Agriculture companies are looking for more workers
Eduardo Morales
YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA) – Yuma’s main agriculture season is officially here, but some growers are struggling to find field workers.
Yuma is responsible for about 90% of the leafy vegetables grown in the United States from November to March.
However, with growers struggling to find workers, John Boelts, the President of the Arizona Farm Buereau is at our nation’s capitol looking for assistance.
“We look forward to folks on Capitol Hill and with the administration working together to find solutions that we’ve been asking for for three decades now,” Boelts says.
There are other alternatives to hire out of country workers, such as the H2A program.
However, Boelts says this can be too expensive for some growers.
“It’s a cumbersome and challenging program you have to work with a number of federal agencies, it’s time consuming and expensive, and it frequently requires you to have lawyers and HR folks involved that many farms and ranches don’t have,” he said.
Boelts shares how this is impacting the agriculture industry.
“Not only can we not produce enough food and fiber in this country especially high labor intensive crops like fruits and vegetables in our country, we also have to be able to compete with imports,” he says.
According to the American Immigration Council, the agricultural industry saw a drop of 155,000 workers from March to July.
They say it could be due to immigration enforcement operations ramping up, with the Trump administration targeting work sites for immigration raids including farm workers, meat packers, and street vendors.