Farm Labor News Update

A recent Newsweek article declared that America has a farming crisis. That crisis is in large part due to a farm labor shortage hitting farms across the United States. 

It’s no secret that most farmers are feeling the effects of the farm labor shortage that has been growing for years in the agriculture industry. The shortage has led to an increased reliance on the H-2A visa program. The H-2A visa program allows farmers to bring in foreign workers for seasonal agricultural work when there are not enough domestic workers to fill open positions. However, the program’s high costs, strict regulations, and complicated application process continue challenging farmers while navigating the program. Meanwhile, the program’s seasonal nature fails to address the year-round labor needs of many agricultural sectors. 

Utilization of the H-2A visa program saw a dramatic increase in 2023. Last year, the Department of Labor (DOL) certified 378,513 H-2A positions. Despite the rise in H-2A positions filled, the program barely scratches the surface of addressing the farm labor shortage. The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) reports an estimated 2.4 million farm labor positions that need to be filled. 

“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 AFBF President Zippy Duvall.

Duvall is right. Between 2017 and 2022, the U.S. saw a reduction in farms by 141,733, a total decline of 7 percent.

In an effort to address the decline in the number of farms and farmworkers in the U.S., the House Committee on Agriculture’s bipartisan Agriculture Labor Working Group (ALWG) is developing a comprehensive proposal to overhaul an ineffective H-2A visa program. 

The ALWG, consisting of Democrats and Republicans, provided 15 recommendations in their proposal. While the recommendations do not address all the labor challenges facing farmers, they do offer much-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 and
• Reforming wage calculation standards to provide stability in farmworker pay rates.

The proposal received unanimous approval. Duvall says, “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 working group of the House Agriculture Committee spent months studying and discussing this issue and now delivers important bipartisan solutions for America’s struggling agricultural labor force.”

Meanwhile, farmers using H-2A to meet their farm labor needs must continue navigating the program's existing regulations. FieldClock's labor tracking software simplifies the complicated program by tracking your employees' hourly pay rates in real-time. Additionally, farmers can protect themselves from the complexities of the H-2A visa program by powering up their payroll solution. Our ag-focused payroll software tracks farm labor directly in the FieldClock app and calculates pay accurately, efficiently, and automatically. Learn more about payroll here.