Voices in agricultural labor are calling on Congress to take action to support U.S. farms and the guest worker programs. Sarah Black, general manager of Great Lakes Ag Labor Service, says the current labor system is out of step with today’s agricultural needs.
GLALS sources seasonal labor through the federal H-2A visa program across several Midwestern states. This program allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers for agricultural jobs when there’s a shortage of domestic workers. Black says a common mistake in policy discussions is equating immigration with labor, which she says stalls progress.
“The guest workers that are here on our farms today… They’re necessary. They’re part of our workforce,” she says. “Agriculture is not going to survive going forward without guest workers.”
To make meaningful change, Black says the agriculture industry needs to shift how it communicates with lawmakers. For example, she says, instead of delivering a long wish list to Congress, the industry needs to prioritize what’s most important, such as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate. AEWR is the wage formula used for H-2A workers. Black argues AEWR has become disconnected from the marketplace.
“The source of how they come up with the AEWR is not the right source, and it’s the number one driver of the cost today. For a lot of our farms, labor is now as much as 40 to 50 percent of their annual operating costs,” she explains. “So when there’s no predictability in what that wage rate’s gonna be next year, whether it’s gonna be a 3 or a 12 percent increase, those farms can’t plan. Furthermore, they can’t absorb that cost because most of our farms are price takers. They don’t have the ability to pass those increased costs onto the consumer like other businesses do.”
Black says Michigan has lost farms in the past few years or scaled back production due to the wage rate. Her solution would be to pause the AEWR and bring together experts to fix the system.
She also called for practical improvements to the H-2A program from the workers’ perspective. One idea is offering multi-year visas to returning workers who have proven themselves year after year.
“Why does the federal government make me go through that process every year? Why don’t we give them a multi-year visa?” she challenges. “It would save the government time and money. It’d make it easier on the farmer. It’d make it easier on the worker.”
In addition, she wants lawmakers to make the H-2A program year-round and available for all producers.
“The program needs to be available to everybody in agriculture, whether it’s a dairy farmer, a chicken farmer, an apple grower, a sod grower… If you’re in agriculture and we have a workforce need, we should not be restricting and penalizing different pieces of our industry for no reason.”
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