A melon in one hand and a machete in the other, John Boelts squints at the fruit, carves off a hunk and pops it in his mouth. Out in his sprawling fields in Yuma, Arizona, he knows how to spot a ripe cantaloupe. Even in early October, the temperature still reaches 43°C (109°F) in the region after having soared to a scorching 47°C at the start of September – well above the seasonal average.
The harvest begins next week. Even as the produce stood ripe in the fields, the Mexican labourers he had hired to bring in the crop still hadn’t received their working visas. They finally arrived, six days late.
Farmer John Boelts inspects a melon in his fields in Wellton, Arizona, October 15, 2026. © Barbara Gabel, FRANCE 24 They lost most of two or three fields, he said, adding that it could have cost him as much as $100,000. He sits at the head of Desert Premium Farms, an agricultural operation he set up with his wife Alicia and another couple. He also presides over the Arizona Farm Bureau.
To get to the Boelts’ farm, you first have to go through Wellton, a small town in the middle of the Sonora Desert. The roads cut straight between the fields, bordered by clay-coloured mountains. Here, there are no hedges or trees, just vast fields in brown and green, dotted with tractors and workers tending row after row of lettuce, covered head to toe to shield them from the sun.
Standing in the arid landscape, it’s hard to imagine that this region grows between 70 to 90 percent of all the leafy greensand vegetables consumed by the US and Canada during the long winter stretch between November and April. Irrigation channels bring water from the Colorado River to nourish sweeping fields of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and melon – the fields of Yuma bring forth these greens on a massive scale, earning southwest Arizona its reputation as North America’s “winter salad bowl”. These farms rely heavily on foreign workers – many of whom live on the other side of the border in San Luis Rio Colorado, in Mexico.
In the high season, around 15,000 farm labourers cross the border every day to work in American fields, according to the Arizona Farm Bureau. The hardline immigration policies put into place by US President Donald Trump, including the mass detention and deportation of suspected undocumented migrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, have only complicated the flow of workers. Read moreWhy Trump wants H-1B skilled worker visas to cost employers more than $100,000 One man spoke to FRANCE 24 near an irrigation canal while helping his coworkers shift heavy pipes, explaining in Spanish that some labourers have become more reluctant to cross the border since Trump returned to power.
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