David Peters is behind the wheel of a tractor digging rows of trenches for peach tree saplings. Behind him, six farm workers plant the spindly trees and till the soil.

Among the workers, Flaviano Garcia goes from tree to tree, large pruning shears in hand, trimming with precision the center stalk and spindly branches that will in time render a bounty of luscious peaches.

So far today, Peters and his small crew have planted 1,400 trees. The six men represent a sliver of the workforce that the Adams County orchardist will need in just a few weeks to begin tending to -- and eventually harvesting -- the 400,000 odd fruit trees planted across 2,000 acres.

His venture, Peters Orchard, annually supplies the millions of tons of apples used by companies such as Musselman's and McDonalds to produce apple pies, applesauce and apple juice.

With this year's growing season about to get into full swing, the hardline anti-immigration rhetoric coming out of the White House is about to play out across the fields brimming with peach and apple blossoms.

Increasingly fruit and vegetable growers like Peters are anxious that they will not be able to fill the thousands of jobs needed to operate and deliver their goods to markets.

"Certainly the political rhetoric will have an impact," Peters said. "Even before the rhetoric we didn't have enough workers. The whole need for labor isn't something new that suddenly happened in the last three to four months."

But growers are increasingly worried that the anti-immigration rhetoric has the potential of keeping workers away not only out of fear of deportation, but for those who enter legally, out of a desire to avoid being the target of hateful rhetoric.

"This year I don't think a lot are going to come out of fear," said Garcia, who has worked for Peters for the past four years. "A lot come from far away and they are scared that they will come all that way and the police can come and deport them. I think we are not going to see a lot of workers."

Peters, who in recent years, has seen a decrease in the number of people coming around to look for jobs, whether to be pickers, mechanics or drivers, is concerned that he is not going to be able to staff his orchard to the critical level.

"It's a very short window for us," said Peters, who relies on word of mouth to build a workforce. "If we don't get the fruit picked at the right time.. you've spent all your money for that investment and if you can't get it picked and get it to somebody who wants to buy it at the right time, it's a tough situation."

Ideally, Peters would hire 175 workers this summer to staff the dozens of jobs that go hand in hand with growing, harvesting and transporting apples. He can make do, as he did last year, with 150 workers, but that entails substantial overtime to get the job done.

Growers like Peters have a critical footprint in state's economy.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2015, Pennsylvania had $74.5 billion in total sales of agriculture and food products. The Keystone state ranks first in the U.S. in production of Agaricus mushrooms; second in butter; third in Swiss cheese; and fourth in eggs, poultry layers, Italian cheese, apples, Christmas trees, grapes and pumpkins; and fifth in dairy cows, maple syrup and milk.

The value of apples produced in Pennsylvania in 2015 was $24.6 million. Floriculture -- which includes the plants available at local nurseries or home improvement retailers -- was valued wholesale at $193,812,000.

As much as three-quarters of all the jobs encompassed in the production of those goods was handled by a foreign-born worker.

"We think that is probably undercounted," said Scott Sheely, a workforce development specialist for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "In general ag very much depends on a foreign-born workforce. That's the big picture. What that means it's not just in production but also in the food the processing industry, and the people processing chicken and making feed...doing all the work in mushroom companies. It's very heavily foreign born workers."

Most of the workers have legal immigration status, but across this vast industry, no one denies that undocumented immigrants work side-by-side to compatriots who are documented.

"We don't really have a good handle on how many people are here under what categories and how many are not," Sheely said. "We believe agricultural employers are making good faith effort to identify people's credentials and identify valid credentials, but in many cases they don't really know. The system is such that people have found ways to slide around those credentials. We have a whole bunch of people in the industry who are foreign born, and another bunch illegal, but still an important part of the workforce."

A significant portion of Pennsylvania's agricultural sector relies on the H2A visa program, which essentially allows orchardists, farmers, and dairy and poultry producers to set up temporary guest workforces.

But the H2A visa program comes at a cost: It doesn't always guarantee the workers when the grower needs them, and it's not cheap. Growers and producers -- who are responsible for every phase of the process -- face an investment of thousands of dollars traveling to the foreign countries to recruit and vet potential work candidates. They pay the fees to process the workers and transport them to the U.S. and back. And that applies even if Mother Nature is uncooperative and a freeze, hail or a destructive storm destroys the harvest.

But even the government-sanctioned worker program has been affected by the anti-immigration rhetoric.

Currently, Mike Melhorn, owner of Mainjoy Unlimited, a poultry handling company in Lancaster County, spends 2.5 years to process a foreign worker under the visa program. The process essentially comes down to traveling overseas and handpicking a workforce.

Pennsylvania, which ranks third in the nation in poultry production, depends heavily on foreign-born workers to staff its poultry industry. Lancaster County ranks first in the state in poultry production; and in general, one agricultural job in Pennsylvania supports seven other jobs.

"It's a long lethargic process," said Melhorn, who employs about 50 people. He is currently processing workers for 2018. Pennsylvania ranks third in the nation in poultry production.

Melhorn says the American public is approaching the immigration debate with two critical disconnects: The first is its failure to recognize that only 2 percent of the population supplies the remaining 98 percent with all its food. The needs of the former should be a priority, he says.

The other disconnect is as compelling: "The problem is that the essential ag worker gets mixed up in immigration," Melhorn said. "That's where the problem is. They want to tie all this to immigration but really it's the ag work permitting process we are talking about."

U.S. immigration policy has largely been untouched since the Reagan Administration. Since then, farmers and growers have been appealing to the federal government to reform the system to allow for easier access to a foreign-born workforce that is willing and able to do the work.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 further hampered any reform efforts, and now 16 years after those attacks, the growing toughline rhetoric on immigration is exacerbating matters for the farm community.

"It's all emotion," Melhorn said. "It's not based on real fact. It's based on immigration. It's not based on ag workers."

In general, the nation's agricultural sector is lobbying for a robust recruiting system that would extend a minimum of a three-year work permit to workers, allowing farmers, growers and producers to have a reliable and skilled workforce on a timely basis. Proposals would impact just agriculture, not construction or hospitality.

Pennsylvania in 2015 had $74.5 billion in total sales of agriculture and food products. The Keystone state ranks first in the U.S. in production of Agaricus mushrooms; second in butter; third in Swiss cheese; and fourth in eggs, poultry layers, Italian cheese, apples, Christmas trees, grapes and pumpkins; and fifth in dairy cows, maple syrup and milk. Dan Gleiter, PennLive.com

As with the H2A visa, American-born applicants get first dibs. But increasingly native-born workers have little desire to pick apples or slaughter chickens.

Peters said native-born workers make up less and less of his workforce as increasingly prospective workers opt for jobs in warehouses or manufacturing rather than the fields.

"Most people say 'I'm not going to do ag'," Peters said. "It's not looked upon as a desirable job. We don't have an appreciation as a society for where food comes from."

Moreover, he added, his workers from Mexico tend to have better skill sets than native born workers since most of them come from rural backgrounds. Most, he adds, do not shy away from the long, tedious hours of working under the sun or carrying heavy loads of fruit.

"They are willing to do the job ...more willing than some," he said.

On average, our food supply is available on a three- to four-day inventory. Take a huge snowstorm, for instance, and bread, milk and produce shelves can be wiped clean.

Peters Orchard each year harvests millions of apples destined for food producers such as McDonalds and Musselman's. Proprietor David Peters relies on word of mouth to amass a workforce. This photo was taken at harvest time in 2015.

"The reason we are not getting positive reform is because people have a lot of food in front of them every day," Melhorn said. "They are not wanting for food. If you want groceries, all you have to do is go to the grocery store. They don't see the process of how food gets to Weis, Giant or Wegmans. They see food on shelves ready and available and they can't connect the dots of how it got there."

On Tuesday afternoon as the sun drenched the peach and apple fields of Peters Orchard, Miguel Angel Hermosillo, who was following behind Peters' tractor, agreed with coworker Garcia that the tough-line rhetoric is certain to keep workers away.

"A lot of people won't come to the farm because they are afraid to drive without a license and that they will be stopped," said Hermosillo, who has worked here for seven years. "I think few will come this season."

About a quarter of a mile down the road, Raul Lopez, who was trimming peach trees on another field, echoed a point made by Melhorn: That all eat because of a few.

"Mexicans harvest all the agriculture in this country," said Lopez, who arrived from Mexico in 1986. "Everything that the American eats, even the president, what he consumes, is harvested by Mexicans."

Sheely said the growers and producers he has talked to this year remain preoccupied with their concerns over the repercussions of the immigration debate.

A number of states, primarily among them California, are increasingly automating the food growing industry, but Pennsylvania still relies heavily on human labor to prune, plant, harvest and process food products.

"We need to be thinking about how to bring foreign born workers into the workforce in a more formal way and provide a career path to help them stabilize, help move up," he said. "We need to be thinking this is part of our workforce for the future. We need to embrace foreign born workers in the midst of that... telling people this is not an altruistic thing. This is an economic development issue. This is about the industry having the workforce it needs to remain competitive in the world. If we do not pay attention we are going to be sorry at some point."