Yesterday, the House Committee on Agriculture presented a roadmap to relieve labor shortages seriously impacting America’s farmers and ranchers. The Agriculture Labor Working Group released its final report on how to improve the H-2A guest worker program. It includes more than 20 recommendations to streamline the program and make labor more affordable for farmers.
“We are losing farms in America at a rapid pace, and there is no question that our broken workforce system is partly to blame,” said American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall. “This report makes it clear, once again, that there is bipartisan agreement on the need to improve the H-2A program to better serve America’s agriculture sector. This House Agriculture Committee working group spent months studying and discussing this issue and now delivers important bipartisan solutions for America’s struggling agricultural labor force.
“I am grateful to committee leaders for prioritizing this when they could have looked the other way. That’s what leadership is all about, and I hope this work is followed by action. America’s farmers and ranchers are counting on Congress to address this issue before more farms go under.”
The ALWG consisted of Democrats and Republicans, with 15 recommendations receiving unanimous approval. While the recommendations from the ALWG do not address all the labor challenges facing farmers, they do offer needed solutions, including:
- Streamlining the recruiting and hiring of H-2A employees
- Expanding the H-2A program to meet year-round needs
- Paying employees based on duties performed for the majority of their day
- Reforming wage calculation standards to provide stability in farmworker pay rates
Out-of-control wage rate increases have damaged America’s farms. A recent Market Intel report shows that the mandatory base wage rates for H-2A workers increased almost 41 percent from 2018 to 2024. This growth in the Department of Labor-calculated agricultural wage rate is almost 60 percent higher than in the overall U.S. Employment Cost Index.
The report includes several weather-related worker protection recommendations. Farmers and ranchers are committed to ensuring the health and safety of their employees, and the Farm Bureau looks forward to working with policymakers to ensure that any heat-related labor regulations do so while also accounting for the diversity of weather conditions and labor duties.
»Related: Demand USA produce! The challenge of cheap labor vs. American farms