There is a lot to consider this year as planting gets underway, and finding quality, affordable labor has been an ongoing issue.
One California grower explains farm labor has become unaffordable because of bad policy.
“In California, yes, we paid $18.00ish for domestic. We’re paying $30 for H-2A. When you put housing, transportation, and food on there, at a high level, California’s paying $16.3 billion for 850 million hours a year, right? And when it’s increasingly going to $30.00 an hour because now 10 percent of our labor is H-2A, and it’s gonna double,” said Walt Duflock.
It is leading farmers in states like California to turn to technology to fill the gaps, but even then, it is a struggle.
“You end up with two choices: You automate and you roll by your way out of it, or the acreage can relocate on you. So, the automation piece was going along okay, but not where we need it, right? Harvest is two-thirds of those hours in a lot of crops, an average two-thirds. Non-harvest cultivation starts about one-third of those hours, so you’ve got roughly 280 million hours that can be automated without fixing harvest, but you’ve got this 560 million hours that just needs to get solved, gone harvest and we’re struggling to get there.”
Farm labor was a big topic earlier this month at a Senate Ag Committee hearing. One grower from Mississippi says the regulations are burdensome and took time to remind the Committee how dedicated they are to their labor force.
“Please understand that H-2A workers live on our farms with our families for months at a time. We have very positive relationships with our workers. To suggest that it requires thousands of regulations to establish a fair, safe, and mutually beneficial employer-employee arrangement is offensive to farmers. Our livelihoods are inextricably linked to the presence and quality of our workforce. We appreciate the willingness of our H-2A workers, and we understand the sacrifices they make to provide a better life for their families, much like we do,” said Anna Rhinewalt.
Rhinewalt told the panel she and all growers she knows are looking for a commonsense approach to the farm labor crisis, without being buried under a mountain of policy.
