U.S. farmer and agricultural trade groups are coming together to support the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act (SAWA), which will provide the first meaningful changes to the visa program for agricultural workers in nearly 25 years, Chris Butts, executive VP of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association and member of the Ag Wage Reform Coalition, told AgNavigator.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA) introduced SAWA, which will streamline the method determining pay rates for H-2A agricultural workers and make changes that will allow a broader swath of the ag industry to tap into this labor pool.
H-2A workers could only work for 10 months under current interpretations of the law and jobs had to be both seasonal and temporary, meaning the dairy industry could not hire these workers, according to a House Committee on Agriculture document on the law. SAWA would redefine the definition of “temporary” to reflect the length of a job contract as opposed to the type of work being performed, and H-2A workers would be able to work for a maximum of 350 days.
The act will also provide clarity and stability to the adverse effect wage rate (AEWR), which is used to calculate how much H-2A workers are paid. SAWA would limit wage rate fluctuation to not exceed a 3.5% increase or 1.5% decrease year-over-year and codify recent AEWR regulatory changes introduced through a 2025 interim final rule, which addressed issues from previous wage rate methodologies, the House Committee on Agriculture shared.
Additionally, if passed, SAWA would change who defines agriculture labor and services from the Secretary of Labor to the Secretary of Agriculture.
The AEWR relies on a survey to determine rates, with five revisions made to the wage rate methodology since 2008. Last year, minimum AEWR rates were $14.83 in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi; $19.97 in California, $20.08 in Hawaii, and $22.23 in District of Columbia, according to the USDA.
Over the last three years, H-2A wages increased by 31% in Georgia, making it “completely unsustainable” for growers and raising concerns about how the survey was conducted and the rate calculated, Butts explained.
“We were very, very concerned that there were not enough farmers responding in various states or various areas to set an accurate rate. We were also worried about who was completing that survey and turning it back in, and did their responses include H-2A workers or all domestic workers? ... Our fear all along was the survey was putting out bad results, and that was then leading to bad wage rates in our state,” Butts elaborated.
How specialty crop growers are responding to labor challenges
Specialty crop growers are seeking relief from H-2A wage increases amid a precarious agricultural labor market, where legal temporary workers do a significant part of the farm work, Butts said. However, small changes to the H-2A program can make farming operations — especially for specialty crop growers — more sustainable, he noted.
Given the specific nature of growing specialty crops, farmers need more farmhands than in row crop production, Butts said. For instance, “10 acres of cotton can be done with half a person, and 10 acres of peppers, you may have 15 or 20 people out there,” he added.
In addition to advocating for policy changes, specialty crop growers are using technology and developing new practices to produce more with fewer inputs, Butts pointed out. However, developing technology for specialty crop growers can be challenging and requires time to get right, he added.
“If you develop let’s say a new cucumber picker, you have to develop genetics and the traits within that cucumber plant to make it work well with that picker, so technology offers a lot of promise, but it’s slow,” he elaborated.