August Farm Labor Series: H-2A Program Needs Updating
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
photo credit: Colorado Farm Bureau, Used with Permission
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
Farmers and ranchers need a more efficient program for supplying labor. Chad Smith has a firsthand account from an Alabama grower.
Smith: Difficulty finding adequate labor is a common challenge for farmers across the U.S. Phillip Hunter, a wholesale tree grower from Alabama, says hired help is vital to his business’s success.
Hunter: There's very little automation in the nursery business, so we have to have labor to do almost everything we do. We grow landscape trees, so planting, pruning, staking, we have equipment to run that we need when we're harvesting, when we're shipping, we'll have multiple crews working on many different things at one time.
Smith: Hunter’s nursery uses the H-2A guest worker program to find labor. While the program has no doubt been helpful, he says the system still needs some updates.
Hunter: It's a good program, but it's been around 40 years, and it needs to be updated, and it needs to be streamlined, particularly the adverse effect wage rate, which we must pay. It has gone up in Alabama, 34 percent since 2023.
Smith: Hunter says farmers can and should get involved in advocating for changes to the labor program.
Hunter: We've been advocating three different approaches: executive actions of the Trump administration, legislative action through our congressmen, and then action through the agencies like the Department of Labor, Department of Homeland Security, USDA. Get involved there.
Smith: Learn more at fb.org/labor. Chad Smith, Washington.
Note: This episode is part one in a series of Newsline episodes about farm labor. Listen to part two here.
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