The COVID-19 pandemic continues to decimate the job market, health care and educational system, and causes death and destruction all over the world. We stand at the precipice, a defining moment in our history. Nothing illustrates the dire nature of the crisis more than our nation lining up to receive free food. The answer to the pressing question of how we will feed our country fresh, healthy food is unclear and unanswered.

News reports indicate that our food production, consumption, and delivery system is not functioning. Restaurants and schools are closed, and newly unemployed masses cannot afford to buy fresh food. Florida growers are destroying acres of vegetables ready for harvest. Dairy farmers nationwide are dumping milk down the drain. California strawberry farmers have no market to sell their highly perishable produce. Farmers are hurting and at risk of losing their farms. At the same time, food banks feed thousands of American families that line up to receive a box or bag of groceries, to help them feed their families. The images do not resemble any America that I recall, nor reflect the American experience that we all dream to live.

A recent news report suggests that the Trump Administration wants to reduce the wages paid to immigrant farm workers under the H2A program. I have a better solution to help struggling farmers: recognize the value and hard work of farm workers, and provide aid to unemployed and hungry families.

First, an immediate short-term solution can stabilize our food markets by expanding the states’ and federal government’s programs that purchase surplus food from farmers, and use that food to supply domestic food banks’ increasing demand. This would keep farmers in business and farm workers employed, support rural economies, and help feed needy families.

The long-term solution to solving food as a national security issue starts with acknowledging and securing the human capital to produce food.

In our country, immigrants provide this human capital. Creating a pathway to legal residency for tens of thousands of farm workers is imperative to harness this human capital at a moment of crisis.

America cannot afford for any agricultural worker in this country to avoid work over fears of deportation by the present federal government. Nothing could be more patriotic right now than immigrant farm workers continuing to feed America. And nothing could be less American than denying these patriots an opportunity to participate in the future, to have a chance to grasp the American dream without fear that the country they helped to cross the pandemic-induced chasm turned around and shipped them out.

Replacing the H-2A program with a plan to legalize undocumented farm workers in the United States would remedy the severe social impacts that the H2-A program causes to the communities that host the workers. Growers and farm labor contractors lease or purchase apartment complexes and hotels in order to house their H-2A workers. This displacement of other farm and blue-collar workers and their families during one of the most critical housing crises in California leaves many workers suddenly homeless.

During this dangerous time, farm workers designated as “essential” workers are responsible for feeding us. Instead of reducing wages, we should increase pay, so that our grocery and food bank shelves are filled with food. We can pay farmers to do what they do best — grow the best and healthiest food in the world — and recognize farm workers for their contribution to the nation by granting them legal status to work and stay in this country.

This is our defining moment: how we treat humans essential to maintaining our national security by maintaining our food supply. We can uphold farmers and farm workers as the most patriotic of all Americans, if we embrace essential farm workers as part of our American future.

Democrat Anna Caballero represents the 12th District in the state Senate, which covers the western parts of Fresno, Madera and Merced counties.