Finding good, reliable and legal workers that you can trust with your cows or driving your sophisticated farm equipment remains a challenge from coast to coast and all parts in between. The Trump administration and farm state Republicans and Democrats who serve in Congress realize it’s a problem, but why is it taking so long to solve?
In short, it’s complicated.
Decades ago, there were plenty of rural and even city kids eager to tackle jobs on farms. That’s just not generally the case any longer, as our population has aged and fewer people are willing to do the tough work that’s often required on farms.
In fact, the American Farm Bureau Federation pointed out this demographic impact on the workforce is more dramatic in rural farm and ranch communities. Only 14% of the United States population lives in rural areas, but more than 20% of the population in rural counties are older than age 65, compared to 16% in urban areas. The share of people in rural areas who are 55 to 64 is also above the national average.
Only 28% of the rural population is of prime working age compared to 38.5% of the general U.S. population, the organization noted.
“Employers in rural communities therefore struggle to maintain their labor force, slowing economic growth and restricting their ability to maintain business operations,” AFBF said in a Market Intel report.
That’s why rural employers are increasingly looking for immigrant labor and more often than not, the H-2A visa program. But any discussion about immigrant labor on Capitol Hill usually opens a broader, contentious discussion about illegal immigration, how to handle the “Dreamers” (who arrived in the U.S. as children and are undocumented), and a host of other issues.
In recent years, key members of the House Agriculture Committee tried to narrow the focus on farm labor issues and specifically, to think about improving the H-2A program. The committee does not have jurisdiction over the program, but hoped to inform those who do.
Ag Labor Working Group
Led by U.S. Reps. Rick Crawford, R-AR, and Don Davis, D-NC, the group aimed to find bipartisan solutions to streamline the H-2A program and ensure a stable workforce for American farmers. Last spring, the Agricultural Labor Working Group released a 23-page report with several recommendations for improving the program.
“A dynamic and well-functioning H-2A program is essential for ensuring the safety and capacity of our nation’s food supply. As the ALWG members know, food security is national security, and hardening the agriculture supply chain, from field or pasture to grocery store, is essential,” they concluded.
Earlier this month, officials from the White House, the U.S. Department Agriculture and the Department of Labor, hosted a roundtable with farmers and ranchers to talk about labor challenges facing agriculture.
North Carolina Farm Bureau member Faylene Whitaker says the conversation centered around two main topics.
“The H-2A program, how we keep it here, but how we keep it affordable. The adverse wage effect, how we bring that into line with other prices here, and how we preserve the farm,” Whitaker said.
She also encouraged other farmers to get engaged on this topic with their congressmen. “They need to tell how it affects their farm personally, and how it affects their neighbor’s farm, and what it means to have a legal workforce here,” she added.
White House weighs in
President Donald Trump has long said he supports farmers, but makes no secret about his desire to remove illegal aliens from our country and shut down illegal border crossings. From 2021 to 2024, roughly 11 million “inadmissible” migrants came to the U.S., according to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Trump’s push to deport immigrants working on farms has worried many farm operators, especially large dairies. A Texas A&M report indicated that immigrant labor accounts for 51% of all dairy labor, and dairies that employ immigrant labor produce 79% of the U.S. milk supply.
National Milk Producers Federation Board Chairman Randy Mooney, a farmer from Rogersville, Missouri, told his board this spring that the top two issues facing dairy producers are immigration and tariffs.
“Nothing else means anything else to us if we don’t have anyone to milk our cows,” Mooney said.
Solutions finally coming?
During a cabinet meeting in April, Trump said he might offer farmers the workforce flexibility they’ve long desired. Details were sketchy, but Trump said farmers would be able to “come in with a letter concerning certain people, saying they’re great, they’re working hard. We’re going to slow it down a little bit for them, and then we’re going to ultimately bring them back. They’ll go out; they’re going to come back as legal workers.”
“We have to take care of our farmers and hotels and, you know, various places where … they need the people,” Trump said after hearing from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the department’s deportation efforts.
By providing a path to legal status in the U.S., the process as outlined by Trump could signal a major policy shift and provide agricultural employers with some assurance that they will have a workforce.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said recently the Trump administration is still having internal discussions about what to do regarding farmworkers who are in the country illegally.
During a stop in Nebraska on Monday, Rollins said she was working on the issue with her counterparts in the Labor and Homeland Security departments.
“Our teams are meeting and figuring out how to make that a reality, and what that looks like and what the time frame looks like,” she said.
Editor’s note: Sara Wyant is publisher of Agri-Pulse Communications, Inc., www.Agri-Pulse.com.
