI,” a reference to “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives that Trump’s administration has sought to eradicate…
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Otto Vargas, who grew up on his father’s 40-acre farm, had long prayed for a job in the United States. In Kirk, he said yes to every request and worked to learn the complex farming equipment that was nothing like what he’d operated back home. JJ, who covered Otto’s rent on a tidy single-wide, invited him over for regular dinners with JJ’s wife, Kassidee, and their two kids.
JJ learned that Otto had applied for residency in the United States in 2023, the same year he married a neighbor from Guatemala who now lives legally in Rhode Island. Otto learned that JJ’s life was complicated, too. Kassidee worked as a dental hygienist, and because their daughter, who is 7, had recently been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, the couple home-schooled both children. On Tuesdays, JJ looked after the kids by himself, towing them along while his wife worked at her clinic…
The Post’s story about them drew more than 5,100 comments, many dismissing JJ’s struggles because he’d voted for Trump. One reader sent an anonymous letter to his home, asserting that the president’s supporters “DESERVE EVERY BAD BREAK YOU GET.”…
Not everything has gone the way JJ hoped, because that’s farming. One evening when the two men were working 90 miles east of Kirk, a hailstorm swept through town. Kassidee and the kids huddled in their basement as chunks of ice tore into their roof and mangled the corn JJ had planted.
With insurance, JJ figured he might break even, but the calamity didn’t panic him. The first half of the grant money had arrived, and by then, he realized what he’d found in Otto.
Even if the Trump administration cancels the grant after Otto flies home in the fall, JJ has made up his mind about next year.
“I’ll bring him back until he don’t want to come no more,” JJ said, “with or without the money.”
Mathguy
Welfare for me (“deserving” white farmer) and not for thee.
Lapassionara
@Mathguy: ditto
WaterGirl
Yeah, good news for one farm to get good publicity and burnish his image. Fuck everyone else.
JML
right-wing media spin that the program was a broken disaster by the Biden administration until the Current Occupant and DOGE “fixed” it, which was the “real” reason payments were paused and eventually released in 3…2…1…
Anne Laurie
I specifically included this paragraph in my post:
WaterGirl
@Anne Laurie: I didn’t mean that the one farmer didn’t care about anyone else. I should have made it more clear that I was speaking of the maladministration.
I’m to the point that I’ll believe what they say when they actually do it.
Ohio Mom
Thinking back to the No Kings marches, this is a very King-like move. Arbitrarily bestowing a favor on a subject.
For all their annoying red tape, one thing about old-fashioned (before Trump) federal programs was that they treated everyone equally. The were clearly expressed procedures and rules, and you followed them, it was that simple.
Ohio Mom
What is especially irritating is the idea that the farmers whose aid is now being expedited are probably now mollified and feeling validated in their support for Trump.
You can file all of it under, Good things Biden did and got no credit or thanks for.
syphonblue
Should’ve had to live with the consequences of their vote
toine
TBH, I’m optimistic about this one. I think JJ knows who f’ed up the process in the first place, and I think he knows that he got lucky in having it expidated after the “fake” news did a story about it. And he loves Otto and will have him back… that is how you put cracks in an anti-immigrant narrative… one person at a time.
RaflW
I won’t pick on JJ or the other ag folks who were using the program. But will any of them even consider making other electoral choices than “R” in the next mid-term or Presidential?
“There’s an old saying in
TennesseeColorado — I know it’s in Texas, probably inTennesseeColorado — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” (GWB, ).moonbat
@toine: Glad I’m not the only one who teased that out of the narrative.
JaySinWa
I read the farmers name as Fricken at first and I couldn’t understand the lack of fricken farmer jokes. /nevermind
glc
Filed under the banality of evil.
Martin
@RaflW: Probably not. I think Democrats might want to consider breaking up the agricultural distribution monopolies if they want to get farmers back. Crop prices fell 20% the year we had high inflation on food. Farmers got poorer during that, and one of the potential upsides of inflation should have been they made more money.
Biden was pretty strong on breaking up dominant companies, but it never really came to pass in part because there wasn’t broader Democratic support for it. Lina Khan was more popular with JD Vance than she was with some Democrats and Vance was outspoken about keeping her on going into the election (which of course didn’t matter because Trump was always going to fire her) while Harris never weighed in at all. This was the one place I can think of where Harris didn’t strongly back a Biden principle that she should have (and why I think she undermined her campaign by acquiescing to donors). Support for Khan was strongest on the left, notably AOC, but also Ro Khanna and some others. This is another place where Josh Hawley is weirdly good as he supported her along with a handful of other less-faux populist Republicans.
Chetan Murthy
And that the favor happened b/c of news coverage. Which means that what matters is whether you’re connected, not the merits of your case under the ostensible law. Very, very King-like indeed.
It reminds me of that Russian babushka in the village, recently devastated by a Cossack raid, wailing “if only the Czar knew what the Cossacks have done!” [to which the response is “The Cossacks work for the Czar”]
toine
@Ohio Mom: I think they know where to put the blame for the delays, and maybe they are mollified now. But as a Democrat, what are you going to do? Stop fighting for and passing good legislation even if they wont vote for you? That just makes you a Republican. One of the real problems is that so many don’t realize that they benefit from Democrat legislation. The solution to that is not to stop passing it when you can…
Bupalos
@Ohio Mom: you’d think one person here in this algorithmically partisan hole would notice that the farmer’s reported reaction was more or less the opposite of this.
The internet breaks brains.
Currants
@toine: hear, hear!
Jackie
@toine: Yes
eta I had to enter nym and email to post. Have I been ghosted?
RandomMonster
Am I the only one who read that a couple times? 100K a year seasonal farmhand?
Jackie
@RandomMonster:
For the farmer. Definitely NOT for the seasonal farmhand.
toine
@RandomMonster:
Yes. Read the law. Room, board, wages and training. Not a Republican law where you could throw 30 people into a shipping container and call it a day. OK, he voted R, but damn, some have really lost the plot… he is not the enemy.
toine
@Jackie:
Yes. And how much of that is left after you have paid for insurance, federal and state taxes and benefits and provided room and board (and not Republican room and board, mind you) and wages? 100K a year for a migrant labourer? It’s incredible that so few are willing to go through the legal channels to do it and equally surprising that all those objecting to it don’t try it for themselves. After all, he had to advertise the job for Americans first. How much do you think JJ is pocketing of the 100K? The enemy is winning because we don’t have an f’n clue of who the enemy is…
Doug
“Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
Totally agree. This is “if only the Tsar knew” stuff. Someone got the attention of the Tsar, he bestowed aid on this one favored class, and all is good for them, for now. But if you can’t get the Tsar’s attention, or if you’re not in a favored group, then it sucks to be you.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: I’ve thought for a while that for all the noise conservatives make about freedom, what they think of as “freedom” is really being friends with the tyrant. He’ll bestow favors on you, let you do whatever you want and crush others with an iron fist. Your personal freedom doesn’t taste as good unless somebody else is oppressed.
HopefullyNotcassandra
Thank you for this update! It is wonderful to hear that Joe Biden’s (& hence, the USA’s) promises are being kept at least in this instance.