Georgia Agricultural Commissioner Tyler Harper released on Tuesday a letter he wrote to Georgia’s congressional delegation last month, which urged them to pause the proposed wage increase for foreign farm labor, warning the raise would add millions in new labor costs for family-owned Georgia farms.
A press release revealed Harper warned in his letter that “the Biden administration’s proposed H-2A Program Adverse Effects Wage Rate increase for 2024” will “add an estimated $50 million to Georgia producer’s on-farm labor costs” over the year, and the “arbitrary increase” would come as farmers already face “sky-high input costs and inflation.”
The U.S. Department of Labor explains on its website that the federal “H-2A temporary agricultural program allows agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring nonimmigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.”
In his letter, Harper noted that Georgia farms, which are overwhelmingly owned by families, will be hit by the higher labor costs as they are already reeling from the state of the economy.
“Georgia farmers are already facing unprecedented challenges from sky-high fuel and fertilizer prices to supply chain disruptions to significant crop loss due to severe weather events like Hurricane Idalia,” he warned. “Implementing this policy – at a time when our farmers can least afford it – will have a devastating impact not only on our state’s #1 industry, but on every household across our state.”
Harper said, “Given the significant increases in nearly every input cost and the significant crop losses caused by everything from hail to hurricanes to untimely freezes, it is not a stretch to say the AEWR increases could be the final nail in the coffin for numerous family farms across our state.”
The federal government under the Biden administration has worked to reform the H-2A visa program, and rates rose in 2023.
In November 2023, a letter including signatures from U.S. representatives and state officials from Georgia, North Carolina, and Kansas sent a letter to the Department of Labor that urged it to abandon plans that critics argued would give nonimmigrant farm laborers the ability to engage in collective bargaining, despite Congress previously determining farm workers are not able to form unions.
Another bill, introduced after Democrats lost control over the House of Representatives in 2022 but before the new Republican majority was seated, sought to create 20,000 three-year H-2A visas which would permit year-round work, which critics warned would provide a pathway to citizenship for about 1 million farm workers who live in the United States illegally.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
