Farmers across the country have the same complaint: they don’t have enough workers.
John Rosenow and his wife Nettie run a mid-sized dairy farm in western Wisconsin, where 18 employees milk 700 cows, three times a day.
“We cannot operate with fewer people,” said Rosenow. “Once one person is short, it seems like we don’t get the work done.”
Keeping the farm staffed is a constant challenge, according to Rosenow. He says Americans just don’t want to do farm work.
“Over the last 10 to 15 years, I've probably had 150 people apply for a job here,” he said. “Two of them have been Americans, and those two are just fulfilling a need for their unemployment to apply for a job.”
In fact, about 70% of American farmworkers were born somewhere else. More than 40% of that workforce is in the country illegally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Without these immigrants, we would struggle,” Rosenow said. “We wouldn’t exist basically, and we wouldn’t want to exist either.”
President Donald Trump ran for reelection on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to carry out what he called “the largest mass deportation in history.” The administration set a quota of 3,000 deportations a day and set its sights on industries employing higher concentrations of undocumented immigrants, including construction, hospitality and agriculture.
In the first few months of Trump’s second administration, ICE raided dairy farms in New York and Vermont, produce farms in California and a meatpacking facility in Nebraska. In June, the president indicated ICE would hold off on immigration enforcement in the agricultural industry, but the ag labor pool lost 155,000 workers between March and July of this year.
The mounting crisis has set off alarms throughout the ag industry. Now, many are hoping this will finally be the moment for reforms in the H-2A visa program, which authorizes foreign workers to take agricultural jobs in the U.S. — something the ag industry has sought for decades.
“I think the time is now, and it needs to be now, because farmers have reached a crisis point,” said Kristi Boswell, the spokesperson for Grow It Here, an advocacy group founded earlier this year.
“We have farms that are going out of business,” she said. “We have food prices at an all-time high.”
While the H2-A program has more than tripled in size over the last decade, approaching 400-thousand workers, Boswell says it’s expensive, and it creates too much red tape for employers.
“The challenge with the H-2A program is that it is incredibly bureaucratic," she said. "There are four agencies that touch every single application: DOL (Department of Labor), DHS (Department of Human Services), the State Department, and a state workforce agency."
First, employers have to prove that they can’t hire an American citizen for the position. Then they have to pay to transport the foreign worker from their home country to the farm, as well as supply housing once they’re on the job.
While the pay rates vary widely from state to state, the average hourly wage is about $17.75. Total it all up, and some farmers report spending more than $30 an hour on H-2A visa workers.
The administration's reversal
President Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to keep farmers from being hurt by his immigration policies. Administration officials have said they're trying to streamline the H-2A program and bring wages down.
“We’re doing everything we can right now, within the statute, to make it better, easier, more efficient, and cheaper for our producers to use that program,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, speaking in Kansas City in September.
Relaxing the system for bringing in foreign workers is an about-face for Rollins, who in July stood at USDA headquarters in Washington, declaring that Trump’s goal was a “100% American workforce.”
“There are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America,” said Rollins. “So, no amnesty under any circumstances. Mass deportations continue, but in a strategic and intentional way, as we move our workforce toward more automation and a 100% American workforce.”
The comments, coming from the secretary of agriculture, struck many in the ag industry as tone-deaf and contradictory, given that Trump had promised an easing just the month before.
“That adds even more uncertainty to the agriculture industry that already is dealing with a lot of uncertainty,” said Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union.
While farmers broadly agree on expanding the H-2A visa policy to allow more foreign workers and ease the labor crisis, not all of them trust the Trump administration to get it done.
“The president says one thing when it comes to this, and the Secretary of Agriculture says another," Levendofsky said. “So it makes me think the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. That’s concerning.”
Any significant changes to the program would require federal legislation. Allowing more foreigners in the country—even much-needed workers—has long been a non-starter with immigration hardliners in Congress.
Yet Trump’s push to shut down illegal immigration and deport undocumented workers may ease the concerns of some Congressional members about more open policies on agricultural workers from overseas.
“I think that border security is really key,” said Kansas Livestock Association Chief Executive Officer Matt Teagarden. “[It] will allow some members of Congress who previously would not be part of the discussion about a more comprehensive solution that we’ve needed for, you know, 30 years, or I don’t know, way too long.”
The ag labor crisis has spawned numerous bills on Capitol Hill that Teagarden believes could provide some relief to hard-pressed farmers and ranchers, who have long sought changes to the H-2A system.
The current program is aimed at relieving seasonal work shortages and has limitations that make it difficult to hire year-round workers who can care for livestock.
“Labor is my biggest challenge,” said Brandon Batten, who raises cattle, tobacco and soybeans on his farm near Raleigh, North Carolina.
On a Grow It Here webinar, he said farms and farmers’ livelihoods are on the “chopping block.”
“This whipsaw, pendulum effect of regulations going from one extreme to the other has just taken its toll … ,” said Batten. “And if something doesn't happen, then, you know, I pray that we never see it, but there might come a time where folks in this country will be hungry for the first time in their lives.”
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
