A closer look at labor by the numbers

Keynote speaker at summit shares ag worker stats

Editor’s note:

This is the first in a series covering the Southwest Ag Summit held in Yuma Feb. 2022.

“It’s difficult to farm without water or labor.”

Craig Regelbrugge, co-chair, Ag Coalition for Immigration Reform and senior vice president of AmericaHort, made that point during the Southwest Ag Summit. He traveled to Yuma from Washington, D.C., to present “Labor: By the Numbers,” as one of two keynote addresses on Thursday.

He noted the struggles and challenges that farmers face with labor. Farmworkers number up to 2.6 million across the nation. Almost 75 percent are foreign born. About half are “document challenged,” but this rate might be as high as 70 percent.

Not surprisingly, the H2A visa program, which issues a temporary work visa to foreign agricultural workers, is surging. In 2017, 200,049 jobs were H2A-certified, the first time the figure has crossed the 200,000 mark.

It reflects another trend: agriculture employment has been very stable for a few years but it tipped up recently.

The average age for an ag work is 40. Fourteen percent are age 55 or older with an average experience of 14 years.

“For many years, this was the work of young single males. The workforce that we have has aged in place,” Regelbrugge said.

Two-thirds are married and have children; the majority of those children are U.S. citizens.

“Migrancy is dead. It’s almost a thing of the past,” Regelbrugge said, noting that fewer than 5 percent migrate. Farmworkers and their families are no longer traveling from place to place, following the work. They are staying in one place and putting down roots.

These days, only 1 percent are recent entrants. In 2000, 30 percent of farmworkers were recent entrants.

“That is astounding. People are simply not coming across the border as they once did,” Regelbrugge said.

The number of unauthorized

immigrants has stabilized or even dropped a little since 2009. Monthly apprehensions along the U.S. Southwest border have plummeted to a historic low number.

In 2007, the government approved 75,000 H2A applications. In 2017, that number rose to 299,000. Arizona is No. 10 on the list of states using the program.

“As much as we complain about H2A, and admittedly with good reasons, the rates of approval are about 96 percent,” he added.

He noted that people in the U.S. are eating more fruits and vegetables today, but about half of the fresh fruits and one-quarter of the fresh vegetables are imported from other countries.

“We are giving up market potential. We are seeing imports more and more,” he noted, pointing out that there’s no reason for that because the U.S. has enough land and the knowhow to completely feed the nation.

However, one of the biggest constraints is labor. He said that immigration reform is needed to alleviate labor shortages. However, he noted that “the White House has dug in right now and is saying this is what we want, and we’ve got a little bit of a stalemate.”

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which defers deportation for individuals who entered the country as minors, is at the center of the debate.

“There’s no room for an immigration debate that doesn’t include DACA,” he said.

Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced a “sweeping” immigration bill, HR 4760: Securing America’s Future Act, that would address border security (wall), cuts legal immigration by 25 percent or more, criminalizes illegal presence, mandates E-Verify for all employees and includes an array of interior enforcement measures.

“The good,” according to Regelbrugge, is that it replaces H2A with the new H2C program, expands eligibility, it has a longer visa term (two years), relieves many of the H2A costs and procedural burdens, including higher wages and recruitment costs, and eliminates employer responsibility for housing and transportation.

“The bad,” according to Regelbrugge, is that the proposed bill would impose a cap on admissions. Although 450,000 seems like a lot initially, 40,000 of those jobs are reserved for processing positions.

H2A workers can continue in the same program is they stay with the same employer. However, those wanting to convert to the H2C program must leave the country first.

If the only solution is for these people to leave, Regelbrugge said some people question how many will do it, how many will trust the system, and separate themselves from families and employment. “Some say no one will, some say 10 percent, some say a third will.”

Regelbrugge called for a solution that doesn’t disrupt families by forcing workers to leave the country.

He also listed the “uncertainties” of the bill: rapid implementation, different rules and regulations (e.g., visa term) as well as “all things practical and logistical.”

“There are profound concerns whether we will get our workers when we need them,” he said.

The bill is currently 40 votes short in the House of Representatives. If the bill garnered the 218 votes it needs to pass, it’s unclear whether the Senate would consider it

It’s a situation of choosing between the “devil we know vs. devil(s) we don’t,” he said. “I’m hearing more and more the devil we know is perhaps better than the devil we don’t know.”

Many want to keep the guest worker program uncapped.

Where’s agriculture? “Not unified,” Regelbrugge said. “Some people see a DACA train as the only train and need to be part of that. Others see the underlining train as a train that cannot get to a destination politically.”

As for the substance of details, he and his colleagues are concerned the bill itself “doesn’t give things that are attractive,” such as housing flexibility and facilitation of border crossing. Much of the problem lies in the border-crossing infrastructure, he said.

“I’m on the side of agriculture who does not believe what’s on the table is good enough,” Regelbrugge said.

On a “somewhat hopeful note,” he noted that nearly a year ago, President Trump sat with farmers in the White House and signed the Rural Prosperity Executive Order which called for an interagency regulation review “to see what’s holding back rural areas.”

The farmers left with a sense of optimism, Regelbrugge said.

In the meantime, what’s an employer to do to address labor shortages? Retention is key, according to Regelbrugge. Farmers should also “stretch and substitute” resources to get more out of what they already have.

“Mechanization, automation, innovation are on the cusp of major breakthroughs,” he noted. It doesn’t mean robots will replace farmworkers, but they should help farmers do more with the labor they already have.

While farmers wait for the “political winds” to move, they should “prepare the soil” by educating communities through churches and organizations on the needs of agriculture.

“Make it part of your business model to educate,” Regelbrugge said.

Tomorrow: Farmers share their experiences with the H2A program and share the lessons they’ve learned.