This story is part of a CBS Reports documentary, “The Price of Milk,” that goes inside the supply chain, from farm-to-table. It airs Sunday, March 9, on CBS News 24/7 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
Petaluma, California — In California, America’s No. 1 dairy producer, Manuel Castro from El Salvador plays a vital role in getting milk to market.
“It’s a process, and in this process, it’s 24 hours, every day…no holidays,” Castro told CBS News.
Castro has resided in California for about 30 years and became a U.S. citizen in 2009. On this particular day, he loads nearly 5,000 gallons of milk into a tank, which will be taken to a processing plant before eventually making its way to stores within 24 hours.
Castro works for Moga Transportation, a company with humble beginnings that has grown over the last two decades into a fleet of dairy haulers.
“We have close to 90 trucks,” said Harwinder Singh Brar, who co-owns Moga Transportation with his wife, Prab Gill.
More than three billion tons of agricultural products are moved across the U.S. every year, according to Bureau of Transportation statistics, with trucks carrying the majority of that freight.
Brar is a Punjabi Sikh from India who first came to the U.S. in 1998 with his field hockey team. Instead of returning home, he stayed and sought asylum because of the religious persecution he faced in his home country.
Some of his employees have been with the company for a decade or more. Brar says he tries to ensure they are well-treated.
“Well, this is my family,” Brar said. “They’re not employees. They’re family to us.”
Brar says trucking relies on immigrant labor. He speculates that without it, the industry would “shut down.”
“Well, trucking would shut down because it’s primarily immigrants now,” Gill explained. “It’s changed so much.”
The Trump administration has begun a major crackdown on immigration. But a study by the National Milk Producers Federation, a group that advocates for dairy producers, indicates that eliminating immigrant labor would lead to a 90% increase in retail milk prices.
A Wisconsin dairy farmer told CBS News last month that about 90% of the work on the farm is done by immigrants.
“If I hired Americans to do the work, I would have to pay probably about $100,000 a year per person, and they would only work maybe 40-50 hours a week at that rate,” farmer John Rosenow said. “Clearly, I couldn’t be able to afford to pay Americans as much as they want.”
Says Castro, “It’s about working hard. These people, wake up, two o’clock in the morning, one o’clock in the morning, they go out. You know, they finish around 11, 10 at night. The milk doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop.”
