Food prices continue to rise at exuberant rates. In 2023, food prices increased by 5.8 percent across all sectors. Rising food costs squeeze family budgets and force impossible choices between food, groceries, medicine, and housing.
Although there are many contributors to rising food prices, experts say that a key driver is the acute shortage of skilled farm labor. When producers lack enough workers, it restricts supply and increases labor costs. This not only drives up food prices; it also drives many farmers and ranchers out of business.
A bipartisan group of senators from eight states reintroduced the Affordable and Secure Food Act in the 118th Congress to overhaul America’s temporary agricultural worker program. The bill will provide farm workers with certainty and a pathway to legal status after 10 years and provide relief to farmers and ranchers facing a labor workforce crisis.
“The Affordable and Secure Food Act is our common-sense proposal to address America’s agricultural labor crisis, bring certainty to hundreds of thousands of farm workers living in the shadows, and lower food costs for Coloradans,” said U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) “If we don’t get this done, more family farms and ranches will go out of business, more farm workers will continue to live with fear and uncertainty, and more families will continue to feel the squeeze of high food prices.”
The sponsoring senators say the Affordable and Secure Food Act reflects years of close input from farmers, ranchers, agricultural workers, and labor organizations. The legislation reforms the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker program by expanding H-2A visas to year-round jobs for the first time, modernizing the application process, creating more wage certainty, and ensuring critical protections for farm workers.
“The shortage in skilled farm workers means less food for Americans and more sticker shock at the grocery store,” said John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) “Providing an earned path to citizenship for farm workers keeps farmers in business, food on our tables, and is a common-sense reform to our broken immigration system.”
Specifically, the bill would:
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Reform the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker program by providing H-2A visas for year-round jobs for the first time, modernizing the application process, creating more wage certainty, and ensuring critical protections for H-2A farm workers.
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Establish a program for agriculture workers, their spouses, and minor children to earn legal status. After ten years of agriculture work, farm workers in the program may earn a path to a green card.
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Establish a mandatory, nationwide electronic verification system for all agricultural employment, with high standards for privacy and accuracy.
The last time this bill was introduced, in 2023, it failed to garner the necessary votes during a lame-duck Senate session. Much of the blame was placed on the complicated relationship between immigrant farm workers and the agricultural industry itself and the different needs they each have. One theory was that the 2023 version was so much of a compromise between the two entities that, in the end, no stakeholders were content with the measure and Senate enthusiasm waned.