Fruit and vegetable growers need help keeping that fresh produce available in the nation’s grocery stores. Samantha Ayoub, an agricultural economist for the International Fresh Produce Association, said fruit and vegetable producers have a significant need for year-round labor.
“Fruits and vegetables are extremely perishable, and they’re extremely fragile. So, a lot of the production done on specialty crop farms in the United States is still reliant on manual labor, and so this is constant year-round, between harvest and all the inputs that go into planting, and to trimming orchards, so it’s vital that we have a stable workforce year-round for these folks. For specialty crop producers, up to 40 percent of their production expenses are spent on labor alone, so it’s a huge part of these folks’ businesses.”
Immigration and agricultural labor go hand-in-hand, so Ayoub talked about the solutions they’re advocating for.
“Absolutely, you know, the H2A temporary ag worker program is the pinnacle agricultural labor program for migrant workers into the United States, and that has been 40 years since it’s seen any sort of reforms to that program. I think we can all agree that not much is the same today as it was in 1986, and there are reforms that are much needed to both expand access to that program for workers like greenhouses that don’t fall into the seasonal categorization, as well as making sure that it’s streamlined for folks to use, and has a reliable, predictable wage structure.”
Specialty crop producers are under a lot of pressure to get this labor situation straightened out once and for all.
“Like I said, 40 percent of production expenses for fruit and vegetable crop producers go to labor alone. We are really fortunate to see and thankful for the new interim final rule on H-2-A wages that came out last October, and are hoping to see that made permanent through rulemaking and legislation going forward to make sure that wages are reliable and predictable for producers. As we know, they’re facing economic pressures across the board, with rising input costs in multiple categories and falling crop prices in the crop production farm gate value.”